First time spraying rattle cans
Discussion
I have bought a plain spoiler that's plastic for my car I know I need to primer it and the wet sand with 600 grit but if I get a gloss black tin and then a clear laquer is there any tips on getting it neat as I know laquer is hard to do without getting orange skin effect if done wrong. Do I need to sand the clear between coats or only if I get overspry and if so what grit would you go for. It dont matter if it don't turn out great as I will do it again.
I wouldn't worry too much about stressing about orange peel, you're going to get it regardless from a rattle can.
BMW and Honda achieve loads of it on their cars straight out the factory!
If you're really worried about it the best thing you can do when doing your clear coat is lay down a thin coat for your first layer, a nice tacky coat for the subsequent layers to adhere to well, this coat won't shine much when you're applying it.
After 10-15 minutes lay down a nice thick wet shiny coat but be careful not to get any runs, again give it 15-20 minutes and lay down another.
Clear coat from a can is far thinner than what you get from a gun so you really want 2-3 good thick layers of it and you'll probably easily go through an entire large can of it.
The beauty of giving yourself so much clear coat to work with is that if you want to try and remove the orange peel you have less worry of burning through to the paint. After giving the clear a good 48+ hours to dry you'll want to start wet sanding it with some 1200, 1500 and 2000 grit sand paper, but keep in mind the more orange peel you remove the closer you get to sanding through your clear so there is a point on where you'll want to cut your losses and accept some orange peel.
After the sanding you'll be left with a cloudy matte finish, you just need to buff it with some decent cutting and polishing compound to bring back the clear coat shine.
This is what i've always done with my DIY projects as I also hate orange peel but having also accidently sanded right through back to the paint a few times in my quest to remove orange peel I've become less and less worried about it.
BMW and Honda achieve loads of it on their cars straight out the factory!
If you're really worried about it the best thing you can do when doing your clear coat is lay down a thin coat for your first layer, a nice tacky coat for the subsequent layers to adhere to well, this coat won't shine much when you're applying it.
After 10-15 minutes lay down a nice thick wet shiny coat but be careful not to get any runs, again give it 15-20 minutes and lay down another.
Clear coat from a can is far thinner than what you get from a gun so you really want 2-3 good thick layers of it and you'll probably easily go through an entire large can of it.
The beauty of giving yourself so much clear coat to work with is that if you want to try and remove the orange peel you have less worry of burning through to the paint. After giving the clear a good 48+ hours to dry you'll want to start wet sanding it with some 1200, 1500 and 2000 grit sand paper, but keep in mind the more orange peel you remove the closer you get to sanding through your clear so there is a point on where you'll want to cut your losses and accept some orange peel.
After the sanding you'll be left with a cloudy matte finish, you just need to buff it with some decent cutting and polishing compound to bring back the clear coat shine.
This is what i've always done with my DIY projects as I also hate orange peel but having also accidently sanded right through back to the paint a few times in my quest to remove orange peel I've become less and less worried about it.
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