Spraying 1k acrylic for first time

[rickbrown74]

Hi all, just looking some pointers as to how best to spray basecoat acrylic followed by 2k lacquer. To date I've only sprayed with 2k solid colour and laquer on 3 occasions and had good results. This is my first metallic basecoat.

The local shop I bought it from were a bit sketchy about what thinners (and how much) to use. I've done a test with the wing mirrors using 2k thinners at approx 20% and followed straightaway with a couple of coats of 2k lacquer and they turned out fine but I've read of ratios of 1:1 being used!? Can I/should I thin it more if 20% seems to be working out ok?

Is it just the same as 2k in relation to spraying coats, ie. waiting 15 odd minutes between coats and following on with the 2k lacquer without a break.

All help greatly appreciated.

[paintman]

The shop should have supplied you with the appropriate Technical Data Sheets for the paint they have sold you which gives you all the info you need regarding thinner ratio, flash off times, drying time prior to clearcoating etc. If they weren't able to do that & don't know much about what they're selling I wouldn't be giving them any further business!
If you know the name of the paint a search on the net might produce the TDS.

I use Lesonal solvent based base coat & that's thinned at 2 parts paint to 1 part good quality thinner.
This is a link to the TDS for it:
http://www.hex.co.uk/tds/lesonal/Technical%20Data%...

Edited by paintman on Wednesday 23 July 19:09

[rickbrown74]

Thanks for the info. Agreed that it's not good that they could not give me a definite idea of how to use the paint and unfortunately there is nothing on the tin to say what brand it is. Just a breakdown of what the mix consists of.

That link you gave is very useful. I'll follow that as an approximate guide and see how it goes. Will try using a bit more thinners next time perhaps.

Many thanks