My neighbor is a very high quality house painter. I was talking with him yesterday about paint for arrow shafts. He was working on some metal doors for industrial/commerical use. The paint he uses is a water-based paint. But you can't hardly scratch it off with a screwdriver! It also dries extremely fast. I believe I am one step closer to providing a very high quality crown for your carbon and aluminum arrow shafts. More testing is going into compatiability of glue and cresting paint.      

Looking forward to your report on testing with adhesives and cresting.
thanks
ALDO

often times prep is as important as the material you use. I'd really like to hear about that too along with your material testing results..... kirk

I tested some industrial paint today. The paint is made to adhere to aluminum without priming and will adhere to carbon shafts also.
I got a sample of this paint and crown dipped one aluminum and one "wood grain" carbon shaft. I cleaned both with acetone before this. I let it dry over night and today I painted some cresting lines with the TrueNorth hi-gloss enamel paint. Then I dipped one shaft in a sealer. The other shaft I glued one fletching with bohning fletching glue and the other with a superglue. Great compatiability of all products so far. I am going to make up 6 arrows and put them through the shooting test. I let you know how this goes. Should be a winner. I tried pulling the feathers off and it left the fletching base intact on the shaft!