Azek (PVC) sign, Need to paint?

[jshoes51]

I'm making five signs for the local garden club out of 3/4" pvc. They want white background with black and green painted carved areas and borders.

Can I get away with leaving the white pvc unpainted, or do I need to paint it white first? The only drawback I could see is that maybe it would get dirty faster if it's not painted?

[jerry_stanek]

What I did was cut a 6mm pocket in the back side of some 13mm sintra and cut out some 6mm sintra to fit the pocket. The I glued it in and carved out the front down 7.5mm with the house numbers.

[zeykr]

My understanding is the PVC is negatively charged when it comes out of the extruder and if not some kind of finish it draws an holds dirt on a cut surface.

[joe]

Jim,

Your least worry is the PVC. It's one of my favorite substrates. The neat thing is how durable it is and how easily it can be cleaned up. For example if you run over it with a car, leaving behind dark ugly tire tracks, a quick scrub down with Ajax and it looks none the worse.

We have three Dybond signs in the shop now which will have .75" Red PVC letter. An adhesion promoter will be used as an undercoat then topcoat with Centari. If these letters were to be white, I'd leave them paint free. It's been that way for years and worked every time.

Good luck with the project.
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[joe]

O by the way,
The above signs are drawings not the final project. These are the three signs which will have PVC letters. Backgrounds are Dybond.

Sorry I didn't make this plain in the first post.

[jshoes51]

Joe,

Doesn't Dibond have a thin aluminum surface on each side of a plastic core? I'm using a solid pvc material. One brand available locally is Azek. My strategy is to carve into the unpainted sign blank, then over-paint the carved areas, then sand the over-paint off of the flat areas leaving paint only in the carved areas. Just wondered if this sign will soil sooner than if I painted the blank first and then masked the whole thing.

[joe]

Jim,

Your process will work without painting the pvc. I suggest you pocket in some painted material like DyBond which has been painted. That makes for a much cleaner and faster job.


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[sawdust535]

Jim,
I used Azek a few times but cleaned up the over-painted areas with a damp rag. Good results but very time consuming. As Joe said, I would imagine your process will work (sanding the over-painted areas), but you would probably need to finish the surface as smooth as the original factory finish (almost semi-gloss) to prevent dirt from adhering to it. I never tried sanding Azek with a very fine grit and wonder if heat from the friction would cause the material to melt or burn. If anyone has tried this before, would be interesting to know the results.