Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum plate paint touch up

Any tips on touching up plate paint? The piano is a communist era August Forster but I'm not going to try to get color from them. Just interested in anybody with (successful) experience doing routine color matching and what your tool kit includes.

There are bronzing powders from Belgium than can be mixed; many different shades of gold.
Get one that is close and you can adjust the colours with alcohol pigmentation colourings in powder form. Required is the knowledge of the colour spectrum. Also colours dry darker than when wet so you would need to have knowledge of that too. Trial and error until matched….
Or you can purchase a metallic paint already mixed. Can sprays have a lot of solvent in them and this could rip up the existing finish or cause it to blister.
First determine if you have paint or some other type of finish. If paint is the colouring this is easy to match.

There are also tools that can compare colors. I have eye-one match. If you go that route make sure you have a full-spectrum analyser. Maybe there are also tools that can match along the full spectrum instead of in HSV/RGB/whatever 3color space.

Thanks for that tip...was thinking I should just drag the thing down to home depot and use their color computer...

Hi Eric. I use 3 colors of bronzing powder. Karat Gold Leaf, Copper, and Venus Martin Gold. Karat Gold Leaf is more of a straight gold color. Venus Martin is more light. I can usually mix and match about any color plate with the combination of these three. Mix them into nitrocellulose lacquer. Sometimes it takes some experimentation.

Boze,
I really love the bronze color of the August Forster plate. I rebuilt one recently, and just went with the regular gold laqcuer. It looks good, and easy to touch up if I need to. But I sure miss the original bronze it had!

REALLY HELPFUL, Roy. Thank you.
Where do you get it?

I bought it at Cincinnati Color, I think. A local paint store. I've had these cans for years, and the store where I bought it is long gone. The company is still around, but I don't know if they still carry it.

The company is United States Bronze Powders. It is sold under the brand name of Venus. Maybe you can do a search, or find some in a local art store. Looking online, art stores seem to carry bronzing powders.

Good luck!

Most art supply stores will have sign painters letter gold in several shades. The link below is one product that Dick Blick carries bit I have used pre-mixed gold in small quantity glass jars with very good color matches from them as well.

http://www.dickblick.com/products/famous-1-shot-lettering-enamels/?clickTracking=true

Hope this helps