New Home.....New Screen...Help?

**mayhem13** · **06-19-09, 01:14 AM**

Hey guys, should be closing on a new place in a few days which has a nioce room we're gonna use for a family room/HT. It has a low fireplace so we're gonna put the 50" Plasma above it and then a motorized screen to come down in front of the fireplace.....100" diag 16:9. HT is at night and good light control with little to no ambient light from the windows. So.......can i paint a rollup screen or what? I already have an Accuview matte white and i've never been really happy with it so i was figuring to mask it off while extended and spray on some BW......N9 maybe? Was also hoping the added paint would help to reduce curling. There's gotta be a flexible base to replace the latex.....maybe whatever the OEM is using...some sorta vinyl base maybe?

**mechman** · **06-20-09, 09:06 AM**

Anthony,

If you have good light control, why do you want Black Widow? Black Widow is a ambient light gray screen. Are you looking for better blacks? But if you do I'd look into the Scorpion N8.5 or the N9.

As for painting the screen, it can be done. I don't think it will help any curling issues though. My guess is that it would make it worse. But it can be painted with regular interior latex paint. Latex paint should be flexible enough. Here's a link to tiddler's guide on this over at avforums. I don't think he has anything in there about curing time. My hunch is to wait at least a week or more before rolling it back up.

Sorry it took so long for us to get a response out to you.

**mayhem13** · **06-20-09, 09:56 PM**

Thanx for the link Mech.....and sorry i haven't been around.....workin on the audio side of things with a new HT hi efficiency design for all to enjoy. As for the BW, you guessed it...poor contrast with my Mitsu HC1500 but i ove this PJ as the colors rival projectors costing magnitudes more. You always trade something away. I though you were closing in on and N9 BW mix?

**mechman** · **06-21-09, 11:18 AM**

Nope. No need for a N9 as Cream & Sugar already exists. The N9 after Scorpion above was a typo. Scorpion is N8 and N8.5 roughly. N9 would be C&S.

**Harpmaker** · **06-21-09, 01:35 PM**

Something I'll throw in here is that on another forum a user was experimenting making a screen to project polarized 3D movies on. He got the usual advice from others about using mica-heavy screen mixes, but ALL of them lost all polarization (even at 100% silver paint).

I had read that one needed a true metallic screen to retain polarization so I recommended he try BW since it is the only screen mix I know of that uses only aluminum. The user ordered some AAA-F, but he already had some solvent-based aluminum from Sherwin-Williams (which retained polarization), but hot-spotted badly. He got some paint tinted Bermuda Beige and tried mixing the SW aluminum with it, but he found that even a little opaque paint mixed with aluminum decreases polarization of the returned light drastically.

I recommended he try the Craft Smart Metallic Silver that is used to make C&S. While it didn't retain polarization as well as aluminum paint (which he guessed retained about 90% polarization), he thought it retained around 50% polarization.

In the end, he used pure AAA-F coated with three coats of Behr Faux Glaze (all the "clears" he tested retained polarization). He is happy!

The point to all this is that while CSMS does not contain aluminum flakes, it does contain something that is aluminum coated or it wouldn't retain any polarization at all. C&S is a close relative to BW after all. The two should co-mingle (Scorpion) quite nicely.

**mechman** · **06-21-09, 02:50 PM**

Off topic a bit...

I believe I recall that thread Harp. I wonder if he tried the Valspar Clear Coat Protector. That is the clearest clear coat that I've tested so far. Even faux glaze affects the color of the base. Someday one of us needs to test all of these again...

Ok back to topic.

**Harpmaker** · **06-21-09, 04:58 PM**

I gave too much impertinent info, my bad. Why I posted it here is that anthony was asking about BW N9 and I just learned that, while not the same, CSMS and AAA-F are parts of the same family (aluminum).

To be dead-bang on-topic (

), if I were going to paint a flexible screen like a retractable I would add Liquitex Matte Medium to the mix between 50 and 100 percent; to make a simple illustration, if 32 fl.oz. of BW, Scorpion or C&S were used I would add anywhere from 16 fl.oz. to 32 fl.oz. of Matte Medium to the mix. The more Matte Medium used the more translucent the mix is and the more flexible.

I have only tested one mix like that so far (I painted a vinyl retractable window shade with a modified BW), but it worked well.

**mayhem13** · **06-21-09, 08:24 PM**

Thanx for the replies Harp, and i'll take a look at the cream and sugar thread again. We just came back from Home Depot with a new set of sliding doors for the room with built in mini blinds. The doors open to the back yard, which has zero ambient light at night other that the moon. I'm thinking an all wood library type decor for the space, using a dark mahogony finish which should suck up the remaining light reflected off the screen nicely. All this might be in vain though if i can't find a solution to the center channel speaker when the screen is down. May have to go the AT route and load my screen roll with some AT fabric anyways.

Advertisement