Painting a custom box.

[Cardboardcat15]

Hi all! Hopefully someone here can help me. I am planning on building a custom ported box using Torres' Box Calculator, and thought that If I did a custom paint job sort of thing on the entire box would look pretty sick.

I do these Space paintings with Spray paint and thought instead of using boring old carpet, I thought space painting the box would look pretty cool.

Here's a small example of some things I paint that I could put on the box.

I would most likely do a white primer over the entire box first and let it dry and then actually do the spraying over the white so it would be like one big white canvas.

My Question is, what could/should I use over the finished product to keep it from getting sticky in hot weather and getting damaged (Scratches, Sticking to carpet in trunk, etc)?

Thanks for any input guys.

[k3n12ock]

So you're from SpacePaintings huh? As for covering the paint, idk, 6 - 10 layers of clear coat?

[PUNKYOU007]

Man I seen a guy in OC doing things like that, was crazy how fast he could pump one out

[Autruche]

Dude, that's awesome! the paint shouldn't get sticky unless you'd be painting over vinyl, that is the only time I've ever had any paint get sticky inside my car was when I used a plastic paint on my soft vinyl interior. for vinyl you need to use vinyl paint, there should be no problem with stickiness otherwise, and I'd go with quite a few layers of good clear coat to preserve it, preferably really good stuff that you'd need to spray with a compressor and a gravity feed gun, otherwise there are some nice spray can clear coats.

[Cardboardcat15]

So you're from SpacePaintings huh? As for covering the paint, idk, 6 - 10 layers of clear coat?

Well i'm not from the actual site, I just picked up the hobby cause I thought it looked like a lot of fun which it is.

And thanks for the clear coat Idea, my only worry would be sanding the actual painting after primer sanding and before I Clear coat it. I have little to no experience with sanding an actual Picture on a box so I don't know if that would skew any of the colors or change the outcome of the picture. Thanks for the input though! I'm hoping I can get this done within the next two weeks or so.

[Cardboardcat15]

Dude, that's awesome! the paint shouldn't get sticky unless you'd be painting over vinyl, that is the only time I've ever had any paint get sticky inside my car was when I used a plastic paint on my soft vinyl interior. for vinyl you need to use vinyl paint, there should be no problem with stickiness otherwise, and I'd go with quite a few layers of good clear coat to preserve it, preferably really good stuff that you'd need to spray with a compressor and a gravity feed gun, otherwise there are some nice spray can clear coats.

Thanks man! I most likely will go out and buy like 5 cans of clear coat spray paint cause I don't have a spray gun nor do I know anyone who owns one. Would you recommend sanding on the actual picture before the clear coats?

[Shyne151]

You're going to want to use more than one coat of primer on the box. MDF absorbs paint like it is it's job. Last time I painted a box I did four coats of a thick polyester primer.

[Cardboardcat15]

You're going to want to use more than one coat of primer on the box. MDF absorbs paint like it is it's job. Last time I painted a box I did four coats of a thick polyester primer.

Oh wow, thanks for the heads up man! I would have foolishly only done one coat. hehe =p

[Alex K]

Makesure your corners are flat too. If not run a layer of bondo over em to make sure the box is a "box" and has no visible connections. or nails/screws visible.

[wL<3bass]

Take a look at my box builds might give you a few pointers to painting mdf.