What kind of paint on mills slots?

[pj waelti]

I know this has most likely been covered before, but i'll ask anyway. I'm repainting a skyscraper because it was painted some awful colors at some point. Were these laquer or some kind of enamel? Painted or sprayed? Also any prefference to what kind of paint to use? Any help would be appreciated.. P.J.

[oldslotman]

I use Rustoleum or One Shot. Rustoleum is the cheapest. Mostly brush on. Casting should be laying flat so the paint can self level. One shot has more color choices but cost a lot more. Rustoleum should have most of the colors that you need.

[Midcoast Vintage]

I have used TESTOR'S model car paint for years, and have always been happy.
Testor's is made right here in ROCKFORD, IL.

[pj waelti]

where you buy testors in Rockord?

[Midcoast Vintage]

the last time i bought it was at michael's craft store at 173 & n. 2nd.
you used to be able to get it at almost anywhere that sold model car kits, but they are near impossible to find anymore... although michael's has them also.
michaels is a national chain, so, this should be useful, to others reading this who don't live in rockford.

[mechanic]

Testors !! just about the only oil based enamels left and the colors are very close to originals. I use a 2 bristle brush or the spray cans.

[JPCass]

First, I recently stripped later paint off a 1930s Mills machine that I'm working on, and can tell you that the final layer of original paint was something very tough and industrial-grade that was not coming off as easily as the rest of it - I just left a fair bit as a clue for any future restorer.

It occurred to me to look to 1930s car colors for inspiration - and some chips and digital color samples online did provide some good visual guides - and I thought that auto paint might be similarly tough as the original slot machine paint, but I discovered that modern car paint is formulated to be overcoated, extremely expensive for even small quantities, and further that they couldn't readily mix the old colors even when I had original formula references (though there may be a national color resource center that I could have gone through). I'm sure that there are specialty antique car paint sources that could be tracked down that could do better, but they're probably also prohibitively expensive.

I finally settled on Sherwin Williams oil-based enamel, mixed based on one of their chips which closely matched some of the old car and other period color examples I had found. They can also digitally match to a color sample, but you have to have something over an inch square that is solely the color you want to match.

[damikeguy]

For TESTORS paint and some great prices on brushes and paint, I have been using hobbylinc. [url]hobbylinc.com[/url]. They have just about every color and there prices are good. Fast shipping.