finally blacked out bowtie

[Arnold355]

Came back to my dorm after class today and got bored so my buddy and me decided to black my bowtie...keep in mind first time to do this

[smokinsilverado]

the bowtie looks good, now your next piece of homework is to colormatch the grill.

[Arnold355]

yep im going to order a grille and then paint the edges black

[WildChevys]

nice job

[1CLNY2K]

Looks good. Could have saved some note taking paper by just removing the emblem itself.

[DMANbluesfreak]

Question, I'm in the process of painting mine now. Did you wet-sand at all in between coats? Did you clear-coat it, if so did you wet sand that at all? Thanks.

[Blaze5509]

There is only two nuts holding it on the back...why not remove so you can paint the edges?

Looks good tho.

[c4justin]

When i paint mine... I just unbolt them and lay them on a table. I use cheap black rattle can at walmart and go to town. I do wash and dry the emblem before hand and then hit it with some sand paper to rough it up a little bit.

[North44]

Looks good! I did this to my Cavalier. The bow tie was a peel and stick. I coated both sides (it was transparent with an ugly gold piece of foil behind it that I threw out) with black paint, and used some PL Nail to glue it back on.

Sold the car, but I still see it around every once in a while and the bowtie is still holdin' up!

[BigChevy17]

Originally Posted by DMANbluesfreak

Question, I'm in the process of painting mine now. Did you wet-sand at all in between coats? Did you clear-coat it, if so did you wet sand that at all? Thanks.

when i did mine i used 220 grit sand paper to rough it up a little and used plastic spray paint.
i think i did 4 light coats with no wet sanding.
its holding up awesome

[FastBlak]

Looks good, suprised you didnt undo the 2 10mm bolts and just take it out. Other than that looks great!

[Tweaks]

Originally Posted by DMANbluesfreak

Question, I'm in the process of painting mine now. Did you wet-sand at all in between coats? Did you clear-coat it, if so did you wet sand that at all? Thanks.

Don't put too much effort and thought into this as it's just a small item in the grill and how it turns out isn't as crucial as say a bumper or something larger scale like that.

If you remove your grill, you can get the emblem itself out and then you don't need to mask the grill off with college ruled paper like the OP did. You can either scuff the plastic finish with sandpaper or if you have a scotch pad, you can just use that. Once it's looking thoroughly scuffed, you can spray it with three light coats to ensure good coverage. Let it tack up for about 5 minutes between coats. If you have clear, let the final color coat dry until it is tacky and then just apply the clear coats the way you did the color and you're done. Let it dry long enough to handle without putting finger prints in the finish and just reassemble the emblem into the grill, put the grill back on and call it good.

That's how I went about coloring mine a GM dark grey metallic. I was a bit quick to apply my clear so it absorbed into the color instead of sitting on top and creating that nice gloss but I still like how it turned out and I know that I can always just remove it and redo it fairly quickly if I feel the need to.

[DMANbluesfreak]

Cool, I actually did the paint layers last night. Do i need to do anything to it before clear coating it (since its no longer "tacky")?

[m grasso]

After a few coats of paint wet sand with 600 grit then wa**** and dry it, then put a few coats of clear, if it isint smooth you can wet sand the claer with 1000 grit.

[DMANbluesfreak]

Cool, thanks!

[MrGoodtime]

You can just wetsand it with 200 grit and get some gloss black epoxy based paint and go to town, it turned out really nice on mine

[DMANbluesfreak]

Well, I'm painting it blue to match my paint so that won't work.

[Arnold355]

take some pics when its done man i want to see it

[DMANbluesfreak]

Oh, I plan on it! A lot of work went into this haha.

[Tweaks]

Originally Posted by DMANbluesfreak

Well, I'm painting it blue to match my paint so that won't work.

That will go nicely with the look of your truck. I'm sure you've probably cleared it by now but like others have said you can get away with wet sanding it with all sorts of different grits of sand paper. Clear does a good job of filling in all the imperfections and scuffs from the sanding process so it ought to turn out great no matter what you do. You could just clear it as is but giving it a scuffed surface to adhere to will ensure that it bonds better and looks good for years to come.