Start Up Costs
You will need to practice - A lot before you ever open a shop of any kind. I recommend you do NOT touch ANY firearm until you have painted, dipped, cleaned, assembled... whatever at least 50 things other than a firearm. You must practice on something cheap to begin with. If you ruin a $500 firearm your first time - or it does not look just like the picture on the internet then you will be discouraged from continuing. Please practice. Buy THESE - they are called speed shapes. There are a few places to get them online; but for now order 12-24 from Liquid Concepts. If you are doing Hydrographics, Duracoat, or Cerakote it does not matter. These are perfect to practice on and display in your shop.
These are all speed shapes that we used on a regular basis to show off what we can do. Again, I stress, buy these and practice; A LOT.
Once you have these in stock you can start to look at costs to coat them. I have learned that there are many people/businesses that sell everything you need to do this. But, picking who to buy from is sometimes overwhelming. Let me say; NO single place is going to sell everything you need. It is best to shop around before making any purchase. Even though every place will sell the things you have to have you will want other designs or better quality gloves or something else that is personal preference; so do not think that you must spend all of your money in one place.
Hydrographics/Water Printing/ Water Transfer/ Cubic Printing
The first thing you are going to need is Film. This is the "paper" that the images are created on. This film is poly vinyl acetate (PVA) and dissolves in water. It does not however change its chemical composition in water and thus never "disappears". (This is why there must be a rinse stage of the process discussed later). This PVA paper is what the decals for the old model cars were printed on. The ones that you had to slide off the backing paper. Imagine that paper but the backing has all ready been removed. You can find film all over the internet (and world). You can buy from china as this is where 99% of all patterns come from - just keep in mind that sometimes building local relationships and shipping speed along with low minimum orders may outweigh the perceived savings from ordering over seas. My best recommendations for Film are as follows:
You will notice that each of these businesses will offer a lot of the same patterns (yes they all order from china - the same factory). Find the one closest to you and start ordering. TWN and Naughty Dawgs are the exception. I recommend ONLY using them when you want/need to buy specially designed film with their proprietary prints on them.
You will also need activator (this is the chemical that makes it all happen). Let me be clear about activator, I have used it from many different companies and for the most part they all work fine. TWN smells the worse and Hydraphics is the easiest to breath around. But you can buy a few quarts from a few different companies for yourself. The price is pretty standard. Activator is just Adhesion promoter with a high MEK content. If you really want to cut initial start up cost just buy THIS Bulldog Adhesion promoter. It works enough for your to get the idea down. But it will not work enough to do large orders with. It is expensive and since it is not as concentrated it takes more. But it is available off the standard retail shelf at auto stores. If you use any other adhesion promoter make sure it has flex additive in it (for plastic car parts) because this helps the ink flex without distorting during the process. The information i just gave about activator is probably new information to 80% of the people all ready "dipping", you are welcome.
Once you have film, activator, and speed shapes then you are ready to buy more supplies. You will need a large tote - roughly 1 foot wide x 2-3 foot long and at least 1 foot deep. This will be your practice tote for learning the process. Make sure it will obviously hold water. You will also need masking tape, duct tape (guerrilla tape or whatever - do not buy cheap tape as it will fall apart in the hot water), gloves (I buy mine locally at harbor freight tools), shop (blue) paper towels, paint (we will talk about this next), preval sprayer.
Those items will allow you to dip your speed shapes and learn what to do and more important what not to do. For the speed shapes i recommend just picking up some Valspar Paint from Lowes to give them a base coat. This paint will get gooey when you dip it into the chemicals so do not touch the speed shape after you dip it. This is NOT the paint to use for real projects. But this is a great and affordable way to see new base colors and learn what angles and adjustments to make for each pattern. PLEASE do NOT use spray paint on your finished product. If you do so you will have substandard results and the community and customers will not take you serious.
Duracoat/Cerakote
The materials needed for these are the same as the dipping. You just do not need film, activator, a tote, or water. You will need some product (Cerakote is available direct from their website). And you can get Duracoat from Houts Enterprises. You can load the paints in one of the preval sprayers to play around with. Keep in mind that both finishes are supposed to be applied even and thin - as they are ceramic based normal methods of paint removal sometimes do not work once these finishes are cured. I will do an in-depth article of each of these on their own so you can see each in action and learn more about each without reading my rambling about other things.
It is important to come to terms with the fact that you will waste a lot of money learning this trade. And at no time should you give up. Stick with it and you will turn out some amazing quality work.
Up to this point you have probably all ready attempted or are ready to try something. I have in NO way covered all the costs in these few paragraphs. The next article will be Hydrographic process cost in-depth and cover some basics about the pricing structure of wholesale vs. retail and about how to budget your business profits in this line of work.
