Well, I said I probably wouldn't blog about painting this one since I covered my process pretty thoroughly in this old blog entry. However, I did some things differently this time around and thought it warranted a quick entry to document.

I decided to take some cues from Sansoo22's process since he does such a great job on his planes. I had planned to bake my plane the way he does but then decided against that since it's too big for my shop oven and I didn't want my wife to beat me for stinking up the house by using the kitchen oven. I also found I didn't have enough Duplicolor enamel like I typically use but I had some Rustoleum Enamel and Primer that was left over from painting a mailbox. It looked nice on the mailbox and has held up well out in the elements. And since I'm kinda cheap, I decided to use what I had on hand

I also decided to follow Sansoo's advice about not masking the top edges and the front and back ends and scraping the paint off afterwards instead. I've never been really happy with the corners at these intersections because I always get uneven edges due to the rounded corners from the casting process and the small cracks that sometimes result when removing the masking.

So I sprayed the primer first. Two coats gave me full coverage with no runs so I stopped there. I let it sit for ~48 hours then wet sanded to get rid of any rough spots. I found it was really thin and I actually sanded through in a couple of spots. So I blasted all the dust off with compressed air and gave it a wipe with acetone and sprayed a third coat. Let it cure a day and it looked fine. (Sorry, no pics. Like I said, I wasn't planning to blog this part…)

Note on the primer: I don't like it as well as something that goes on a little thicker and sands better to a smoother finish. Though this primer does go on easily and evenly and does well at promoting adhesion.

So then it was time to paint. The can basically says get all your coats on in an hour or wait 48 to recoat. So I sprayed three coats about 15 minutes apart and it looked pretty good to me so that was that. In hindsight, it really needed another coat or two. It shrunk a lot more than I'm used too and has less gloss than the Duplicolor semi-gloss. So it's acceptable but I won't use it for planes any more. I'll quit being a cheap-ass and pick up some Duplicolor primer and enamel next time I do a plane. I didn't take any pics comparing the two paints but you can see in some of the following pics that (at least IMHO) this paint is perfectly acceptable.

So now it was on to the main point of evolving (hopefully) my process - scraping the edges instead of masking per Sansoo's advice. He was kind enough to run point for me on scraping a plane that had been primed and painted (see the comments of the last entry in this blog series) to be sure the primer didn't present any new challenges for him. His came out great so after letting the plane cure for about 60 hours I went to work with a utility knife blade. Well actually about a half dozen by the time I was done…

As advertised, the enamel peeled off pretty clean in nice, long strips. But, because these edges aren't really flat and the blade is, a good deal was left behind.

It's kinda hard to see in that photo but it's the best one I have. There is some obvious black enamel left after scraping. What you can't really see is that there's also a great deal of primer left in low spots of the casting surface and the surface looks really rough from being scraped and gouged by the razor blades. I was however really happy with the intersections of the painted and scraped surfaces

This method is considerably more work than masking these edges but the improvement in the lines makes it well worth the effort IMO.

I found the best method to get the crisp lines I that have always eluded me with masking was to rest the edge of the blade on the inside corner so it was angled at about 10 degrees to the inside of the body and so the back of the blade was higher than the cutting edge enough so that it would cut the paint cleanly but not dig in if it caught a rough spot or inclusion in the casting. Here is a shot after I finished removing paint with the razor blades and removed all the masking. I think it shows the nice clean lines fairly well.

By contrast, a close-up of the frog reciever after removing masking shows how those corners can sometimes look by relying on masking to create the lines:

After I finished scraping, I tore some small pieces of 80 grit sandpaper per Sansoo's advice and set to gently abrading the edges. I was very careful to avoid scratching the paint at the lines I had worked so hard to create!
I went over each edge and the front and back probably 6-8 times using a fresh piece of paper until I couldn't see any remaining spots of paint or primer or gouges from the razor blades.

I'm not sure the photo has enough resolution for you to really be able to see it but this is how the edges looked after the 80 grit paper. Clean but also pretty rough. Especially in comparison to the sides and sole that had been sanded up through 320 grit already. So I repeated the same process again with small pieces of 120, 220 and finally 320 paper. And voila:

Clean lines and smooth edges. I'm a happy camper

Well, mostly….

I'm not sure if it even shows up in the photos above after the resolution is reduced for the site. And you probably wouldn't even notice it in full resolution pics if I didn't point it out but, in some spots it looks like there is a border between the black enamel and the polished cast iron.

Yep, didn't think it through with the gray primer. It's definitely not terrible and it's staying like it is because overall I'm happy with how this plane looks now. But it's something to keep in mind for future.

So, in summary, I tried a new enamel and primer. While they worked well, I'll revert to Duplicolor in the future because I'm familiar with it and like the sheen better. How it looks when wet vs. after curing is easier for me to predict as well. I also tried scraping instead of masking for the ends at the heel and toe and for the top edges of the cheeks. While it's a good deal more work, it also yields much better results in my opinion and will be how I do planes going forward. I will either use a black primer or no primer though to avoid the primer coats showing in the final edges. I'll also sand the edges back before painting so there aren't as many nooks and crannies for the paint and primer to get into. That should reduced the amount of time needed to scrape and sand them after painting significantly.

That's where I'm at for now. I still have to sand the wood pieces back to bare and repair the busted horn on the tote. I plan to follow a different finishing schedule so I'll definitely post on the repair and finishing of those pieces when I get around to it. That might wrap up this series though. Polishing up all the hardware and painting the frog and working up the blade and chipbreaker are also outstanding tasks. But, my methods for doing all that will be the same as in my old series other than using a powered sharpener instead of stones on the iron. So I will probably skip over all that unless anyone has special requests to see anything I may not have covered previously. If so shout out in the comments.

Thanks for reading and a HUGE thanks to Sansoo22 for graciously putting up with all my questions about his painting process