Sealing primer

[T. Cotten]

..the Bob and Tom show.. comedy, for now.
I like both of your motorcycle commentary, though.

So Filibuster!

Who's the straight man, and who's the clown?

Back to paint,
My Paasche airbrush is taking a lot of trial and error time.
The butyrate paint requires a special thinner, and a 'retarder', as Midwestern humidity makes the finish "blush".

Even before materials costs, it takes me forty minutes to prepare, paint, and clean up for a single carb.
(And that's without a primer...)
There's no way I can charge forty bucks to paint a carb, but I will lose money if I don't.

....Cotten

[surfdude]

kind of on topic - paint/primer - but a little off topic as well. wasn't sure where to post/ask:

in the palmer book it says sheet metal was parkerized under the paint. having never parkerized myself, I'm not even sure what the solution is made of. my question is, did the parkerizing act as the primer or was there a primer over it? was the parkerizing a rust control until the factory could prime and paint?

[swall]

Parkerizing is a phosphate conversion coating. There are 3 types: iron phosphate, zinc phosphate and manganese phosphate. The latter is what was historically used to finish military small arms. The other two types are used as pretreatments prior to painting. In any case, a mixed acid solution (primarily phosphoric) reacts with the steel substrate to convert a surface layer of metal to a crystalline phosphate which is chemically bonded to the steel. The phosphate crystals greatly increase the surface area which enhances paint adhesion. An automotive paint store should have a phosphate product such as Bonderite they can sell you.

[T. Cotten]

I realize that cosmoline stained parkerizing to many hues, Folks,...

But I believe that the MOCO chose different formulae for different hardware.
As a subcontractor, Chandler Products may well have used different solutions as well.

Note in the attachment how star hub seal covers are a very light gray. This also resembles my '49 footboards that were painted over, and an NOS Knuck cylinder shown to me that had parkerizing in the bore.
Other hardware is nearly black, and some is the familiar green-brown that I suspect is the manganese formula.

My contention is that if a "restored" machine's parkerizing matches everywhere, its a fault!

....Cotten