A little birthday gift

It’s not crazy or complicated but it was made to fit a little girls love of cats.

The background and foreground are 16ga steel. Spacers are 1/4" steel welded to the background. Foreground is bonded to spacers.

Powder coat was done in house.

Total size is about 15 x 13 inches

5 Likes

Oh my gosh she is going to love that. Looks awsome btw. Great job.

What did you use to bond the foreground to the spacers?

On this one I used Epoxy. For the next one I have ordered some weld on studs.
The lettering on the name is so fine that epoxy is the only good solution. Trying to mask things off and multi color powder coat is above my skill level. That means welding it all together is not an option.

1 Like

Looks great. TIG weld the really thin stuff.

TIG is the only option on really thin sheet.
Because of the control it gives you over the Amperage./foot pedal control
Although I’ve seen a guy weld some 24Ga. With a MIG. but he was good!

REALLY NICE WORK👍

You can’t really weld after powder coating. and getting all the parts together before powder coat makes coating very difficult.

1 Like

I’m wondering why that’s so. As long as you don’t have non-conductive portions that you want coated, wouldn’t it be just a matter of how large your oven is?

My oven has a 30x24x40 inch capacity - with something at an angle I can squeeze out a bit more room as well.

Another finishing alternative is acid coloring using something like the Steel F/X Patina solutions.

1 Like

The sharp corners of the metal cause a corona effect in the static electric field. The powder coat doesn’t cover evenly in an environment like that. Paint would work, but in this case I was under a time constraint. I have a few more Ideas for some upcoming projects to share. Hopefully some might even workout ok.

Ah. The Faraday cage. There are ways of shooting the powder to get around that. There are also some polyester powders designed not to suffer the effect.

My problem is I keep coating bigger things so I’m pushing my oven’s capacity :slightly_smiling_face: But generally if I can fit it in the sand blasting cabinet I’m okay.

I just ordered a bunch of Patinas from SCULPT Nouveau, heard great things about it and seen some done.
pretty awesome stuff

I’ll have to check them out. I use Steel F/X Patinas and haven’t had any issues - shipping is quick and well packaged and the prices seem okay. I’ll have to compare some from Sculpt too and see how the products compare. Thanks for the tip.

Had anyone powder coated a clear over the sculpt nouveau?

I’ve used some sculpt products. I’ve found they are a lot easier to patina if you have piece sandblasted. We generally use the clear or black wax instead of there clear coat. The clear coat they sell is very hard but if you don’t mix it enough the magnesium (I think) does not dissolve fully and you get little shinny flakes in the finish.