Wow. heh. I gave up the can over a year ago now. Aerosols were somewhat limiting, and toxic. Currently, I'm using a 2 gallon compressor, a fully adjustable gravity fed touch-up gun, and an Iwata HP series airbrush. The paint is the Auto Air line of water based automotive paints from Createx (http://www.autoair.com)

Anyway, an update! I sanded and clear coated the Candy Orange machine last night! Of course, there's pictures.

http://www.blackradish.com/finishedorange/

It still needs to harden a little and get polished, but it looks good even without, methinks. Allaya have a look!

Even without polishing that looks really good and could probably go without it (in my humble opinion). I like that fade, it's classy. Not Donald Trump classy, but true class.

Well i'm gonna say it i LIKE the yellow tiBook and the ibook looks great is that ibook painted from the inside or the outside?

Thank you Mr. Whitlock, I consider that a highly paid compliment

heh, I'm glad you like the yellow Not all people are capable of rocking the yellow and white.

In regard to the ibook, its painted on the outside. A lot of the later models have completely opaque shells, so there's no way to paint inside. Similarly, its a lot easier to prep, paint, and clear coat the outsides of the shells :lol:

I agree with whitlock. I would go without polishing it. It looks great as is!

it really does look great how is the scratch resistance on the ibook i'm thinking of a pinkk to red fade for my girlfriend on mine and i really don't want to strip paint again.i'm getting a g4 powerbook soon that i might send you for the yellow if youu will do another one thhat color i would be willing to pay you for yhour time and supplies.

Hey Dead,

Well, the thing to remember is that with all my stuff, I paint on the outsides of the shells. So it IS a painted surface and it can scratch like any other painted surface. Depending on how heavily I clearcoat something, the scratch resistance varies. The heavier the clear, the less chance of wearing through to the paint, and so on. Obviously, care goes into it too. I painted my iBook a pearl blue, and gave it 3 coats of clear. Its either in my laptop sleeve, or on my lap/desk/whatever, with no scratches whatsoever. Its more a care issue than anything. You take care of it, and it wont scratch

For paint work of your own, the tricks are simple. Go to the hobby shop and pick up the Testors sanding films. About two bucks. use the red film to lightly sand in between primer, paint, and clear. If you have a really super smooth finish, the results are way better. For primer, pick up the Valspar etching primer (the light gray color works super well) and use that as a base. For the clear, Valspar has cans of what they call "Truck and SUV paint." look for the cans labeled "Clear Top Coat." Give two or three light dust coats, with 15 minutes flash time in between, and then several medium wet coats. You want to see the surface of the computer glisten, but not dripping. 3-4 coats like that with a 30 minute flash time in between. let them sit overnight inside so they can start to dry out. when they're totally dry to the touch, you're getting somewhere. It'll take about a week to totally harden over though. Handle them gently to keep them from marring, etc.

A week later, dig out the sanding films and take the white one, the finest one, and gently sand the clearcoat smooth. then you can hit it with teflon and carnuba car wax

In terms of powerbooks, if you're interested in having me do some work, I currently offer to paint the lids on Aluminum Powerbooks. everything else is a royal pain. But the lid is the most shown off part anyway I can get a spare lid, so your girl can keep her original just in case. If your interested, message me directly and we can get into details.

Okay, yeah, that was a lot of info. Apologies for the long post. Hope its helpful!

Oh yeah, just a note to follow up, I presented the iBook to the recipient this evening. He absolutely loved it. We discussed painting the keyboard to match, so that process might get to be another thread once I tear into that idea

nice, I would love to see that done, I know it would look killer!