Hey guys, I am a bit of an amateur paint "enthusiast" and enjoy painting but really have trouble getting consistent results. My car (painted with white pearl) had a rust spot I decided to touch up the other day and, aside from the tiny rock chip sized piece of rust revealing a massive rust cavern, had an issue with the basecoat. Primer went on well, wet sanded it with 400, nothing too exciting. Spray out test said 3 coats of white to match. Shot the base about 24 hours ago and it appears that it flashed way too fast, got some nibs, a run (got excited with edge blender) and some read through on the sanding marks. The gun is an LPH80 with 18 psi at the gun through a 1.0 tip with fast reducer. I'm thinking next to sand out the nibs and a bit into the base with 600, clean up the overspray up with 600 so everything is smooth, drop pressure to 12 psi and use a slower reducer.

I also have an Iwata LPH400-LVB and W400-LV4 that I could use for this but with the size of the repair these guns seem like hunting mice with an elephant gun.

Also how do you guys clean up edge blender between coats? Are you usually able to spray right over it? If you have other tips or something different to try that might help, I'm all ears

i'm not sure why your using the blender on the base coat ?
Jay D.

Isn't a white pearl a tri-stage paint?

Yeah, it's a tri-stage so it's a pain to match. I used the Transtar edge blender which says use after final coat (primer, sealer, or clearcoat). It probably meant after the final clear, oops. I sanded the base back down, gave it another coat of base and finished out the repair last night. It looked pretty good until the edge blender which caused the clear to sag, that stuff's hard to use.

So even if your can of edge blender says to use it on base, primer or clear, only use it on the final coat of what you're trying to blend into? Base blend to base, clear blend to clear?

why and where are you trying to blend ?

sailnaked6842 wrote:Yeah, it's a tri-stage so it's a pain to match. I used the Transtar edge blender which says use after final coat (primer, sealer, or clearcoat). It probably meant after the final clear, oops. I sanded the base back down, gave it another coat of base and finished out the repair last night. It looked pretty good until the edge blender which caused the clear to sag, that stuff's hard to use.

So even if your can of edge blender says to use it on base, primer or clear, only use it on the final coat of what you're trying to blend into? Base blend to base, clear blend to clear?

This is why we suggest you clear the entire panel rather than trying to blend the clear. Also, I have seen where after a year or two the blended edge of the clear begins to peel.

http://nastyz28.com/threads/blending-cl ... ay.258231/

I went off this post where the guy used 800 grit hold the new clear but if anyone has a better way of doing this I'm all ears. This repair has been a bit of an ego kick. I was trying to blend the clear at 2 edges on the driver and passenger side, in the middle the clear was ran to the edges.

Turns out the air pressure was way too high as well. It was near 20 but the LPH80 runs around 8-13. I reduced the air pressure to 12 to spray the base, reduced to 10 to spray the pearl and 16 to spray the clear. Even though the pressure was down it was still hard to get a good looking coat and seemed like it was flashing too fast when it was thin, but not fast enough once I got the second layer of pearl on. 2nd layer of clear sagged anyways, so it's going to need some sanding.

What do you guys look for to tell if you're putting the right amount of material on or that your air is set right? How do you tell if the coat is too dry? Can you make the coat a bit wetter by just applying more material or do you slow the reducer? The paint was BASF Diamonte and painting usually goes a lot better for me

that is a roof ? does it tie into the quarters ?

Yep, it's the roof, it had a rock chip that got out of control...but I found 2 others that might need some attention later...for painting in a dirty garage it didn't come out too bad. About 2 more weeks and I can sand the clear down and buff it

why two weeks ? id recommend no more than 2 days