Painting Badges

[xjwmx]

Painting Badges / Emblems

I discovered an easy way to restore side cover badges. You can buy repro badges, but you get two right side ones.

1. Clean the badge with dish soap and a brush, let dry. Don't do any sanding.

2. Spray the whole badge with gloss black lacquer. Let dry for an hour or two.

3. Wet sand with about 400 grit to remove paint from the top of the letters and roughen the surface there. Rinse and let dry.

4. Load a foam paintbrush real good with gold lacquer paint. Just spray it on the brush.

5. Breakthrough step here - hold the badge upside down and paint the letters as if you were painting a ceiling. Upside down keeps paint from running onto the black. After half a minute the paint will thicken enough that you can turn the badge right side up to do touch up.

6. Do final touch up if necessary with a trimmed down artist's brush.

 

[jd750ace]

Those look outstanding!

 

[weekendrider]

I would have thought they were new.

 

[deadchef]

very nice!

 

[cmyoch]

I have been looking around for replacement tank badges. I now know what I'll be doing this week with my existing ones!!

 

[RatyXS]

Came out nice. Good job

 

[xjwmx]

Since it's lacquer if you mess up just wait 30 min for it to dry and sand a little and try it again. No problem. I did one of them twice, don't remember now exactly why, but it was pretty bad. I hadn't developed the final technique.

The brush has to be foam because it's flat. Bristles wouldn't work. Check the foam with the gold paint you're using because the paint I used dissolved styrofoam. Some paints might attack some brush foams.

 

[TwoManyXS1Bs]

5. Breakthrough step here - hold the badge upside down and paint the letters as if you were painting a ceiling. Upside down keeps paint from running onto the black. After half a minute the paint will thicken enough that you can turn the badge right side up to do touch up.

Did you 'brush' the emblem or 'daub' the brush?

 

[xjwmx]

^It was a brushing motion. I might have used a couple or three coats, I can't remember. The brush was so heavily loaded that if it had been right side up it would have run all over everything It's easy to do. Experiment. But like I said if you mess up just wait 30 min and try again. As long as it's lacquer.

The brush was about 1" wide btw. I think it was fifty cents at wally's. I bought two of them but only needed one because when you spray lacquer on the brush it dissolves the lacquer already on it from the last round.

I got the gold at Wally's too. A good source for the gloss black lacquer would be the Dupli-Color Perfect Match cans at the parts store. Any non-metallic black. Metallic tends toward matte, unless you clear coat it. There might be more sophisticated golds you could try too.

 

[cmyoch]

This was the best $6 I've spent in a while. It was super easy and turned out to be way better than I expected. I'm glad I didn't drop the money on new badges. Thanks again for this one!!

 

[jd750ace]

Indigo Blue? Badge looks good.

 

[mark rossiter]

i did this today it worked well. on close inspection you can see it's been painted, is there a way you can smooth the surface just to finish it off?

 

[jetmechmarty]

I did mine with a leafing pen. Rather than post the whole explanation again, here's the link to the other forum I posted it on.
http://xs650temp.proboards.com/thread/17276/badge-restoration

Clear over the whole thing makes it complete.

 

[cmyoch]

Mine was rough around the edges also. Only noticeable up close. I plan on redoing them. I'm not happy with the gold color I chose. I will go with a brighter gold with a coat of clear next time.