Advice on lacquer

[mouseymousey]

Hi everyone

I'm after some advice please... A little while ago I did a repair job on a bit of rust on my girlfriends 1997 Ford Ka. It's metallic silver and after respraying it the finish was very flat. I suspect that the something went wrong with the lacquer stage, maybe the conditions weren't right or it was a dodgy aerosol.

Anyway, I've now taken the area back to bare metal and i'm going to have another go at spraying and I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on type of lacquer to use. Previously I just used a can of clear lacquer from Halfords.

I know that any home spray job is not going to be perfect but anything is better than the rust that was there before.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Matt.

[Anatol]

You can actually get a decent result with the Halfords aerosols, provided you are very strict about following the flash times between coats, apply the right number of coats of the right heaviness, and resign yourself that it will almost certainly need flatting and polishing after curing.

Aerosols are not precise instruments, so you're likely to end up with a fair amount of texture in the final finish. This may be the 'flatness' you had. Once fully cured, cut the texture out of the repair with 2000 grit wet and dry (wet) on a small rubber block. Once the finish is completely glass-flat, use a gentle cutting compound to polish the gloss back in (slowly!).

This should give you an acceptable result.

HTH

Tol

[mouseymousey]

Brilliant, thanks for that.

I didn't do any sanding after the lacquer last time, maybe that's where I went wrong.

Thanks again.