Painting UHMW

Ok so I am using the hinge method to install the wing tips and using a UHMW "Ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene" block to secure the hinge pins in place. I have tried several primer products from the auto paint supply store that they use on flexible bumpers and can't get anything to stick to this stuff. I might as well be trying to prime a block of grease any ideas out there?

Perhaps make the plastic parts out of the black stuff, mask them off and leave them unpainted?

Dave
(Who also doesn't know how to paint that stuff)

I left mine white. They look great! Can't see them except when banking hard!

You can change the color with RIT dye for clothes..

I also use UHMW blocks to secure my white/red wing tips' hinge pins but just left them "natural". I think that if I wanted to change their color, knowing that paint would not adhear, I would use colored pin-stripe tape from the auto industry.

Your local auto paint supplier (I use PPG) will have a selection of pin-stripe tapes in different colors and widths. Just completely wrap the UHMW block, the tape will stick to itself and then poke holes in the tape to correspond to the bolt positions.

Great idea Noel, wrapping it in pinstripe or auto wrap of similar color. Thanks all

Go online to Tower Hobbies and get some Monokote trim sheet. Comes in a ton of colors, the adhesive sticks great and it's pretty affordable.

gasman said:

You can change the color with RIT dye for clothes..

Click to expand...

We did this to make some white UHMW washers black for an optical application at a company I used to work for... Black ones were available but not on the timeline we needed.

It worked extremely well, we just had to experiment with soak time to get the colour as dark as we wanted. If I recall, we left the washers in the dye for 48 hours to get a black we were happy with, and in the end the order of black washers we received later were indistinguishable.