I need help spraying better clear

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PostPosted: Sun Sep 26, 2021 6:38 pm
Hi everyone,

I'm currently praying my first car based largely on the many posts I researched here. I'm using Tamco products (epoxy primer, 2K primer, OEM basecoat followed by Glamour Clear, recommended by them for beginners).

I sprayed my first panel a few weeks ago. It was a fairly small battery cover and it came out amazing.

That gave me the confidence to spray the trunk of my '60 MGA. This came out hella-good!

Image


I then moved on to the outer shell. Primer and base went on perfectly. Got into my second coat and decided to lay it on thick to get that nice glossy finish. Bam - got a bunch of runs, one a couple of feet long. So... I sprayed it on way too thick.

And just now, I looked under the car and see large drips of clear hanging off the bottom edges of the panels. :cry:

Image


So I'm clearly laying it on too thick. I guess I was under the impression that you had to in order to get it glossy. If I lay in thinner layers, will it build up to a nice glossy layer?

Any other suggestions? As for equipment, I'm using a 5 stage turbine sprayer with a SprayFine gun, 1.3mm nozzle.



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PostPosted: Sun Sep 26, 2021 6:53 pm
Other details I thought might be relevant:

* I spray the first coat very thin - a tack coat. It looks satin after it's sprayed. I tighten up the fluid knob and go kind of fast.
* Second coat is the thickest. I spray about 6" away and go slow to lay it on (maybe I shouldn't).
* Third coat is about 8-10" away and I try to go a little faster than the second coat but still much slower than the first tack coat.
* I adjust my gun to about an 8" fan and spray with ~50% overlap.
* When first adjusting my gun, I start with the fluid adjuster turned most of the way in. This usually gives me a circle spray pattern. I then loosen it up about a turn, which gives me a full fan. I tried it the other way - starting from wide open and tightening it up about a turn but this gave me really thick spray.
* Runs for me are bad on vertical surfaces but much worse where the surface of the panel is partially facing the ground (ie: the photo above).

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PostPosted: Mon Sep 27, 2021 10:58 am
Set your gun up so you have a good, full pattern with fine droplets.
Once set up, keep your distance from the panel and your speed of spraying consistent. Moving in an out from the panel, going faster and slower is a recipe for disaster.

I spray medium wet coats, start to finish. Be sure to wait the proper amount of time between coats. The tendency is to rush things and that's where the runs come in.
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 27, 2021 3:47 pm
Ok, I gave up being clever and trying to save the panel. I'm just going to reshoot the whole thing and chalk it up as practice.

I sanded the runs down with an oak block and 320 grit. It wasn't exactly fast but it was far faster than anything else I tried. Not unexpectedly, I cut through the clear in a few small places.

This was followed by a thorough sanding with 600 grit on a DA. This was a little tricky in spots because I use guide coat and it doesn't stick to unsanded clear. A good trick I found was to point an LED flashlight almost tangent to the surface of the panel. This shows any orange peel or other small bumps.

Had a good call with Sprayfine and am going to rebase/clear tomorrow.

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PostPosted: Mon Sep 27, 2021 4:25 pm
Turbine spray finishing is just NOT like regular spray finishing. I've been using this equipment for 41 years now.... with the evolution going from primitive 2 stage units to now even the 6 through 9 stage industrial units. A lot of advice and the "old" setups that paint suppliers told you about do not apply to these more powerful turbines. Personally, that Glamour Clear is not a clear that I would be wanting to learn on with a 5 stage. You should be using at least Tamco's 2100 or better yet their 2104. A 5 stage combined with that Sprayfine gun can lay down wet even coats easily.
And, let's stop for second here.... so even you say that trunk laid out pretty, good....right?...if it worked.....do it again.... 68 is right..... it is all about developing a consistent spray style.
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 27, 2021 5:52 pm
ot1138 wrote:
I sanded the runs down with an oak block and 320 grit. It wasn't exactly fast but it was far faster than anything else I tried. Not unexpectedly, I cut through the clear in a few small places.


when ya sand runs, spread some glazing putty over them before sanding. that way you will only be sanding on the high spots.



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PostPosted: Tue Sep 28, 2021 8:08 pm
Yep, I applied glaze. The trick to sanding them out was to cut an oak block and wrap it with 320 grit. I tried 600 but was at it for an hour and barely made a dent. This expectedly led to breaking through the base, which led to a complete respray.

So let's start with the good news... the clear laid down beautifully this time. I had a good chat with Sprayfine yesterday and the owner advised laying down 3 fog coats in perpendicular directions for each regular "medium wet" coat. That extra 60-90 seconds of flash time is enough to prevent runs.

So I tried it and guess what... it worked! I ended up with a few small drips on the bottom of a rocker panel but these will be cut out and hidden behind some trim. There was very little orange peel as well.

Image


Image


So now the bad news. I ran my hose across the clear on my final pass. How do I fix this? I just checked it and it looks like the bumps have mostly melted into the clear, so my guess is that I can just sand these down, right?

Image


On a minor note, if you look very carefully with a flashlight, you can see signs of the runs I sanded out from the first attempt. That's crazy to me because you couldn't feel them and I was careful to sand them down perfectly flat (so I thought). I'm guessing you would have to have a trained eye to see them because my family can't.

There's also two tiny little black specks in the clear that I'm hoping will buff out. Not that anybody is ever going to notice them in a million years but I know they are there... :knockout:



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PostPosted: Tue Sep 28, 2021 8:17 pm
DarrelK wrote:Turbine spray finishing is just NOT like regular spray finishing. I've been using this equipment for 41 years now.... with the evolution going from primitive 2 stage units to now even the 6 through 9 stage industrial units. A lot of advice and the "old" setups that paint suppliers told you about do not apply to these more powerful turbines. Personally, that Glamour Clear is not a clear that I would be wanting to learn on with a 5 stage. You should be using at least Tamco's 2100 or better yet their 2104. A 5 stage combined with that Sprayfine gun can lay down wet even coats easily.


Tamco advised the opposite... they strongly suggested I start with the medium solids glamour coat. Also Phil emphatically said that my 5 stage was overkill for this. He actually tried to down-sell me to a 3 stage when I bought it.

The gun definitely has no problem laying down a wet coat. The problem I ran into when doing so was severe runs. His advice to spray three fog coats instead worked perfectly.

And, let's stop for second here.... so even you say that trunk laid out pretty, good....right?...if it worked.....do it again.... 68 is right..... it is all about developing a consistent spray style.


What worked for my trunk floor definitely did not work for the complex curves of an MGA. I sprayed pretty light on the vertical surfaces of the trunk because nobody would ever see them. That's not really an option for the highly visible vertical surfaces of the vehicle...

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PostPosted: Tue Sep 28, 2021 10:07 pm
Okay, so the point I was trying to make on this is that the 5 stage turbine allows you to lay down much higher solids coatings which don't have a tendancy to run. When I did my last truck project I shot Tamco's highest solids clears with no extra reduction and no need for those fog coats whatsoever. That was using the Sprayfine gun along with my 6 stage turbine. Trust me, I had plenty of curves to deal with...... This is where we started with the 2104 and then into their Matt....
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 29, 2021 7:53 am
Oh, I see. That makes sense... For now, I have plenty of the 4300 (low solids) to work with.

I'm planning on measuring the paint thickness today. Curious to see how thick three coats of this is.
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