Ridiculous price for paint

I stopped by a welder repair shop I need to pick up a trailer from. I want to clean up an older Miller Big 40 to sell. They had a spray can of Miller branded blue paint. We both almost went into shock at the price... $52!!! That is just insane for a spray bomb! Miller has really gone off the deep end. Diodes go from $125 to over $400, the free manuals you could download for ages now you have to pay $15 for and paint that must have gold in it. Good way to lose customers rather than gain them. The guy said Miller is difficult to deal with too but they're technical support dept. is still really good. Some bean counters that don't have a clue what they're doing. Edit. Just saw it online for $67! Who would pay that??

Is it time to switch to team red?

I read somewhere that Ford Tractor Blue is a very close match.

You're paying for the name. I have an Arctic Cat snowmobile. I paid 1600 for an Arctic Cat leather suit, matches the sled. Could have bought a suit with no lable for 800. The gloves boots helmet. Paid s fortune. At the time. Bombardier came out with a fighter pilot style helmet. The interior drop down sun shield. They wanted 1000 bucks and it didn't match my sled, it was skidoo colors. They had the exact same helmet. Black. No markings. 350. You could probably find that blue cheaper if you had the time. I know the paint I got mixed in rattle cans for my truck last year was 50 a can

Tinkerer said: I read somewhere that Ford Tractor Blue is a very close match. Click to expand... It's a perfect match if you buy a gallon, and paint the whole machine.....

Tinkerer said: I read somewhere that Ford Tractor Blue is a very close match. Click to expand... I've read that too. Miller has an old blue and a new blue just like Cat.

Easy to cure this issue, get small cans of paint and combine to make the color you want, then either spray or roll it on. You can usually do that and have lots of left over for the next project for likely under $50.00. And beats getting a can that will just plug up and not work. Also with experimenting and letting the top coat cure real well you can use a 2K clear that will be fuel proof and help keep the color lasting much longer. That makes it similar to using automotive base and clear, since most all automotive base is now a water color, so they have no hardener in that water base coat, just water.

I wouldn't roll it on. Just use a mop it's quicker.

Krylon has a tractor and implement paint in Ford blue for $20 a can. I'm not doing a restoration just want to clean up the hood. Thinking of putting the hood of the parts machine on it. That hood is straighter and doesn't have an extra hole for exhaust in it.

Welder Dave said: I stopped by a welder repair shop I need to pick up a trailer from. I want to clean up an older Miller Big 40 to sell. They had a spray can of Miller branded blue paint. We both almost went into shock at the price... $52!!! That is just insane for a spray bomb! Miller has really gone off the deep end. Diodes go from $125 to over $400, the free manuals you could download for ages now you have to pay $15 for and paint that must have gold in it. Good way to lose customers rather than gain them. The guy said Miller is difficult to deal with too but they're technical support dept. is still really good. Some bean counters that don't have a clue what they're doing. Edit. Just saw it online for $67! Who would pay that?? Click to expand... During my job as a parts technician supporting the shop and field mechanics in our earth works/mining company we would send in some paint samples to our local paint store to make us the paint and we would buy their mix by the box full of spray cans. They were able to save the mix information on their computer for the future we had CAT yellow, JD Green, JLG Orange, Komatsu Yellow, Hitachi Orange, and many more. They were costing around $15 a spray can which wasn't to bad and the shop had no complaints about the quality. This was using Cloverdale paint here in Edmonton, but I'm sure other paint companies can do the same thing. There was a minimum amount of paint you had to order to have them create the mix but it wasn't unreasonable (can't remember the exact amount) but I was ordering cases of all the paint due to the company having such a large fleet anyway.

Yes, I got Cloverdale at Union Tractor and it's a very good match for new Cat yellow. I'll have to look into Cloverdale. It's good paint.

Prices on everything has gone nuts. Prior to COVID I was paying $4.95 for a Square D QO single pole breaker. It's now $18.00.

my wife was operations manager/HR person for Smith Equipment cutting torches...a subsidiary of Miller. ITW, or Illinois Tool Works owns them all, they also own Hobart.

Smith is good but not popular here. The school I went to had all Smith equipment. I find the cutting torches a little awkward. I prefer Purox but Esab discontinued all the Purox and former Linde gas equipment. Really stupid considering there's a lot of Purox torches still being used. Miller cancelled the lifetime warranty on Smith torches.