Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Adding texture to paint

I was wondering what others do to add subtle texuring to their rifle stock when they paint their stocks. I have about 6oz of duracoat and I would like to use it on a rifle stock. I also own a B&C stock and I really like how it has a very mild texturing to it. I was just wondering if there was something I could add to the duracoat such as sand or microballoons that would add this type of texturing and still be sprayable through a sprayer. I do not own an airbrush, I have used the preventhal aerosol sprayers in the past.

Buy a can of aerosol spray in bed liner at NAPA, $10 or so. Prime your stock and then give it however much texture you want by spraying on more or less bedliner. Let it dry, prime again and paint whatever color over it.

Probably not how it's done at the manufacturer but it's how I do it. Easy, cheap, and effective.

This works ^^^^^^^.

I have also used those stone texture paints and apply lightly till you have the texture you desire. An advantage of the stone texture paint is that if you like the color then you can just coat with a matte clear finish and your good to go.

These are great ideas. I was just trying to figure out how to do it with the duracoat I already have on hand. How well will these paint's hold up?

Here is something
http://www.houtsenterprises.net/dur_top_text.html

I add fine grit crushed glass blasting media to paint all the time, never on a firearm though. It's cleaner, lighter, and less abrasive than sand. Micro balloons would be really light and easy to remove/tweak.

Or if you only want grip on a specific area there are a couple easy ways. I prefer steelbed lifted up with a sponge but the simplest is some 5 min clear epoxy and grit of choice. I put the epoxy on as thin as possible and sprinkle 120 grit aluminum oxide (rough play sand also works). You can paint right over it or let it show as a color accent.

Go to your local hobby store, and pick up some epoxy microballoons. These are typically used for RC airplanes to lighten the weight of patches and fill material. Based upon my experience, it usually takes 3 to 4 table spoons of paint, using an HVLP gun, to fully coat a stock in one color. With that volume of paint, I would generally add 1/8 to 1/4 of a teaspoon of the micro balloons into the paint mixture. Some HVLP guns may have a problem spraying this material through, however they are so small most guns have no problem at all. To spray, turn the pressure in your gun way down, almost to zero, and turn the volume of paint way up. This result in the paint spitting out of the gun, to provide a typical splatter pattern. The splatter pattern, in conjunction with the micro balloons, will provide a texture very similar to a McMillan painted stock. Once the splatter pattern coat has been applied to the entire stock, go ahead and turn the pressure in your gun up to the normal setting and spray the rest of your color coat with the balance of the paint remaining. You can control the amount of texture and in one area by adding more paint to that particular spot, but the general feel will still be fairly mild and not overly coarse.