NYPC Lev­el­ing
Test Blade

This instru­ment pro­vides a means of eval­u­at­ing the abil­ity of a freshly applied coat­ing to level before cur­ing while reduc­ing or elim­i­nat­ing marks caused by brush­ing or other means of appli­ca­tion. Eval­u­a­tions of lev­el­ing using this spe­cially designed appli­ca­tor cor­re­late with, but are more con­sis­tent than, eval­u­a­tions done by brushout. Since dif­fer­ent fac­tors influ­ence lev­el­ing and sag­ging, tests for these prop­er­ties should not be con­fused with each other. The lev­el­ing test is per­formed on a hor­i­zon­tal plane and is not a mea­sure of sag­ging.

The New York Paint Club (NYPC) Lev­el­ing Test Blade is a U shaped film appli­ca­tor with a shal­low gap cut into one edge. Into this shal­low gap is cut an evenly spaced series of five pairs of nar­row notches hav­ing total clear­ances of 10, 20, 40, 80 and 160 mils. The appli­ca­tor will pro­duce a 4” wide draw­down, and has an over­all width of 5”.

A draw­down is made on a panel or chart using nor­mal pro­ce­dures. This pro­duces five par­al­lel pairs of ridges with a very thin (<0.5 mil) coat­ing between them. The draw­down is kept flat on a hor­i­zon­tal plane until the coat­ing is dry and it is then eval­u­ated. Lev­el­ing is rated on the basis of which pairs of ridges of coat­ing merged together and to what extent.

Com­plies with New York Soci­ety for Paint Tech­nol­ogy