A local art supply store and an internet supplier said they can no longer order One Shot, but can order a product called "Ronan". The salesperson didn't know if it was just a product name change, just said it was their new product. When I lookup One Shot on the web it appears the page is down. Anyone used Ronan?
Ronan is a completely different company, located in NY. https://www.ronanpaints.com/one-stroke-lettering-enamel They make Alkyd Enamel, Waterbased, and now Urethane. I have used the Ronan enamel stuff in the past, worked fine at the time. Basically interchangeable, with 1Shot. If I didn't see the label, I wouldn't have known it was different. Not sure if the colors are all the same or not. Ronan never had the distribution that 1Shot enjoyed, maybe that is changing ? Sounds like your local store, is changing suppliers. They used to be able to mix different colors, to make a case. Which would be good for smaller retailers. That got changed. The last 3 cans of 1-shot that I purchased, were completely unusable garbage: A quart of White, that was like Skim Milk, with nothing settled on the bottom. Didn't even smell like paint. They were cleaning the machine, and sold off the dirty cleaning solvent as paint. Complete garbage. A quart of Black, that is thicker than Tar. Not skinned over, just crap. Also, didn't smell like their paint. Can't do anything with it. And a can of Pearl Red, that wasn't Red, or any other of their production colors. Looks like a color change, that they screwed up. Halfway between Red and maybe Purple, but at the same time UGLY. Job called for Red, not some random color. I used to stock all their stuff. No more. Shitty management, shitty sales reps, shitty inconsistent quality. PPG bought 1Shot, from Spraylat. The geniuses at Spraylat completely Fucked the 1Shot brand and their customers. It appears that PPG hasn't fixed the situation. No idea why their site is down.
Tried a search and just as you say, the site is down. Might be with all the computer tech issues lately, or they may have a problem. I'd check with the next big one that isn't an ad and still shows the product. https://www.dickblick.com/products/1-shot-lettering-enamels/ EDIT: @Unkl Ian beat me. I have no recent experience, so his opinion is more useful.
The web page is still up. PPG just has a missing redirect https://www.ppg.com/refinish/en-US/products/1-shot What is everybody using now if 1 Shot is not the quality it used to be?
Coast Airbrush has one shot,and others. Alfa is what I will try next, but I have a lot of One Shot in most colors.
I bought some AlphaEnamel a few years back to play with. I have no experience with any other brands so cannot speak to the quality compared. Stuff is made in Detroit though so thats cool!
evilBay to the rescue. I used to gasp when it was $8 per can. https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fr...13&_nkw=one+shot+enamel+paint&_sacat=0&_oac=1
I have bought all my One Shot from Amazon. I encountered this problem when I attempted to buy their flattening agent. I've never used it but a friend asked if I could lay lines with a flat finish. It's unavailable from Amazon or the two previous sources mentioned. Thanks very much for everyone's input
Funny you say that! The man that got me started striping said that exact thing when I told him I couldn't get flattening agent. Reckon I'll play with it. Thank you!
No clue how much you have to add. I've never done it, or used flattening paste. But the old guys say it works. Always listen to the old guys. You don't have to do what they say, but listen to them. And think about it. Might learn something.
Probably 20 or 30 years I used to do some occasional sign painting and lettering. A large local paint store always had a good supply of Ronan Bulletin and Lettering enamels in stock. I imagine it was what most of the areas professional sign shops used. Always worked well for me. Flowed out smooth and usually very good one-coat coverage for the lettering enamel. Went for several years not doing much sign painting when vinyl lettering started to take over. Wanted to do a bit of hand lettering for a project and decided to buy a few cans of fresh Ronan lettering enamel. By this time their paints were lead-free and their one-coat coverage was pretty much a thing of the past. I see online that their enamels are still lead-free (which is still a good idea) and maybe they've improved the coverage of their paints. But the local large paint store that used to supply Ronan paints has long since closed when all the "big box" hardware stores starting moving into the area. I'd be curious to hear from anyone who has used some of the newer Ronan enamels in recent years. It seemed to be pretty popular years ago with the local sign painters and race car lettering guys in this area.
This was in response to a change in Federal law, which came into effect around 2001-ish. All the paint companies started working on this problem, years earlier. I was at Lead East, around 2000, and asked the sales rep for 1shot if this was going to be a problem ? He said "A lot of the colors had already been switched to Lead free, they just hadn't announced it yet. The Orange you were just using, worked fine ?" "Yes", I replied. "That is one of the colors that is now Lead free. So it is possible to make a good Lead free paint, this won't be a problem." Of course, shortly after that, 1shot got sold to Spraylat, and their brilliant Bean Counters went and Fucked up the paint formulas, "removing things like Pigment and Resin." Brilliant.
I've always assumed that one of the differences between Ronan's Lettering Enamel and their Bulletin Color Enamels was the greater amount of pigment used in the Lettering Enamels. And possibly that the pigments were more finely ground. The lettering paint seemed to feel smoother in the brush when lettering than the bulletin colors. I may have just been imagining the smoother feel of the paint as it was pulled from the brush. I imagine that the lead helped improve the "one-coat" coverage over darker base colors. But lead is some really nasty, horrible stuff.
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