Painting Engraved HDU

[Signsup]

I am getting interested in doing HDU signs. I just cut our logo out of some painted it. There are some raised parts and engraved ones. I sprayed the whole thing with primer and then sprayed it with a darker background coat. I handpainted the the engraved portions and raised parts. I think it would be better to cut a mask and use it for the engraved parts. I could spray them and get a much nicer finish. I have very limited experience at this. Can someone share the best approach? What masking would you suggest?
Thanks

 

[Gino]

Are you using rattle cans or do you use a painting system ??

 

[Signsup]

Are you using rattle cans or do you use a painting system ??

I used a gravity fed paint sprayer with latex paints. Currently I'm just trying to learn. I appears that Matthews paint would be the best way to go if you were doing this all the time.

 

[Gino]

Over the years, we did tons of these signs but always redwood or cedar. Only a few were hdu. When we did the foam, we sanded as best we could, blew it over and then tacked it down. We always used brushes and gave it a heck of a heavy first coat. Once dried, we'd knock off the high spots and give it a good second coat. After that dried, we made sure it was as smooth as possible and gave it two full top coats and then handpainted in the other areas. We never used a mask that I can remember. We almost always sandblasted these things. Not until recently did we start with cnc's, but we handled it pretty much the same way. Also, we rarely , if at all, ever used latex.

 

[bowtievega]

We did some monument sign faces for a customer a couple years ago and did them a little different and they turned out pretty well. We cut down the sign blank to the correct size, primed (with the water based primer they make for HDU), sanded and painted the entire blank with Grip Guard plus paint. After that we applied paint mask over the face then engraved the recessed area on the CNC router. We then brush applied the primer in to the recessed area to make sure we had good adhesion, same process for the back ground colors. Lastly we peeled the spray mask off to expose the original painted surface. Whatever paint had leaked underneath the spray mask was easy to wipe off. That color was the majority of the finished sign but where it needed to be a different color we had a nice clean smooth surface to hand brush paint onto. Seemed to work well, kept us from having to sand the faces of the graphics everytime we applied a new layer of primer or background paint.

 

[Signsup]

We did some monument sign faces for a customer a couple years ago and did them a little different and they turned out pretty well. We cut down the sign blank to the correct size, primed (with the water based primer they make for HDU), sanded and painted the entire blank with Grip Guard plus paint. After that we applied paint mask over the face then engraved the recessed area on the CNC router. We then brush applied the primer in to the recessed area to make sure we had good adhesion, same process for the back ground colors. Lastly we peeled the spray mask off to expose the original painted surface. Whatever paint had leaked underneath the spray mask was easy to wipe off. That color was the majority of the finished sign but where it needed to be a different color we had a nice clean smooth surface to hand brush paint onto. Seemed to work well, kept us from having to sand the faces of the graphics everytime we applied a new layer of primer or background paint.

Thanks for that reply. I thought about that, waiting to cut the engraved areas. Priming and painting the flat areas, lay a mask and then cut the recessed with the mask on. Then prime and paint that area. Pull the mask off and clean up and leakage. I should try that.