Has anyone tried to paint dope over epoxy paint??? If so, how did it work out??? The problem I'm having is that I used K&B Ultracoat Epoxy Paint for the base and now I want to do trim painting. I don't have clear epoxy paint so I'm getting bleed under the tape. I tried dusting light coats on but that didn't seem to work out as well as I wanted. I would appreciate any suggestion, at this point I'm ready to show the plane the trash can and probably would be the best way to handle her. Shes to ugly for me to play with, the epoxy paint shines with a real nice gloss but all I can see is the bleed through on the tape lines. Yes I know sand, sand, sand and start over. Hello!!!! TRASH CAN, Gary

   Don't use paper tape, use regular plastic trim masking tape. I don't think it's a great idea to use dope over it, and certainly not to seal the tape edges - I would expect it to pull the dope away from the base color, and take the trim color with it.

     Brett

     

Hi guys,

Has anyone tried to paint dope over epoxy paint??? If so, how did it work out??? 

Don't do it. I made that same mistake once trying to repair a plane that had K&B paint on it. The Sig dope ate right through in seconds. Made the whole thing lool like it was coated in cottage cheese.

I don't have a LOT of experience with the epoxy paints, but I do paint a lot with Urethane's which are in the same general characteristics. If you can unmask before the paint starts to get stringy then I generally do that. If you wait say overnight,, the paint film gets so strong that it doesn't want to shear cleanly sometimes. It is far SAFER to pull masking off when the paint isnt wet, so you don't drag wet paint across the rest of the surface on accident, or get paint on your hands then touch something,, All that being said, I generally try to mask things so that I can pull the edge tape away from the fresh paint, leaving the paper on the surface to pull up later after its dry.
Hmm that may not make sense. try this when I mask up for a color, I use vinyl mask tape, 1/8 or 1/4 generally. Layout my design. Then I will mask the rest of the area with tape and paper leaving the paper about a 1/4 away from the vinyl tape. then lay another strip of vinyl masking tape to close-off between the paper masking and the outline separation masking. That way when you unmask, you can pull up the 1/4" and the actual edge masking leaving the paper in place to protect the rest of the plane from accidental drags and touches.

I believe dope attaches to the base paint better than epoxy.

    Oh, I don't think so, not as long as you use all epoxy products underneath. On coat of dope generally slightly melts the one below it so they stick pretty good most of the time. But I have heard *far* more problems pulling dope off than epoxy. Particularly if you use silver dope at some point, it has the adhesion of teflon.

     It's epoxy, after all, and it sticks like, epoxy.

     Brett

My personal experience with Brodak jet black dope over KlassKote was the dope stuck about like latex to glass. It was fair over large area's, but any fine lines or small fonts, and it wasn't pretty.

    Exactly, the dope just sort of lays there until you get a point load, then it peels right up.

     Brett

Hi Brett,

I know you're correct, it just looks like the dope is penetrating more than the epoxy. When I apply dope it looks like its penetrating through all the coats of dope, maybe not, but looks like it is. When I sprayed the epoxy trim color over the base color epoxy paint, it looked like it was just sitting on top of the epoxy. I wasn't happy with the job I did on spraying this coat, so I sanded it off and it was stuck very well to the base coat. I guess when the epoxy cures its melts into the base.

   I think we are miscommunicating - epoxy does just sit on the top of the underlying coat. But it's literally glued to it with, well, epoxy. Dope *does* slightly dissolve the underlying dope and that's how it bonds But dope over epoxy doesn't do that, so it just peels up. Same to a lesser extent with epoxy over dope - it works better and it sticks to nitrate pretty well, but it doesn't stick to butyrate very well.

    There's just not much problem that I have found putting epoxy over epoxy, it works great.

     Brett