Process for Textured Interior Paint

I recently saw a post here (I think) which mentioned using air pressure and/or other gun adjustments to add a spatter texture to the interior of a project. As I recall, the technique was mentioned as a passing comment, not a how to.

First, I can't find the post.

Second, I'd love to hear about that technique..

Thanks,

Can't find it with a quick search, but reach out to Geoff at Aerosport. I'm pretty sure he used the technique - very low pressure through the gun.

A friend who builds cars uses this all the time. We give him endless rations of grief because he texture paints nearly everything. Nothing wrong with it but everything he touches gets texture painted. At a bbq he was spraying something on the chicken with a squeeze bottle and everybody asked if he was trying to texture paint the food too.
Anyway, if memory serves it is low pressure but higher than normal paint flow.

Texture

xblueh2o said:

A friend who builds cars uses this all the time. We give him endless rations of grief because he texture paints nearly everything. Nothing wrong with it but everything he touches gets texture painted. At a bbq he was spraying something on the chicken with a squeeze bottle and everybody asked if he was trying to texture paint the food too.
Anyway, if memory serves it is low pressure but higher than normal paint flow.

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Yep. Works great on chicken!
Actually, I got the effect by accident texting interior paint.
You may want to shoot some samples and see how you like it. I found the samples looked horrible after cleaning. Sooner or later you need to clean the interior.
I ended up the opposite and buffed everything to a smooth finish.

wirejock said:

Yep. Works great on chicken!
Actually, I got the effect by accident texting interior paint.
You may want to shoot some samples and see how you like it. I found the samples looked horrible after cleaning. Sooner or later you need to clean the interior.
I ended up the opposite and buffed everything to a smooth finish.

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The challenge with the -10 is the cabin top. I suspect you could spend tens of hours filling and sanding and you'd still have obvious flaws if you painted it with gloss paint. If you texture it or use flat paint, you could spend a fraction of the time finishing it and have nice results.

But the cleaning issue is why I haven't gone with a flat paint. My gut tells me it wouldn't clean very easily.

Flat paint

Kyle Boatright said:

The challenge with the -10 is the cabin top. I suspect you could spend tens of hours filling and sanding and you'd still have obvious flaws if you painted it with gloss paint. If you texture it or use flat paint, you could spend a fraction of the time finishing it and have nice results.

But the cleaning issue is why I haven't gone with a flat paint. My gut tells me it wouldn't clean very easily.

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You could rhino line it!
My interior is flat paints. After buffing it smooth, it wipes clean.
I used a red clay bar and water on the parts before assembly.
It didn't take very long at all.

Just a data point

Tremclad Textured rattle can
4th season wearing well, photos are when built
applied before assembly
applies easily, can spray over remodelled parts without detection
dries very quickly
cleans easily

Many composite aircraft have their interiors painted with a speckled paint called Zolotone. I opted to make fake Zolotone by using roller and brush-applied latex paint, then a quick pass from about 24" with a rattle can of fake stone paint in a contrasting color, just to give it a few speckles of a contrasting color. Looks great - so far I haven't had a single person detect that it's not real Zolotone. And it wears like nails!

I used Zolatone

I used Zolatone (Apollo Gray) in the baggage area of my plane and so far it's been very durable. IIRC, I had the gun set for high pressure and low paint flow to get it to splatter correctly. You'll just have to experiment with gun settings.

Kyle Boatright said:

But the cleaning issue is why I haven't gone with a flat paint. My gut tells me it wouldn't clean very easily.

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I got a tip from a local paint shop that does a lot of warbirds. For the anti-glare areas he uses PPG Concept with about 3x the normal flattening amount. It lays out smooth and flat and can be hit with wax without leaving the white residue. I've used it on my RV canopy frame and rollbar as well as the anti-glare cowling on my Navion. Only downside is a very short shelf life because of the extra flattening. It tends to crystalize. Normally ~3 months but I've kept mine in the fridge and it's still good after a year.

Texturing JetFlex WR

I had the exact same thoughts as you do regarding the finish on the interior of my canopy. I am using the Aerosport overhead console and headliner so that significantly reduces the area that I have to cover. Not sure what your plans are. I used flox followed by micro to smooth out the exposed areas to get them fairly good. I am also using the McMaster door seals so I wanted the area between the seals and the overhead filled.

Not wanting to spend a lot of time finishing the interior I shot Akzo primer over a less than perfect interior finish. That exposed pinholes and sanding that was not perfect. On top of that I shot a smooth coat of JetFlex WR to get a good color cover. Through that color coat I saw the pinholes were mostly visible though the base coat somewhat covered the inconsistency in the micro finish showing through the primer. On top of the smooth coat I laid down several texture coats.

Using a Tekna Prolite gun I used a 1.3 fluid tip, TE20 air cap, 5.0 lbs of pressure and had the fluid knob turned out as far as it would go (about 10 turns, at about 11.5 it falls off the gun). I tried to thin the paint down to get it to flow but found that once the texture was put down the thin paint flowed too much ending with more of an orange peel than a texture. So I put paint in the gun that was thinned to the level it was when I shot the base color (reduced 10%). At that viscosity the paint would hold the texture. The problem was the gun would not consistently flow paint at the extremely low pressure (it flowed well on the base color at 26 pounds). Since I was using a DeKups system on the gun I forced the paint to flow into the gun by squeezing the disposable cup while squeezing the trigger on the gun. I found that it was easy to control the paint flow into the gun by how hard I squeezed the disposable cup. My experience was that it was better to put several lighter coats on to increase the amount of texture over one heavier coat.

So what was the end result? I am generally happy. It did not hide all of the imperfections but you have to look hard to see them now. Very similar to putting sand paint on drywall. Any defect in the drywall can be seen through the sand paint but you have to look for it. On the large pinholes I took a toothpick and filled them with paint. That proved fairly effective though not perfect. The trade off between time spent on finishing and the quality of the finished product was worth it in my opinion. Worst case scenario I will cover the areas that I painted with headliner material later.

If you have further questions on this let me know. Good luck.

Ron RV8 said:

Just a data point

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You should leave the cleco there and add a nice "CLECO" label under it

Canadian_JOY said:

Many composite aircraft have their interiors painted with a speckled paint called Zolotone. I opted to make fake Zolotone by using roller and brush-applied latex paint, then a quick pass from about 24" with a rattle can of fake stone paint in a contrasting color, just to give it a few speckles of a contrasting color. Looks great - so far I haven't had a single person detect that it's not real Zolotone. And it wears like nails!

Click to expand...

Researching options for interior finish at this point. The finish I decide to apply will have a major effect on the amount of final filling, sanding and general fiddling I have to do on the interior fiberglass stuff. I may in fact be past done if I'm going to hide imperfections with a splatter finish.

Zolatone looks attractive but for the recommendations on the website that it be applied with a pressure pot gun and over a primer (Spruce claims no primer is needed over fiberglass). I'm very curious about the faux Zolatone you've accomplished here, JOY. What type and finish of latex paint did you use? Does the fake stone paint need to be latex also?

Thanks in advance for any details you can recall.

JetFlex

This is an approved method for texturing water based JetFlex.

When I had my gun set just a little too low in pressure I got an nice, slightly stippled effect with their flat paint.

Luck not skill in my case, but if you experiment I'mm sure many more surface finishes are possible.