Painting something to look like brass?

I was trying to paint my PC chassis to look like brass but this is the best I got using rust-oleum metal effects

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The weird bumps are from using the hammered spray paint first to try and make it look like hammered brass, didn't turn out to well.

Any other ideas on good paints to use/techniques?

 

About the only way you could do better would be to brush some fine streaks in it ..... and done wrong it would look worse IMO you did about as good as can be expected from paint.

 

Best always is to start with bare, shiny metal. If you are trying to paint over a powder coat paint which most computer cases have then getting a consistent texture is more difficult.

There is some fish eye which is usually caused by contamination. All it takes is a tiny spot of wax or oil on the surface to cause it and if using a spray gun it can be caused by water in the air supply.

Another flaw I see is uneven application which can be difficult to control with a rattle can but in general it takes practice. Application thickness is critical when applying a paint that develops a texture like hammered or crinkle. Too thin and there is not enough paint for the texture to develop and you end up with just a normal painted surface. Too much paint and the paint while not creating runs is running too much for the texture to form and you get a puddle look. All of this is made more difficult with a complex shaped part.

Unless you are willing to strip your case down to bare metal I say just live with what you've got. It looks good and I'm just nit picking because you asked.

If you are considering a top clear coat make sure you follow the manufacturer's recommendation. Most require the clear to be applied within an hour or at least a day or week later. Don't cheat and try clear coating sooner or you risk your base layer crinkling and lifting.

 

Actually I did strip it down to the bare metal. It was a REAL pain to do because sanding the factory paint off as was recommended in the pc painting tutorials I read didn't work to well, in the end I had to resort to a chemical paint stripper spray. Even then I had to use a few cans of stripper spray and spent hours scraping layer after layer of it off, but I got it down to bare steel.

I don't notice the fisheye but I can see it's uneven. After all the work I did and 60-70 dollars I spent on different spray paints (most of which I didn't use and can't return) I am disappointed with the way it turned out.

I saw a video on some guy making steel look just like brass with a certain kind of wood finish https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEKEMiV3QRc
this looks really good, ever seen this done?
In the end I don't know how well it would stay on.

I almost never spray paint anything, but with all the metal finish spray paints I really thought making metal look like brass would be a lot easier, but maybe I did something wrong.

If I could do it over I would have kept it black and glued actual sheets of thin brass onto the case.

 

I only skimmed thru that video and while that will work to color the metal - it won't wear well! Wood stain is not formulated to dry over metal, it's made to be absorbed by wood. Vigorous rubbing even weeks later would remove the stain from the metal. The only possible way for that method to work is to spray poly or varnish over top of the stain.