As promised, I decided to try a little experiment. Previously I had posted about epoxy adhesion problems with metalliic paints. The epoxy would take on a wavey patern when cured, couldn't hold well. So...On the suggestion of a fellow builder to use spray fixativ to cover my signature, i thought why wouldn't this work on a larger area of a plug? So, the experiment. One side of a small scrap of AYC was sprayed with rustoleum blue metallic paint. The other side the same, except when it dried I shot a coat of krylon spray fixativ over it. epoxy over both sides, hung, and flipped after first hour, and again after second hour.
Here are pics of the results.
top one is with fixativ, bottom one is without:
You can see the wavy appearance of the non fixativ side. Other side looks pretty good. Both sides look a bit bumpy, due to the fact that this was leftover epoxy with a bit of glamour dust in it, but I think you can see the results were good with the fixativ. Not sure how it will hold up, but it looks like I will give the fixativ a try with any plug that has this blue metallic, or other metallic colors on it. Something else I may try is to give a quick shot of fixativ over anything I plan on hitting with metallic spray, looks like it may help with adhesion problems between metallic/ non metallic paints. Again, not sure how everything will hold up long term.
hope this helps someone out.