Armor - Painting - Progress Report

As I mentioned previously, I'm not entirely satisfied with the way the paint is turning out. It's not terrible, but it's not great either. Part of that is my own lack of skill with painting these surfaces using this type of paint. And part of it is that the silver metallic paint just does not look like metal. But, as time is running out, I decided to just move ahead and do my best with what I've got.

Here are a few pics of the work in progress...

Random pieces. The gold paint goes on pretty nicely with one coat, but the silver takes two coats. The pieces here all just have one coat so far.

The knee pieces in the foreground have two coats of the silver, and they look OK. Not as shiny as I might have hoped, but otherwise not too bad.

More pieces, with a mix of one or two coats of silver. The spray can is for the black primer that I've been using.

The trick with the two coats of silver is that the paint does not dry very quickly, so I have had to wait a full day before putting on the second coat. When I tried to just wait a few hours on the same day, the second coat was actually dissolving the first coat and causing it to smear. Definitely not the effect I was hoping for.

I expect to finish all the painting tonight, and then start with the various leather straps and buckles that will be needed to hold everything together and in place. I already made one experimental strap with buckle, and it worked pretty well. So I have some confidence going into that, that it will turn out fine.