On my camera, there are several areas where some paint touch up would help. Does anyone know what paint should be selected for a good match to the hammertone gray on the camera? Also, does anyone have a suggestion on how to clean off the old grease, and the stains found where the old grease sat on the paint? Lighter fluid, alcohol, and Goo Off do not touch this stuff.

We went through a paint search a year ago or so. I don't remember anyone coming up with an exact match, but we did find a couple of sources for the hammertone paint. In spray cans anyway. I have one sitting here. Rust-Oleum "Hammered" #7213 Silver. To be honest, I haven't tried it yet. I covered all the tiny spots with an automotive touch-up paint I got in the auto store. Not hammered, and not even a great match, but is silver... I just didn't have such large spots. Although I think one of the back could use a complete repaint. Just haven't gotten around to it yet...

As to the grease removal. I don't know if I would go beyond alcohol and naptha. If they don't do the removal, you'd have to move up to something awfully volatile and probably damage the original paint. If it was mine, I would either ignore the stain, or try polishing it out. Automotive "polishing Compound" should be safe and effective. Hmm, maybe an auto paint tar remover? Should be strong and paint-safe? There are some remarkable products out there for cars! Those combined with Pledge lemon wax and you can recondition just about anything!

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: 45PSS on 2005-12-26 18:12 ]</font>

I have Rustolium 7214, which is too silver. Sounds like there is another color that may be a better match, so I will try to chase down a can of the 7213 to see if it is better. If all else fails I will just leave it alone, as fair wear is more acceptable than badly matched touch up. I tried the denatured alcohol, and it did not seem to soften the old grease. I will try again, and give it more time to soak in. I thought the MEK stuff was rapid carcinogenic death; can you even still get it? or maybe I have it mixed up with something else. I am inclined to live with the stains rather than risk harming the paint. Luckily they are not in prominent areas.

You can get hammertone paints from Eastwood Automotive Company. Eastwood is better than any other brand IMO. There are two types of silver, the silver and the grey. I would not keep them more than a year as the gas used to propel them can escape and then they are useless. Eastwood has wrinkle finish paints too. They are on the 'net at:
http://www.eastwoodco.com/jump.jsp?itemID=997&itemType=CATEGORY&iMainCat=706&iSubCat=997
Hope this helps.

another source of hammertone paints is Hammerite. http://www.hammerite.com I've used their products in the past, and they're a quality product. I don't know if they'll have an exact match or not, but it's worth a try.