Quality of lettering enamels?

[John Grenier]

It is time for me to restock my lettering enamels for the coming season. I am not happy with the covering properties of 1Shot. This used to be good now it seems I have to double coat red especially(suggest renaming 2Shot). I have not used chromatic or ronan in a long time. Any suggestions welcomed.

Sorry to hear of Lola's passing, see feed me when I was hungry and Rick tossed a couple little jobs my way when I really needed it. God bless them both.

John

[Kent Smith]

All I can tell you for certain is that 1Shot has purchased both Chromatic and Dana. Jack at 1Shot assures me that they have not changed the formula for Chromatic since we had already gone lead free. I believe that they have been using that fomulation information to help tehm make the 1Shot brand compliant with the regulations as well. Having said that, some of the raw materials could have changed athough that would not essentially change the batch formula. Most of the lead free pigment replacements for red, yellow, orange and green which were all chromium lead oxides and red oxide, tend to be somewhat transparent. I think the philosophy still is, make as clean a formula as you can so that the colors will be bright, especially over a white or similar background and in mixing. Then it is up to the sign painter to muddy them up or add a compliment to gain coverage, not to mention a double coat. It is perhaps the only good solution in this lead free era. When I spoke to Dennis from Ronan at the Cincinnati Zoo Meet, he basically said they have been struggling with the same issues as are some other larger companies that I am familiar with such as PPG and AKZO.

[John Grenier]

Thank you Kent for such a thorough explanation. I think I might look into getting some pigment. There was a company ( Kramer? a german company) that I once purchased some raw materials from. Will do a search later.

Thanks again,
John