# Uvision paint. Whats the verdict?



## Mr. Lee (Oct 12, 2002)

I am making this post because hopefully I can get some answers to what you guys that have used it ....think about it.

I bought a mallard kit and painted up 2 drakes and 2 hens to give it a test.

I sanded down the decoys and cleaned them really good.

But.....I see some issues. First of all the paint becomes wet and changes color when you put the decoy in the water. I then used some Krylon 1311. Gave it 2 coats. It was much better but the water still did get through and change the color. Another thing I noticed is that after spraying the 1311 on the gray on the drake mallard was noticably darker.

Is it ok to mix some white in with the gray to compensate for the color change due to the 1311?

Some other things I noticed is that it is almost impossible to cover dark area with white. You give it one coat and let it dry...but then when you try to put another coat on the original coat softens and you are back down to the plastic or original color. Do you need to prime areas that are dark...before painting white?

As far as the paint holding up....the green was good as was the red on the drake breast. Both browns on the hens also held up pretty good. However the Uvision gray does not hold up very good. The orange for the legs was pretty bad too.

Even if the Uvision paint does work(as far as finishing birds) what good does it do to repaint them to have the paint break down/fall off after only a couple of times?

What are the solutions that you made...and what are your results with the Uvision paint?


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## Hunter_58346 (May 22, 2003)

We used the UV paint for Honkers and mallards. What we found was this: We set 6 dozen bigfoot honkers and 8 dozen GHG mallards, half of each painted. We set the decoys in an inverted U or V. 95% of birds decoyed went for the side of the decoys with the painted decoys. 
Another occasion was just for honkers. 3 dozen painted bigfoots. Clear calm morning. When the decoys were in the shadows we virtually decoyed nothing. As soon as the sunlight hit the decoys, we shot our 20 geese in 30 minutes. The thing to remember is thet there are only a few parts of the bird that actually reflect UV rays, not the entire bird.


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## fungalsnowgoose (Sep 11, 2004)

I have had virtually no chipping and I was unable to find the 1311 before I began testing this fall there are a few spots that I will need to touch up before next season but not too many. I hunted in a variety of circumstances and found the only days that the paint wasn't as effective was on the cloudy days, and early morning. With this being said remember the paint isn't an attractant it makes your decoys look more realistic to the birds. You still need to scout and make sure your concealed well.

What kind of decoys are you using if it's the GHG's getting some 12 slot bags might be a real good idea it will help protect the paint even more than if they were just bouncing around in the trailer. Another thing with the 1311 is it should be done on a warm clear day let the sun bake the 1311 into the decoy and the paint this will help it adhere and protect better.

Hope this helps let me know if you have any other questions


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## Mr. Lee (Oct 12, 2002)

I was using some G &H mallard decoys.

It could be that I did not have the right temp. for the 1311. House was at 68 degrees.

I still am wondering if it is ok to mix the gray and white?


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## fungalsnowgoose (Sep 11, 2004)

I don't know about the mixing of the colors you could check with the U.V. guys and ask them. I know on our Honkers we did 1311 those and we had no problems with the colors still working or not even though the chest color came out a little darker after the sealant. Another way to help bake the 1311 in is you can hit it with a heat gun but the best way is still the warm sun to let it bake in


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## goosehunter21 (May 18, 2004)

I don't belive that you want to mix the gray and the white. Don't worry about it, because from what I know it will still give off the same UV reflectivity. 
Some reasons for your decoys still absorbing water is that maybe you didn't give it the right amount of time to dry properly. Because of the types of bases they use in the paint it takes up to a couple of weeks to be completely dry. If you are real worried about the color of your decoys what I would do is maybe re paint the areas that became darker and let the dry for a long time during the off season now and then in a couple of weeks or a month hit it with the matte finish.

As for my results we used an all uvison spread on the ducks a couple of times and had great success with it. We also did a test one day where we set up half painted and half unpainted. 99% of the ducks worked the painted side over the unpainted side.

Any other questions feel free to ask. No guarnatee I can answer them, but if I can't I can find the answer for you. 
Thanks 
Shane


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## tombuddy_90 (Aug 5, 2004)

has the price went down at all?? how much would it cost to repaint a dozen standard duck decoys?

thanks 
thomas


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## jpm49878 (Oct 29, 2006)

I would prime the deke , and then paint it white to bring out the lighter luster. what exactly is 1311 paint? is it that paint that when you move the decoy, it changes a bunch of colors?


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## Mr. Lee (Oct 12, 2002)

It sounds like I did not let the paint dry long enough. I think I sprayed the 1311 on the same evening.....or no longer than overnight.

I have done 8 more drakes. I will let them dry for a week or two before spraying them with the 1311(matte finish clearcoat sealer)

I did mix the gray and the white 50/50. I believe that it will be much closer to the right color. I would assume that since both colors reflect UV that it should work.

In my opinion....the color still needs to be right. Otherwise you could just paint all UV reflective colors with just white or gray.

I am going to use them down in Arkansas after the first of the year and see how the paint holds up during a week of hunting.

Also...as was mentioned I think I will use some white plastic primer on all the white areas in the future. It is just to hard to cover black areas with the white paint. (at least to my standards)


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## fungalsnowgoose (Sep 11, 2004)

You can probably get the mallard kit and do several dozen of your duck decoys remember it doesn't have to go on too thick a little goes a loong ways


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## Old Hunter (Mar 8, 2002)

I am thinking of doing a small spread,about 70 floaters and 150 field decoys. I will do 2 coats the first one quite thin worked on with a brush and the second coat a little thicker. Snows will be easy the blues will be more difficult. My question about the paint is which of the colors have the reflecting qualities? Can I take their gray add their white and some of my own blue latex to make blue gray? I'm going to try it. They are both latex so it should not be a problem.Ill do about 100 econo silosocks and paint my own detail. Another question is about the birds and from where on their bodies most of the uv reflection comes from. I have seen several referances to the fact that some areas on their bodies have the most apparent reflection of uv.Where are these areas?
I am most worried about keeping the paint on the floaters. The take the most beating. We will see how the paint stands up. I have pretty good experience with paints and refinishing products so I can give it a fair chance. I know one thing for sure ,it is very hard to get paints to stick to some of the plastic decoys. I have roughed with 60 or 40 grit abrasives, then painted with a quality acrylic cling primer and still had the primer break loose from the plastic. The floaters will be painted over their old finishes.I will wash them with tsp before the paintIf you guys are spraying poly over latex as in the case of using Krylon the latex should be totally dry.Is there a web site that a person can go to to get their questions answered? I would like to use their product but I need some advise.


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## Hunter_58346 (May 22, 2003)

How to Use UVision

Surface Prep
Plastics are a difficult substrate for adhesion, not only for UVision, but also for decoy manufacturers. Most decoys are made of polypropylene or polyethylene and often have poor adhesion to start and can chip off. This means they will chip off UVision too. For best results lightly sand, clean, inspect, prime, and top coat. That being said, most of the people who volunteered to test UVision this spring painted directly over dirty decoys and have not reported many issues with adhesion.

Priming for UVision
We have had the best results with Rustoleum Plastic Primer for bare plastics. Priming is not usually needed for painted surfaces but it will make it more durable. In many cases, we have found that the original decoy paints chip and continue to chip underneath the UVision. We have not found a way to make the decoy manufacturers paint stick better. Although some of our field testers have had good results without priming on bare plastics, our adhesion testing (after 30 minute boil and breaking off ice, etc.) indicates that UVision is most durable on bare plastic surfaces (coroplast silouettes, and the chests of Bigfoot honkers) using a primer. UVision's adhesion also improves with time: a week of cure is better than 24 hours (this is typical with latex paint).

Protective clear coat for UVision
Tetramatch can become translucent when wet. This can be reduced by putting a protective clear coat over UVision. Thus far we have found the following clears to be effective: Krylon Matte Finish 1311, Rustoleum's American Accents Matte Clear, and Rustoleum's Painter's Touch Matte Clear. Don't use polyurethane sprays because they strongly absorb UV. Acrylic sprays must not contain UV absorbers or you will nullify the UV-reflectivity of UVision.

Copyright ©2006 Twilight Labs, Inc.


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## goosehunter21 (May 18, 2004)

If you need to get any questions answered you can check their web site www.decoypaint.com.


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## Mr. Lee (Oct 12, 2002)

Steve,

You can mix any "Tetramatch" colors together to your shading preference and still be OK with UV reflectivity. But don't mix the non-UV-reflecting colors in our kits (dark browns, reds, blacks) with the UV-reflecting Tetramatch colors or you will severely reduce the UV reflectivity.

The 1311 can change the shade a little and you can mix in white to your preference to offset this. But there is a lot of natural variance in the "gray" on a drake mallard--which is why there is such vaiance in grays (from true gray to tan) on mallard decoys from different manufacturers.

We are very close to releasing a new formulation that doesn't darken when wet and doesn't need 1311. If you have concerns about your coloration at that time, we can send you the new formula for the Tetramatch colors on your kit. Let us know.

Hope this helps. We're happy to answer any other questions. Thanks for the order.

Regards,

Todd Pringle 
Twilight Labs, Inc.

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## coreyt (Dec 22, 2006)

Last spring and this fall I hunted over Uvision painted decoys and now I am a firm believer that this stuff works. When I first heard of it I thought that it was just a gimmick. After seeing what an actual bird looks like under the lense that matches what waterfowl see verses what a decoy w/o the paint and one with the paint I wondered why geese and ducks even decoy at all. After the second day of snow goose hunting I was convinced. We had mature snows setting their wings ½ mile from our decoys making one turn and then in our face. It's not like they are going to land in your decoys but it's the difference of 70 yard shots to 20-30 yard shots. We hunted 6 weeks last spring and every time out I knew that we shot more geese because of the paint verse if we didn't. Because of what I saw in the spring I decided to give it a try in the fall. We hunt in areas that consist of a lot of hunting pressure. I had the same results as many did. As soon as the sun came out geese decoyed better than I had ever seen in years past. Instead of veering at 150 yards they finished. We decided to give it the ultimate test. There were about 500 geese feeding in a 400 acre wheat field, our hunting party decided to split up into two groups and in one spread we had 100 full-bodies with the decoy paint and the other group had 100 full-bodies w/o the paint. The 2 groups split up equal distances (about 600 yards total from each other) from where the geese were sitting the night before. With the paint, five guys filled out w/o the paint, 4 guys only got 3. I will probably never own another decoy with out Uvision decoy paint on it because I'm almost certain that it works. Consider it this way all the time and money you spend on decoys, shells, GAS, and how time consuming it is the cost of it isn't much.


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## Mallard Man (Oct 13, 2006)

From the photos on the uvision site it seems that only the white parts of birds reflect the uv rays. Am i right? Is it best to sand the old paint off? If you dont sand the old paint off do you still use the primer? An when will you be coming out with the new formulation. I would be happy to test it.


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