I’ve been trying for weeks to figure out how to do a good Damascus Steel paint technique on for my Cats Paw dagger. I found a tutorial that sort of worked
HERE but it didn’t quite work in the video since the paints they used weren’t sand able and the whole point of this technique was to cut through multiple layers of paint to get a two-tone swirl effect. After playing around a bit and following an Iron-man build channel I realized that automotive paints might are sand able and might work with the technique in the video. The first thing I did was prime and sand the print. Over… and over… Again…
I also marked off what would be covered by the handle. Once I was happy with the blade, I needed to sand away the primer from where I was going to glue everything together. I need to make sure the PLA is all glued together and the primer isn’t acting as a barrier. I then taped that part off and hung it upside down in the garage.
Then I got a can of Dupli Color Universal Black from AutoZone and used it as my base coat.
So shiny!
The can says to give the paint 10 minutes between coats so I set a timer and applied the first coat of the metallics I was going to use. I felt since this was a dark black, I should go with another dark color for my first go and used a Dupli Color Dark Shadow Gray, waited 10 minutes, then covered it again with a Ingot Silver Metallic coat. Both of these are Ford colors for those interested. I repeated this several times for a total of 8 layers.
I had never done this before and I was afraid of sanding through the paint to the primer. Turns out… that fear was well founded. I tried several different grits ranging from 3000 to 600. It took me a few tried and several errors but what I *think* seems to work best is to sand the paint in a back-and-forth motion unevenly with 600 grit wet sandpaper. Doing this cut though the paint relatively unevenly and helps to cut through several layers. After that I switched to 1000 grit to help smooth and scratch marks back out. With that said, 1000 grit will still take off paint though not as quickly. This will exacerbate any areas where the paint is thin so be careful if you start to see the base coat peaking through. My final product looks like this!
It's not a true Damascus effect and my sanding defiantly needs some work but I think this is the right technique to achieve this effect. When sanding I focused more on a circular motion which took off layers fairly evenly. This is normally wanted you want to sand something smooth, but since I was aiming for a swirl, I defiantly over sanded in a few places. This is the good side of the blade. The other side has a few more spots where the black paint is coming through. With that said, this will get weather so I’m hoping most of those areas will get blended in. It’s supposed to be 80 here Friday so I’m hoping to add a layer of clear coat on it while it’s nice.
