CRAZER Custom Paint Job

[Dodgyiti]

My experiences with Crazer Black

http://www.kmccorporation.com/produc...ts-crazer.html

A guy I know sold me a litre of Black Crazer and a litre of their Speed Clear as he may take NZ rights to distribute their range of wicked custom paint effects.
Prices are well below House of Colour, of which I can only dream of affording.

The effect worked perfectly after much testing and tribulations. The instructions are minimal and the videos on U=Tube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zhc9ibWrPrU are edited to ruin how long you leave it for. So I had to work al that out for myself on a sidecover from the black bike<- the test bed of many recent experiments.

http://www.kiwibiker.co.nz/forums/sh...95#post1728995

My original almost black basecoat was wrong, there was not enough difference in top and base coat to show the effect properly. So I re-did the base in purple/black metalic and then the black crazer coat, let it almost dry then laid some gladwrap over it. Having learned that the instructions say smooth it with your hand is crap, because you get smears and not crisp edges to the marbleizing effect- I gently laid it over the fresh crazer and blew it onto the tank with a heat gun, this also caused the gladwrap to wrinkle more and suck onto the bodywork. Smear free.
Then when it has been on for about a minute you rip it away, this sounds like unrolling tape.
This whole part is really really difficult.
The heat gun application, if too hot will melt the glad wrap and ruin everything. Lucky all those hours spent burning off paint from the house with it gave me the skill not to melt it, but if I had it would have been -wait a week, sand and start again. Also if the gladwrap is left on too long it will fuse with the drying paint and stick too much and tear away when peeling off.
So once I had the first effect coat completed, I baked the parts out in the sun for 5 hours, the crazer is slow drying even though I only gave it one wet coat over a 600 grit wet sanded basecoat.
The saviour was doing another sidecover at the same time, it told me when the crazer was ready to have the gladwrap put on, when to pull it off, and most importantly- how to shrink the gladwrap for maximum creasing and adhesion.
After a 5 hour bake, I let it cool off and then used the clear I bought from the same company to ensure compatibility (they say 'use your favourite clear' in the T.D.S.) as there would be a lot of sanding to start again if it reacted! This effect really leaves some texture!
To the clear I sprayed some flip-flop colour change green-bronze-gold straight from a spray can into the clear pot. This looked amazing when I stirred it into the clear. Just enough to candy it up.
Gave it 2 wet coats of that and boy was it bling! Pic1
Then it dried really quickly so I blasted another thick wet coat of crazer black, and did the whole glad wrap thing again.
This was because I wanted real depth to the effect. The second pic is at that stage, like covered in cobwebs,
This will now take a week to properly dry for a dust off and then a hearty dousing of straight clear. A wet 1200 sand and then more clear to finish. I'ts really hard to photograph what you see, when the sun hits it there is colour changing sparkles and purple peeking out of a cobwebed gloss black with a thick texture you can feel, this will take mega clear to smooth out, unless it subsides while drying, but I don't think it will.
Will put some more pics when I do the clear then I will see how smooth I can get it before the final clear coating.

[imdying]

I had a guy do something similar to that for one of my bikes, I could pass on his contact details if you'd like to talk to someone else who has done it. Mine was a lot simpler though, only used regular paints... looks great in the sun though, you'll love it

[Dodgyiti]

you'll love it

Your right- I do love it.
The direct sunlight pings out an effect, but in the shade or night it looks normal, which is what I'm going for, a normal black looking bike, but covertly super bling.
Thanks for the offer, I am too far along now, it is 'hit it and hope' on the weekend.
Incidently there is enough to do a whole other bike left over. I only used 250ml on this bike but it only has a tank and I did 3 sidecovers.
My next plan; next winter is to do the black bike in silver basecoat and use the rest of the black crazer up on that project. This was an experiment on my daily runner.
I hope people were not expecting to see some megabucks professional job here, I am just a dude in the shed with a compressor and a gun.
But maybe when finished it will be ok, can't wait for it to dry out

[imdying]

Ok, the guy's a techinical rep for an automotive body products company, so is pretty good on the advice front if you change your mind

[Dodgyiti]

Well, I'm not much into waiting. And it seemed firm enough when I got home from work. So the first 2 coats of clear went on. Another 2 later this week and I will see how smooth it is getting. Still very textured, which I don't mind really.
I know it looks really far out and hippie-like, but so is the bike it's going onto and I wanted a straight out of the '70s old school bling machine.
The little white dots are the colour change cristals bouncing the camera flash.
In real life they look like tiny stars