3d (edited) • General discussion
Even the best laid plans go wrong
Last week I sprayed a bunch of stuff that came off the gun looking absolutely perfect. The kind of finish that makes you stand there for a minute just staring at it.
So I walked out for about 30 minutes.
Came back, opened the door, looked at my panels and my stomach dropped.
Fish eyes. Everywhere. All over the hood, all over everything I had just sprayed. Bad ones too, not little baby ones you can hide under a buff.
If you've ever had this happen you know the feeling. Total dumpster fire. Kind of like Kevin dropping the pot of chili at the office Christmas party.
That's exactly how I felt walking through that door.
What I think actually happened: I'd been running a space heater near the booth to keep things warm. My best guess is somebody sprayed WD40 near it at some point, or got some on it. As the heater warmed up over the session, those silicones cooked off and drifted onto my wet clear. Fish eye city.
I was running Wanda 2100 LV that day. Good clear, but it didn't stand a chance against silicone contamination floating in the air.
Most guys would panic here and start sanding everything back to base. Don't do that. There's a way better route and it's called flow coating.
The basic idea: let the contaminated clear fully cure, block sand it dead flat, then lay fresh clear over a perfectly flat foundation. The new clear self levels into a glass finish and you skip the cut and buff entirely.
Let everything cure for two to three days. The hood was the worst panel so I started there to get the hardest one out of the way first.
First pass was 600 grit. I needed the coarser paper because the clear was still a touch soft and 800 was giving me painted pigtails, those annoying little curly cues you get when sandpaper grabs soft clear. 600 cut through clean.
Wiped it down with a microfiber. Degreased.
Then I went back over the whole panel with 800 grit and got it sanded out properly. Looked like a matte mess at that point, which is exactly what you want. If you can still see gloss anywhere, you're not flat yet.
Back masked the hood.
Then I went nuclear on the degreasing. Three full sessions. Different rags each time. I was not letting one molecule of silicone survive on this panel.
Tack cloth, final wipe down.
I changed clears for round two. Pulled out one of my all time favorites, Wanda 8100, and laid it down. 8100 flows like a dream and it's a lot more forgiving than the 2100 LV.
Came out perfect. Like nothing ever happened. Ice cream afterwords made it all better. I think it turned out pretty great.
Have you ever walked back into your shop and seen something so bad you almost sat down on the floor? Drop a GIF in the comments that sums up what your own paint disaster felt like. This stuff happens daily - hope some of the tips here help you avoid a headache 😎
0
0 comments
Even the best laid plans go wrong
skool.com/makeitmatch
Auto painting made simple. Learn pro techniques, share projects, and level up your skills together.
Powered by