Just a thought I am thinking to spray paint my old VT 80 that has a lot of chip Do you think it will change the feel? I believe spray paint is very thin right? Maybe this racket become custom ..... lol
there have been attempts before. both good and bad. a proper paint job is not easy to do. esp when you are starting with a painted racket. to do a proper paintjob, you need to prep the racket properly. that means you need to remove the existing paint first. to do that, the most painful but safe way is to sand it down. chemical stripper are too corrosive and will affect the pourus carbon fiber underneath. after sand it down (expect a couple hours of work), then you need to prep the surface with a primer. after the primer, then your creativity comes in. what type of design do you use, and how do you spray it on? when you have your design sprayed on, then it comes to the final clear coat, the clear coat will seal in the middle layer and offer a protective coating. that's a lot of work to get a racket painted. but if you have good design and good spray/airbrush skills, the results will be rewarding. i remember once i got a racket from a client, he used some cheap household rattle can and sprayed his whole racket brown without any preparation whatsoever. aside from leaving a cheap and ugly paintjob, the paint was so poor it was shreding paint chips like crazy. i was still cleaning my stringing machine from those disgusting brown chips weeks after.
i believe your racket or most rackets already have a protective coating on it, so if you want the paint to stick you might want to sand off the existing paint so you might lose all the graphics. plus if you don't treat your racket correctly after the paint is sprayed, you might be stuck with a racket that could be hazardous to your health. just my thought.
Imho, there are better things with which you can satisfy your artistic needs than a badminton racket. There's little space on a frame, the grommets/holes are always in the way, carbon fibre is weak (if you want to use the racket afterwards.). Better do your art on something else and enjoy the badminton racket as a tool for playing rather than a substitute for canvas...
Painting a racquet is relatively easy once you know how. As someone said above, most of the effort is spent on the prep work. I've done quite a few automotive paintwork repairs and painting of panels/bumpers but not a racquet. I use a proper spray gun and compressor to get the best finish but you can use aerosols too. There are a few things you need to consider. Firstly, are you painting the whole racquet or are just a local repair for the chips? Also consider whether you want a gloss finish or matt. If gloss you can either use a clearcoat (lacquer) or polish a solid gloss colour. Then you need to consider if you want to use metallic, pearl or solid paint. Do you want to paint on top of the existing paint (adds weight) or remove the existing paint first? Painting the whole racquet will give a more uniform look as blending in the new lacquer to the existing can be tricky if you are doing a spot repair plus over spray will be a difficult to overcome on such a small piece. Suggest using a fade out thinner such as Upol 20:43 for blending the lacquer. Removing all the paint is the time consuming part as it is all done manually, careful not to go too deep and remove the carbon. Rather leave some paint behind than remove carbon. Also when painting the lacquer, you don't want to go too thick. Racquets tend to have a very thin lacquer to save weight as it isn't really there to protect the carbon (although it does a little), it's there really just for shine. When I have time I'll write a "how to" for repairing paint chips on racquets later.
