Nick Gravagne wrote: > Ah yes, the dark-grey auto primer. I used to use this as the stuff > really piles on and dry-sands easily. But it seemed to me that the final > finish turned out to be too thick, soft and fluid causing all hardware > to either mark, scuff, ripple and chip the finish, not to mention blur > the lettering details. It seems to work best sprayed on minimally thick, and mostly sanded away. > Also, I always cross my fingers when installing all screws and > bolts, even though I have prepped the counter-sinks; still, what can you > do when a the underside of a lag bolt or nose bolt grinds on the finish? > I don’t really have a handle on this yet. I've had the best luck with countersinks, and installing vertical hitches, by beveling the hole edge before the final bronze coat. With the countersinks, I use a countersink (or rotary file) of a shallower angle to knock the top edge off. That leaves the finish so thin at the edge, that even when finish squeezes up out of the countersink as I hammer the screws in (impact wrench), it (usually) doesn't crack the edge. This works better than anything else I've tried. For plate perimeter bolts, a small thin washer that does the damage far enough under the lag or nut head that it doesn't show. Whatever, for something utterly non-functional, plate finishing takes up WAY too much time and generates WAY too much angst in the process. Something else. What do you folks do about hitch pins? Do you have birthdays while you mask and un-mask each one, or just spray over them and blow off the chips after stringing? Ron N
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