Give Your DIY Stompboxes a Stunning Finish

Give Your DIY Stompboxes a Stunning Finish

Since I got into the whole DIY stompbox thing I find myself looking for those things that will make a build unique. I’m sure you all do it too. So the other day I was driving past an Autozone and decided to pop in and take a look at the available paint colors. Brother did I hit the DIY jackpot! “Dupli-Color / Metalcast Anodized Coating“. It comes in blue, and red and possibly green and it’s freakin’ awesome! I went with red since my Crimson Drive clone

DIY stompboxes

Between my crappy worn out camera and bad lighting these pics do not do these pedals justice, Not even close.

metalcast-paints

Check the red and blue caps. They’re accurate.

was one of the ones needing paint (I’m going back for some of the blue too). It’s made to paint on chrome and makes it look like it’s been anodized. They have an undercoat specifically for this stuff if you’re not putting it on chrome but trying to save a few bucks (and having that DIY mentality) I figured I could find a way to make it work. What I found was that a solid silver paint works great and gives it the appearance of candy paint. I also took a new enclosure and polished the shit out of it to get it as shiny as possible. It looks really cool as well but a bit darker which I like. I believe this stuff bears some experimentation with different base coats.  There’s no telling what we may conjure up. Overall it was a spectacular find (for me at least).

Details
Name: Dupli-Color / Metalcast Anodized Coating
Uses: Made for use on chrome
Primer: None. It’s made to use directly on chrome but they have a special undercoat for use on non-chrome. Any good “silver” color works.
Ease of use: On a 10 scale it gets the full 10. it sprays on really smooth and even. And it dries mega-fast! Like 20 minutes and it can be handled (a DIY dream!).
Coverage: 2 light coats then a third wet coat  It’s very translucent by design so you won’t be covering anything up with this even if you tried.
Clear coat: The directions never specify the need for a clearcoat but I used Krylon MAXX Hi-Gloss Clear to be safe. Like I said, it looks like candy paint when done.

Final thoughts: At $8.99 it’s a little more than what I normally spend for paint, and I almost passed on it but it was just so incredible looking I said to hell with it and bought some. Damn glad I did too!

Russ

Dean Soltero, Dean Leslie West Signature Models (4 of them) Hamer Studio, Gibson Les Paul, Epiphone Les Paul (Korean), Ovation Celebrity, Gibson Hummingbird, Blackstar HT-1R, Jet City JCA20H, Laney Cub 12R, Orange OR-15 and a lot of dirt pedals, some store bought some homegrown.

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.