Faux Tesla Coil Halloween Project-Part 7

Painted cross beams.

The title of this blog post should be And Then Something Weird Happened. I had a materials failure and I'm not totally sure what happened.  I had all the cross braces for the towers painted and I was ready to start painting on the varnish sealer.  I painted the orange cross pieces with the gloss varnish with no problem.  Next I started to paint the black cross pieces and that is when I ran into problems.

Beginning the construction of the tower.

Last week I went out of town.  I was rushing to pack and rushing to get paint and varnish on the cross braces so that I would be ready to go to the next phase of the project once I returned.  I'd paint the braces, go pack, return to the studio flip the braces over and paint the other side, then go pack some more. Putting the varnish on the orange braces was no problem.  When I started to put varnish on the black ones the problem started.  As the varnish went on, the black paint started coming off.  The white gesso primer coat was showing through.  My first thought was that the paint had not been given adequate time to dry.  I put varnish on a few more braces before I decided that this was going to be a problem on all the black braces.  And that is the point that I went out of town for a long weekend.

When I returned, I re-primed and repainted the messed up braces.  I allowed them to dry overnight to make sure the paint was completely dry.  The next morning I started to varnish them again.  And the varnish removed the black paint again.  I was rather puzzled by this because the varnish and paint were made by the same manufacturer and it was definitely for this type of paint.  Also, the long pieces of the tower had been painted with this same paint and had not had any problem.

I recalled that when I had painted the long pieces I had used a gloss medium and varnish combination.  That varnish did not dry completely and the pieces were very tacky.  They picked up dust and stuck to each other and would not dry.  That is why I went out and bought new varnish.  I had painted the long pieces with the new varnish which dried nicely.  I concluded that the gel medium had protected the pieces from the new varnish stripping the paint.  So, reluctantly, I concluded that I would have to repaint the black cross pieces once again, then cover them with the gel medium/varnish mixture, then the new varnish.  I did that even though it took an extra day and a half to complete the work.  Wouldn't you know that the gel medium that remained tacky last time dried perfectly this time.  I had a hard time convincing myself that I should go the extra mile and add that last coat of varnish so everything would match.  In the end I did add the last coat of varnish, with my fingers crossed.  Fortunately, everything was okay this time.

This morning, before blogging, I glued the black cross braces on and took some pictures.  I will have to wait until the glue dries before I flip the pieces over and glue on the orange pieces.  Hopefully, next time I blog I will have the tower assembled and be working on the anthropomorphic pumpkin man.