What I learned while plasti-dipping my badges

I finally got around to getting my badges dipped today. I'm a first time dipper, so I thought I'd share what I learned in the process for others who are considering doing this. This is not a "how-to," since others have already taken care of that. These are just a few details of the process that I wish I'd had a more solid handle on before I did this.

1) The mosquitoes are back with a vengeance. I had hoped that our single digit temps back in February would knock the population down some. Alas, it didn't.

2) Wooden toothpicks will scratch your clear coat. This isn't a huge surprise, of course, but more care is needed than you might think. Also, in the process of of removing the derp from the tight spaces, I was so focused on getting every little resistant bit of paint out that I let myself exert a little too much pressure. The scratches aren't huge (there's only one, inside the hole in the top part of one of the "A"s)

3) While you're focusing on using the tip of the toothpick to scrape derp from in between the letters, pay attention to what the edge of the toothpick is doing too. I found that there were a couple of places where the edge of the toothpick had scraped a tiny bit of paint from the bevels of the letters. Here's a pic -look at the beveled corner below the hole in the "A."


4) Leave at least an inch of border around the badge when you tape it off. Someone on a YouTube video I watched suggested that and I forgot to follow that advice. It makes it easier to remove the derp from around the badge by giving you more to hold on to, and the wider margin is less likely to break as you're peeling it off.

5) Thicker = easier to peel. More coats = thicker, but the term "coat" is a little ambiguous. I knew that a thicker coat of derp was going to be easier to peel, and many people online have posted that 5 coats is a good amount. What I realized after I was done is that the thickness of each coat is (of course) dependent on how thick you spray it on. I was being pretty cautious so as to avoid drips. That meant that each of my five coats was pretty thin. The result was that it didn't peel off quite as easily as I've seen it happen in the videos. Where that created the most trouble was inside of the "A"s. I eventually got it out of there but it involved a lot of scraping with the toothpick which resulted in the aforementioned problems.

6) Touching up with a paintbrush doesn't seem to work - or at least not within an hour of completing the job. I wanted to touch up some of the bezels where I had scraped a little off, so I sprayed some derp on a brush and then tried to lightly paint the bezel. It actually seemed to have the effect of removing more paint from the bezel, as seen here (look at the right inside edge of the top of the "A".


I'll need to spray this one again at some point. The other thing that painting with a brush does is create a smooth surface instead of the kind of rough textured surface of spraying. Since I'm using matte paint, I obviously didn't want a smooth, reflective surface.

7) Overspray can happen pretty far away. I had the truck covered for about 2 feet in all directions around the badges, but there was overspray as much as 5 feet away. I couldn't see it but I could feel it. It's not a big deal though. A light buffing with a microfiber cloth took care of it.

All in all, I'm fairly happy with the results. You can't really see the flaws unless you look closely. Since I'm a little OCD about this kind of thing and I know the flaws are there I will probably put a few more (thicker) coats on at some point.

 

All great points.

I actually left about a 2" taped off border around each emblem. That made it really easy to remove around the perimeter of the each one because there was lots of overspray to grab onto.

Also, my experience has been the longer you let it cure/dry, the easier it is to remove without damaging the parts you want to stay on.

 

That's probably especially true down here on the Gulf coast where it's always humid.

 

I have watched a few video recently on youtunbe on this process and I have a really stupid question maybe. How come when you start to peel it away, why does it seem to easily come off of the the paint, but sticks to the plastic emblem? Does it adhere stronger to the plastic? Does peel away because of the raised surface of the emblem?

 

....or....

It will actually peel off of anything you put it on. People use it to paint entire cars. I think what's going on is that once you get part of it peeling, it bonds to itself slightly more than the surface it's on, so if you can manage to tug on part of it (assuming you have a thick enough coat) it will continue to peel. I'm guessing that when you're peeling it off of the paint around the badge, there's a little bit of a gap between the badge and the surface its mounted on to, so that creates a break in the coat of plasti-dip. You start peeling it off of the door, it gets to the break and, well, breaks.

 

Stop poking around in your A hole.


Sinner

 

The badges are not completely flush with the paint. They are held off of the surface of the paint by the tape that holds them on, so there's a bit of a gap between the badges and paint. That small gap is not bridged by the plastidip, so the plastidip on the paint is not physically connected to the badges, so it comes off easily because of that.

 

Ah, thank you!