Translucent paint for backlit sign?

[sinclairgraphics1]

Who makes a good outdoor translucent paint for back-lit signs? We are refurbing an existing back-lit fiber glass sign and removing all the old paint with paint stripper, which is taking it off really clean and quickly. Does Matthews or One shot make a paint that would be good for this? The background is all solid color and then there is some vinyl lettering on the front. Thought about printing a whole sheet of trans vinyl and mounting it to the face but then the rest of the cabinet would have to be wrapped and I'd rather go with paint for durability over the long term.

 

[signbrad]

Lacryl

Lacryl is an acrylic lacquer made for painting back-lit plastic. It is a Matthews brand.
It is applied second surface. Though it takes a little practice to get good at applying it evenly, you can achieve translucent colors that look like translucent vinyl.
A similar product, Gripflex, is no longer manufactured.

Here's a link:
http://www.matthewspaint.com/Products/Topcoats/Lacryl.aspx



Brad in Kansas City

 

[Billct2]

Translucent paint is not that easy to get right, especially without a lightbox to spray on.
I wouldv'e started with new faces to begin with.
But it sounds like it may be simple enough to sheet the background with translucent vinyl, then cut out the letters and drop them in (with a little trap).
You can use the same vinyl as the background to wrap the box, as long as it's white and in good shape it should look OK.

 

[sinclairgraphics1]

Translucent paint is not that easy to get right, especially without a lightbox to spray on.
I wouldv'e started with new faces to begin with.
But it sounds like it may be simple enough to sheet the background with translucent vinyl, then cut out the letters and drop them in (with a little trap).
You can use the same vinyl as the background to wrap the box, as long as it's white and in good shape it should look OK.

Yep, we convinced the client to go with new faces. The originals were almost 20 years old and made of short strand fiberglass so they really weren't translucent at all. Plus once we removed the paint from one of them, we realized it was going to be way too much work to polish this turd. What we did was cut the fiberglass out of the metal frames since it was bonded together then we can re-use the metal and attach a new face with trans vinyl print and re-paint the cabinet to match. Still a decent amount of work and fabrication but we're charging for it all.