I purchased those plastic/rubber handles, I had spray painted them and turns out they aren’t drying…any reason why?
These were the ones that I purchased at the Home Depot…(someone even here posted them here as well)
Can you paint rubber? What kind of paint are you using?
I used some Rustoleum Universal Flat Black on mine.
http://www.rustoleum.com/CBGProduct.asp?pid=182
They were tacky for about a day and a half, and then they dried up nicely.
Note that I didn’t give them a heavy coat, but several light coats spaced about an hour apart…
They seem to have held up ok so far, although I haven’t exactly put them through a stress test or anything…
You should probably get a paint made for plastics, like Fusion.
Yeah if you follow the thread about thois handles, people recommended using dr phillips black ink on them, because this issue came up with others.
One thing you can try is liberally dusting them in baby powder. They will lighten up, but will end up dry to the touch.
When I was getting ready to paint my handles, my Dad recommended scratching the pipes up with fine sandpaper. Apparently it makes it easier for the paint to adhere. I don’t know if it made a difference, but my paint came out pretty nice.
I think someone in the other topic recommended vinyl paint. As well as dye like Gareee said. :eduardo:
yeah, I did scruff mine up with a medium grit sandpaper before I sprayed them.
I think I may have also been the one to recommend automotive vinyl dye, although I ended up just trying the Rustoleum Universal paint first since I had some handy.
According to their literature, “New Rust-Oleum Universal is specifically formulated to work on diverse surfaces including wood, plastic, metal, wood, concrete and even vinyl.” So far it’s working for me and you can get it at Home Depot or Lowes.
I just put the handles around a scrap piece of PVC and sprayed away. Then I just left them sit to dry and they were tacky for about a day and a half and then the next time I checked them, it was solid…
i used the same handles, and this is what i found:
you MUST either sand the grips, or bathe them in mineral spirits before beginning any work…
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regular spray paint doesn’t ever really set up. it will dry after a LONG time, but it rubs right off, and is a real mess on your hands.
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the dye doesn’t work that well either. it goes on and dries nice, but still will scratch off fairly easy.
i’ve had my pack hanging on the wall since i dyed my grips [in march i think?] and just the small amount of handling about the house has them already needing some more before the halloween outings.
i think the best method is the vinyl paint.
Seems like an awful lot of work and expense for something that won’t last. The paint/dye will come off eventually no matter what you do, the rubber leaches oils which cause the paint to NOT stick. Why not just buy some resin cast grips, paint them and be done with it?
you need a can of black rustoleum black vinyl spray paint. No tacky and leaves a nice finish. Home Depot has it. Theres a picture of a bar stool on the packaging of the can.
spoken like a true salesman! too bad we can’t see the glimmer in your eye when you say that! 
I went the cheap route and just electrical taped them, to me, they came out perfect.
I had the same problem you did and I was not satisfied with the baby powder solution. So, I used 3M adhesive remover to get the spray paint off. Next, I washed off the rancid 3M smell with soap and water, then applied India Ink. India ink worked perfect and dried very quickly.
Use this stuff.
http://www.rustoleum.com/CBGProduct.asp?pid=117
I picked it up at Home Depot and used it on my old Ecto goggles and gun handles.
Dryed fine and was never sticky.
edit:
India Ink works great as well, but rubs off rather fast.
I’m 95% certain I saw that at Lowe’s yesterday as well.
LOL too funny!
irricanian is right though, the time, effort, and money put into making inaccurate parts look better seems wasteful when you could just buy the accurate parts and be done with it.
i agree with Colin, just buy some resin grips 
I’m all for finding inventive ways to save money on your props and utilize found items but to me it seems like this option ends up costing far more than just buying resin casts
So i’m going to assume the rubber grips are approx. …$5-6 a set? The vinyl spray paint… $6-7 a can, the time taken running all over trying to find everything… $??? I’d say that adds up to about $20-25+ for less than accurate parts whereas resin copies are $10- $15 a set ($12 at MMM 
), plus you likely already have the black paint from your build, coupled with shipping $7, so we’re $17 -$22 and they are relatively accurate. **And **the paint wont come off
It surprises me that a topic like this gets so much attention yet when someone posts an awesome prop they build it gets ignored :sigh: