About fifteen years ago Kevin and Barb Pickett, the owners of River Hills Sporting Clays near Boonville Missouri gave me this formula for white grease paint for a steel patterning plate. We’ve used it at our club for many years with wonderful results, and I mixed up a batch this afternoon.

You will need.

Three gallon plastic bucket with lid. A five gallon bucket may be used, but the three gallon size allows a standard house paint roller to reach the grease paint easier and with less mess.

Two quarts of new cheap motor oil. I use 5W-30, but any motor oil works.

Two quarts of cheap, white, latex house paint.

Four 16 ounce cans of white lithium wheel bearing grease.

Pour equal parts motor oil, paint, and white grease in bucket and stir until completely mixed using a paint stirrer chucked in a cordless drill.

Dip end of roller in grease paint and paint the plate. The lid on the bucket only keeps the grease paint clean. It does not freeze in cold weather or get runny in hot weather. The grease paint never really dries out or gets hardened. We store the bucket and the roller in a cheap paint tray in an old pickup bed tool box behind the patterning plate.

You’ll only need to refresh the paint on the plate occasionally. A roller will wipe off patterns with one pass. Replacement paint rollers are very cheap, and last for years.

This formula works in any weather you can stand to shoot patterns in. It doesn’t fly off the roller hardly at all on your clothes. It cleans off you hands and guns or anything else, with any hand cleaner and a paper towel.

If you start with a gallon and a half, when the bucket is about three quarters empty, one quart of oil, two cans of white grease, and one quart of white latex house paint stirred in brings the mix halfway up on the three gallon bucket and makes dipping the roller easier and less messy. We use latex paint because it cleans up easier than oil based paint. Once the plate is painted entirely and the house paint roller saturated with grease paint you’ll use very little of this, and might only need to top off the grease paint every year or two.

We’ve tried used motor oil and never will again. New motor oil makes the formula an off white that shows every pellet strike perfectly, and looks much better.

If you are using cans of white spray paint now, you’ll stop that forever if you try this. It’s less messy, much easier, faster, cheaper, and no need to mess with cans of spray paint. The roller just spreads the grease paint on the plate and roller and covers up the old pattern with a few swipes (no new grease paint required for the entire session) and you put the roller behind the plate and shoot again.

There’s surely other formulas for white grease paint for patterning plates, but equal parts motor oil, white latex house paint, and white wheel bearing grease works for us very well.

That's what I do exactly, but I use a 5 gallon bucket so that I can leave the roller in it, with the lid snapped on. I hang the bucket by it's bail on a "hook bent" nail driven into the back of the plate's supports. I haven't been adding the white lithium grease, but might try it. The latex paint mixed with new oil has been entirely satisfactory for me.


When testing loads or guns, and want to save the patterns, I place a card with a number on top of the plate and snap a pic with my cell phone. Then I can email them to myself, move to my pics on my computer, and on to Photobucket if desired.



SRH

Thanks for the idea of leaving out the white lithium wheel bearing grease, and just using equal parts white paint and motor oil. We’ve never tried that.

The white grease costs about double what white paint does and several times what motor oil costs.

Grease is designed to not harden or dry out, and grease stays on the plate and roller.

Oil won’t harden or dry out, either, but it’s thinner than grease, and may be prone to flip off the roller and make a mess.

The white paint is designed to dry hard and fast and stick to everything, which is not the object of pattern plate grease paint.

The white grease is about $15 a quart, the paint about $7.50, and the motor oil $5.

I suppose you could try just oil and paint and then add white grease later, but three quarts of our oil-paint-grease formula lasts for hundreds of patterns, and the savings on grease would not amount to more than a box or two of shells.

Not having the mix fly off the roller, is worth a lot.:)

I use the cheapest white latex primer Lowe's sells. It works great and washes off the roller easily when finished. A gallon goes a lonnng way. Use a little 3-4" roller, it goes in the can easily and doesn't waste as much. Forget the grease thing.
JR

If only paint or primer were used, the roller would require cleaning each time and the lid on the paint can sealed. It would work as well as cans of spray paint and be cheaper, but more work.

The oil-paint-grease mix never, ever dries or hardens. Rollers are replaced eventually, but never cleaned. The lid on the bucket is just placed over the mix, not sealed.

Thanks for idea of only cheap paint in a bucket

But we tried cans of spray paint, and never again.:)

A gallon of the least expensive latex 'base' paint [its usually white] mixed w/a qt. of 90wt gear oil [no need for hypoid unless you like the smell of sulfur] will give you a very durable mix for the least cost. Use a close nap paint roller on a long extension handle and don't get overly enthusiastic when rolling; it will throw off & is not that easily removed. It makes for a very durable mix for grease plate application and is inexpensive to renew.

note: if you are using white lithium bearing grease, it is least expensive purchased in the cartridges sold for use in grease guns as opposed to in a can.

I wear some old boots that "don't matter" when I go to the plate. I may not get any on my clothes, but it's always speckled on my shoes/boots. Rolling the paint slow helps to prevent that.

Do a slow roll......................SRH

Good memories of trying it way back for the first time, thinking I was all set with a brand new rattle can of spray paint. Boy was that silly. Some time, I'd like to try that grease mix. And, I would tend to prefer the regular wider roller, quick coverage with minimal splatter sounds interesting.

I always bought any light color returned paint that was marked way down at the hardware store. I just threw away the roller sleeve and use one of those thin plastic roller tray liners and threw that away too. If I wanted to use it a couple or three days in a row, I just laid saran wrap right down on the paint and roller and sat it in the shade. It seemed plenty good enough the next day.

I don't have to buy any of this crap. I have plenty of leftover white latex from keeping up "This Olde House', and there's no short supply of engine or hydraulic oil in my farm shop. Only thing that gets short around heah is time...........and cash.

SRH

So, ya' think that pattern will kill a dove or quail cleanly? Before you answer, it's a .410, now. Be careful you don't give it any credit it's not due.

SRH

In the hands of a great wing shooter, looks like no problem. It seems to be hitting where it's supposed to. For me, I'd need a spreader load and pry a paint can open with the barrel to bump things up to one in ten.

Stan, is that pattern shot from the Dickinson?
JR

Yes, right barrel, at 20 yds. Left barrel is about the same. As you can imagine, at 30 it's still deadly. But, 30 is my limit with a .410.

SRH

I went from one of the paint/grease/oil/I don't remember what else club formulas (which, contrary to claims, did dry out) to just white lithium (which didn't work well in the cold, windy (read "dust") high plains of West Texas, to my latest: Castrol amber wheel bearing grease. Case of 12 1 lb tubs for 30.00 off ebay. Love it. Just near enough the color of the soil so unaffected by the dust storms.

Mike

With no white pigment? How can that work?
JR

Easy- the steel plate is readily visible where the shot impacts, just not the high contrast you get with white pigment. Was able to easily see the horrible patterns (I had already suspected) in my #4 non-tox reloads, and the amazing regulation of my third set of tubes fitted to the Manufrance 314. The smith humbly claimed the regulation was by accident (he fitted, finished, and opened the chokes on these in the white barrels), but I still give him credit and couldn't be happier.


Whatever you put on your plate, you and I know that while the information derived is incomplete, it is still invaluable.



Mike