Help painting raised lettering.

[xbartx]

Any hints as to repainting the raised letters on this vise I'm repainting?
My hands are probably not steady enough to do it freehand. Would some kind of paint pad work best?
-Brad

 

[RTM]

Here are some past posts on this topic

Search results for query: Paint letters vise

www.garagejournal.com

 

[rsanter]

Make up foam thing
dip in the paint
touch on the surface of the lettering

 

[ecotec]

Make up foam thing
dip in the paint
touch on the surface of the lettering

This, paint pen (not as durable, but easy to touch up), or small paint brush.

 

[Shiftless]

Make up foam thing
dip in the paint
touch on the surface of the lettering

This is a fine technique.
But be careful with the amount of paint on the foam pad. You might want to have a scrap Of cardboard on your workbench to dab onto before dabbing on to your vise.

Another tool I sometimes use is a Q-tip. First I cut off the cotton swab end though. Just use the compressed paper shaft of the Q-tip as a dauber.

Here is a vise I repainted and highlighted the lettering using the above techniques.

 

[aka Larry]

Not sure if this is applicable to your vise, but I've used the 'dry brush' technique with good results.

Basically you use a small brush (like for models) and use just enough paint to get color on the brush. This keeps the paint from bleeding over the edges of the lettering. The only downside is this method requires multiple coats for coverage because of the fact the paint is so thin.

Here are the raised areas I painted on a couple of items (washer fluid cap, fuse box) in the engine bay of my Charger R/T.

 

[Orangina]

I use a small, fine real hair brush –
and in case I've applied too much paint, cotton swabs q-tips to wipe it away along the edges.



For flat surfaces, I use self printable waterslide decals – or order decals from a cutting plotter.



Good luck,

 

[Nick Rivers]

Skip the paint pens, brushes, and markers. There is a technique where a piece of fine cloth is wrapped around a rigid sphere. That is touched to the paint then touched to the surface of raised letters to only apply paint to the face of the letters.

It is a cloth ball applicator technique where the cloth is twisted and tied to form a smooth, slightly padded “face”. The ball is dabbed into paint, then dabbed onto raised letters.

Paint transfers only to the top surface, not the sides.

 

[xbartx]

After I saw the foam suggestion, I tried it with poor results. I decided I might be able to do a bit better free hand with a small brush.
I was better but not great. Some of the later suggestion look pretty good. I'm not sure if I will try again or just leave it as-is.

 

[crguy]

Those raised letters are often rough and uneven to start with. I've used a paint pen with acceptable results, probably as good or better than the original factory results.

 

[Beerhippie]

Oh, I thought you were offering help painting raised lettering... I could use it.

 

[Lassen Forge]

I've always had issues with this no matter what I tried - someone told me the OEM solution is usually some itineration of a print shop inking roller - get a small amount of paint on the roller, roll it on some flat surface until It's relatively "dry" and THEN do the raised lettering.

I talked to a distant relative who actually knew this info firsthand that license plates used to be painted this way - they'd go through a roller that applied the paint to the top of the extruded letters/numbers in a much larger, industrial setting (GrayBar Lodging and Industries, inc.)

 

[Beerhippie]

It's all going to depend on the quality of the castings of the vise.

This old Chas. Parker, for instance:



Nothing but a fine brush and steadied hand (not steady hand--that was a long time ago--but you can use the other hand or a rest to steady your hand) will do the trick. The irregularities of the casting are as high as the lettering in many places. I used a magnifying visor to enable me to see the original lettering.