I'm a custom mask/helmet painter and have used water based created auto air paints for decades. I used to bring my jobs to an auto body shop for clear coating. When I decided to take this full time, I started to bring the clear coating in-house as well. I have been doing fairly well at it but admit I'm still a novice and am a little intimidated by 2-part urethane clears.
Like I mentioned, I have been doing ok with the clear coating. But last night had a rash project go to heck...
Finished the backplate earlier in the day and the main mask in the evening just before clear coat. I mention this in case a paint cure time is thought to be a factor.
First coat of clear went on as usual and went down well. Waited the flash time as recommended and as I have been doing and sprayed a second coat. As I was finishing, I noticed the clear was crinkling or wrinkling. Happened to both pieces. And I had clear coated a mask a few hours earlier with. I issues. I didn't do anything to the spray gun between coats. Going to try and sand the wrinkling out but I'm thinking the job is trashed and I'll need to start over. Any idea what happened? How to avoid? How else to fix?
Createx auto air paint
Eastwood euro clear 2k
Concours hvlp gun
California air tools 2 hp/20 gal compressor.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/96ycq8guaq3t3 ... .jpeg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ef7tlfir33uc2 ... .jpeg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/kqltmzetnl9ix ... .jpeg?dl=0

I've done several whole car/truck projects with Auto Air over the years and I did run into this early on....I was told that when working over the Auto Air that the very first coat could not be a "full wet coat" or wrinkling could occur. When first using Auto Air I did some sample pieces and sure enough, with a couple brands of clear putting on that first coat wet would make them wrinkle. If I instead did a "dry sprayed" orientation coat first, let that flash, then went ahead with normal wet coats I was okay.... No one ever really gave me a full explanation on why this happens but doing it that way always worked for me...... Oh, and your images aren't showing for me......

Same here no images. Maybe try first coat a med wet coat and extend the flash coat longer. With small part we tend to pile the clear on and some clears are a little sensitive to recoat times , some clears you can do back to back coats with no problem but if you wait but not the full flash time you have the lifting. Also temps and humidity play in to flash times.

I changed the images to simple links; dropbox really does not play nice in terms of allowing images to be embedded

There's a window of time with clear where it is in a danger zone for wrinkling, as new solvents from the second coat will attack the drying clear from the first coat. The mfgr will usually publish the recoat windows in the tech sheet, but generally you either do the second coat within the immediate recoat window or you are going to need to wait several hours.

Looks like those are trashed, time to start over. Sux for sure.

I've had a few items do this. It was due to being outside of the re-coat window AND laying on too much material at once.

Just a suggestion... practice with a few pieces and see if you can recreate your wrinkling problem. Then modify your procedure and timing to eliminate it.

Thank you for the suggestions

Macmasks wrote:Thank you for the suggestions

any chance you could go to the shop ya used to get the CC sprayed on and ask what his process was? and what brand of clear was used?