Quick, cheap, easy badge refinishing

[ClarkGriswald]

Reason I asked before is because I was thinking about epoxy/plywood composite boats. The epoxy itself will yellow in the sun so if you want a bright finish (wood) you have to use a clearcoat over it with UV inhibitor. I think your clearcoat could serve as that. The ones im talking about are just really good poly.

[dbeardslee]

Clark - good tip. Thanks. I'll make sure I use something with a uv inhibitor when I do the 'real' pieces. In the mean time, here's the finished product next to one of my 'good' badges. I couldn't get the lighting just right at this time of night in the garage, so I took a couple at different flash angles. Believe me when I tell you the pictures don't do it justice. The Liquid Leaf is pretty interesting stuff - almost like it's self-leveling. Small brush marks and lumps just seem to go away as it dries. It gets kind of a rounded look to it that's really nice. It's got metal in it, and it kind of looks like metal. I hope it holds up, cause I'm goin' for it.

[Shuriken]

Your badge repair looks fantastic. Very nice.

I ended up replacing my badges with die cast replicas.

[dbeardslee]

Taking it to the next level...

OK, so the refinishing worked great. But what about those badges with cracks and chunks missing? Fear not gentle readers, there's a great fix for that too. I recently tried a product called 'Plastex', and it's some pretty amazing stuff. I'm not going to go into all the details of how it works - there's a video on the Plastex website that explains it. Here's an example of what it can do -

Here's one of my tank badges (golf cart badge?) that seemed like a good candidate for a test. Note that the 'Y' is completely missing and there are chips at the bottom of the 'A'.



This is the Plastex molding material applied over a good badge (sorry about the focus).



Here's the mold taped to the bad badge.



And here's the badge after plastexing, and a little trimming with a sharp knife. All it needs now is refinishing as outlined earlier.



Plastex - the stuff's incredible, and the new part is MUCH stronger than the original. There are lots of applications for it, and it's real easy to use. Definately worth a look.

[Rasputin]

Kinda makes me want to try that on something bigger, like maybe new sidecovers for my 79 Special.

[dbeardslee]

Rasputin - Check their video. Near the end they show a bunch of big patches done with this stuff. Supposed to be real good on cracks too. I've got a side panel with a crack in it that I'm going to try this stuff on tomorrow.