February 19, 2007: The Glowing Walls

So . . . I am in the process of repainting the interior trim on my house. I like the current color and went to some trouble to match it. The match is close enough that it's sometimes hard to tell what's been repainted. So if I can't tell, is it good enough? Well . . . not if you're compulsive.

Yesterday I found out, quite by accident, that the new paint glows a spooky velvety purple under UV light, and the old paint doesn't glow at all. This showed me just how many spots, and occasional large patches, I'd missed. So I repainted in the dark, under UV.

The downside to that proved to be that under UV one can't see if there's too MUCH paint in a spot, turning into a drip. So the thing to do is to do the initial check in the dark, but then repaint with a light on, and hold the UV lamp close enough to the work to show the missed places.

Of course, there's no point to this technique unless you happen to have new paint that looks just like the old except under UV. But it was still neat, and worth sharing.
-- Steve Jackson

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