Plugging up cap screw holes for painting

Ignoramus11220 fired this volley in news:VJednf6X54TjmRHWnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:

Iggy, I plug them with a drop of CA, then hit it with some kicker -- carefully applied so it doesn't sneak around the head. When you want it out, it chips away pretty much in one piece.

LLoyd

I'd say cut some strips of paper, roll them into cylinders and slip them into the holes around the screw heads. After painting remove them immediately before the paint cures. Some paint might wick down around the outside of the hole, but that shouldn't hurt anything, and when you remove the paper the screw itself should be completely clean.

Plasticine (modeler's clay). Don't smear it around and get oil on the parts you want the epoxy to adhere to. If you have any microcrystalline wax, used for sculpture and lost-wax casting, that works well, too.

'Course, chewing gum probably would work just fine, as well. d8-)

I think that I will buy some Play-Dough.

I was going to list Play-Doh but I thought this was getting ridiculous.

Be careful. It contains salt and surfactants. (I know this because my wife buys it by the case, for her pre-schoolers). Wipe it out with a damp cloth or something.

-- Ed Huntress

I'd recommend the paper, not any sort of putty. With the paper you can remove it immediately after painting, just like other "normal" masking. With any sort of putty, the only way you can remove it is to scrape it out after removing the screw from the hole, vastly more work for no gain in masking functionality.

PS: Did you get that mill moved? Pictures posted somewhere?

Friday is the day

I feel kind of stupid, the answer, of course, is to make my own actual dough with water and flour, and be done with it in 5 minutes at zero cost.

And, if you want to thicken it up without making it too dry, add a couple of teaspoons of cream of tartar for a cup of flour. And a teaspoon of cooking oil or mineral oil.

That. plus about 1/3 cup of salt and 1 cup of water, is close to the original recipe for Play-Doh. For your kids, cut the salt in half and add food coloring. The color is a little dimmer than the commercial stuff. Salt makes it fade fast.

It will keep for quite a while in a Ziploc bag. (Yes, my wife also makes it, when she doesn't need color.)

Time to make and apply, minimal. Time to remove, maximal. Paper, think plain old paper rolled into a tube to fit over the SHCS screw head. Don't make things difficult for yourself.

Oil-based paints can tolerate some oil -- they'll incorporate it. If you're a painter who uses natural-bristle brushes, you probably know that wiping a cleaned brush into one or two drops of motor oil in the palm of your hand, while the brush is still wet, is the way to get a long life and some flexibility out of them.

However, with epoxy paint, any oil on the surface is bad news.

I lean towards Play-Dough.

Kevin Gallimore

maybe he makes his own paper too.

just curious, why couldn't you just use grease? (i used grease once, painted an old arc welder, i wanted to mask off the existing printing on the exterior of teh device, i just dabbed on small blobs of grease on top of the printing, painted it, let it dry, wiped off the paint covered blobs of grease, seemed to have worked fine, was that bad?)

b.w.

Plumbers puddy. Cheap, never hardens.

Shoe goo. Put a dab in the hole with a chunk of thread or wire loop in it. Paint. Pull the plugs out.

has some .25" OD, .0625" ID disk magnets you could use as caps. Perhaps shove them into short pieces of .25" ID plastic tubing. Also see

I will use plumbers putty

Wax candle - pack it in. Later it can be melted or dug out. Solder iron can melt... Dig out is easier.

Mart> I will paint part of my lathe today, with epoxy paint. I want to plug