YouTube personality Jeremy Winters of Booth Talk was blown away by Evercoat’s Optex Premium Body Filler and Putty. That was the gist of a recent “Tech Tips by Tim” video where Evercoat’s Tim McKinney talked with the social media influencer about Optex and the proper use of 440 Express Micro-Pinhole Eliminator.
Jeremy has been using Optex for over a year and utilized it heavily on a 1953 Willys wagon restoration project. He heard about the product from a trusted friend and immediately fell in love with it.
“It’s a really cool thing whenever you take 80 grit on a block and just start working it in and it just instantly powders up,” said Jeremy. “You’re not having to sit there and put the elbow grease into it and work the heck out of it.”
Of course, you can’t talk about Optex without also mentioning it’s unique color-changing technology. Optex changes color from pink to green, letting the body technician know that the repair is properly catalyzed and ready to sand.
Jeremy said that one of the things he hears a lot is, “Well, why do you need something that’s going to change colors? If you don’t know when your mud is ready to sand, you don’t need to be in this industry.”
“Having been in the industry for 18 years, I get it,” Jeremy said. “But whenever you’re starting to work multiple panels, you don’t have to stop and go over here and test something to see if it’s good enough. It helps with production because you’re looking across and seeing it change color and you know, ‘All right, well I’ve got another couple of minutes and I’ll be good to go on it,’ and you can continue doing whatever else you were doing. it’s one of those little things that makes a big difference down the road.”
Jeremy related a story about telling people who saw his work on the ’53 Willys that the magic ingredient in the Optex filler he was using must be “unicorn dust” because it was “absolutely amazing” and the “neatest thing” he had ever seen.
McKinney joked that Evercoat may or may not have unicorns on site that they harvest dust from. While he could not divulge all of Optex’s secrets, he brought up a product Evercoat had in 1983 called “Tack-Free” that was the first body filler that did not load up sandpaper when it cured. Fast forward to 2012, when Evercoat introduced Rage Ultra that started using a resin blend called eco-resin. The eco-resin and traditional premium resins offered adhesion and sandability without sacrificing a very hard cure profile.
As far as the color-changing properties of Optex, McKinney said it’s a special pigment that enables the color shift and makes the product just a little bit creamier. Thus, any of the air pockets that might have been trapped in its cousin product, Rage Ultra, are able to work their way out and, all of a sudden, you don’t have nearly as many pinholes you normally would.
As far as 440 Express goes, McKinney said it is expressly for finding, filling and fixing micropinholes, all in one application. He had a funny story about the importance of following the manufacturer’s instructions for applying 440 Express. Someone had just gotten new work boots and, when they tried to apply the product with their spreader, it ran right off the spreader and onto their boots.
“Why would you make a product like that?” he asked.
McKinney replied, “Well, didn’t you put [the product] on the blue sponge?”
There was a moment of hesitation where they could almost hear crickets chirping, and the person replied, “What blue sponge?”
Evercoat spent a lot of time in the lab trying to figure out which foam applicator worked best, so needless to say it pays to follow the manufacturer’s specific instructions.
“I tell people take a look at that foam applicator pad and imagine it in clocks, 12 to 6 and 3 to 9,” says McKinney.
“So, apply it between 12 to 3, wipe it and then wipe it in another quadrant where you take that area and wipe off the excess. If you, do it right, you shouldn’t put on a whole heck of a lot. Wipe off the excess, wait 15 minutes and it’s ready to go to a solvent primer.”
For more information on Evercoat’s Optex Premium Body Filler and Putty, visit evercoat.com/rageoptex/us/.
