Hammertone finish

[Serge]

Does Hammertone paint become really hard at a certain point?  I finished an enclosure in Hammertone paint some time ago, and the paint is not (yet?) as hard as I thought it would be.  How long does this take normally?

[SonicVI]

It depends on how heavy you apply it. If you use too many coats without allowing previous coats to dry first then it takes ages for it to harden if it ever does. If you do thinner coats and allow them to dry between coats it will be hard in less than 24 hours.   My advice for spraying hammered effect paints is to use one very light coat to get a color basecoat on the metal immediately followed by just one proper coating. This gives the best hammering effect in my experience.  If you apply too much the paint can't do whatever it does to get the effect as well and you lose a lot of the hammered effect, especially on the sides.  Here are a couple of boxes I've done as described above. I haven't really had problems with durability with just one coat either.

[Electric Warrior]

these look spectacular. what brand of paint do you use?

[SonicVI]

the gold is real Hammerite brand and the silver is Rustoleum.

[Serge]

SonicVI, those enclosures indeed look great!

[biggy boy]

Man!
I really like the copper colour

[Electric Warrior]

looks like Hammerite is worth its price... don't know if I can get Rustoleum here.

[Mick Bailey]

Which primer did you use, if any?

[SonicVI]

No primer. It works best on bare metal.   Rustoleum is easy to find in the in the states but Hammerite is harder to come by. I found a local shop that had some that looked like it had been there for a while. I've hear Hammerite gold (as seen above) is no longer available in spray cans. I have about half a can left   It looks much different from the Rustoleum gold.

[Electric Warrior]

The German hammerite site states that black, silver, copper and dark green (though the pic shows dark blue) are available in spray cans. Did you use gold or copper?
Edit: maybe the German site is just outdated. They left copper off the Austrian site.

[SonicVI]

I used Gold

[Electric Warrior]

I wonder what hammerite copper looks like in reality, the preview on the website looks promising:

[m-theory]

The effect is caused by having silicone in the paint, which produces a paint "defect" called "fisheyes."  You should be able to produce a similar effect with armor all, using any type of paint, though you'd have to experiment a bit with it, to see if wiping armor all across the substrate before painting, or lightly spraying it over fresh paint would produce the most favorable results.  Might be worth playing around with.  Hammortone is a very cool look, and it's surprisingly durable. 

As for dry time, it's no different than any other similar resin material.  In other words, if you pound multiple heavy coats on, it's going to take a long time to dry.  If you're using rustoleum, expect longer dry times than lacquer or acrylic regardless, because alkyd enamels, by nature of the resins that they're made from, are very slow to dry.  This natural tendancy is also why it's easy to get very wet looking, smooth finishes from alkyds. 

[Jargo]

I found this...in case someone was wondering


http://www.discountpaint.net/store/home.php?cat=7&gclid=CNzw0fPFn6oCFcWA5QodrE1N5g