My Preciazz.... Page 3 - spraying
OK, so the body's prepared, and ready to be sprayed. I've decided to use a gloss acrylic clearcoat, as used on cars.
I found a great supplier www.auto-paint.co.uk who not only stocked the laquer,
but 1500 and 2000 grade wet and dry and tack cloths for removing dust between coats.
Following advice gleaned from various places, I asked about having aerosol cans filled rather
than buying the off the shelf stuff - the quality is better, as is the spray nozzle.
Interestingly, they knew all about supplying paint for guitars - the guy I spoke to was saying
that he'd been suprised to find that a lot of the Fender colours he'd been asked to supply were virtually all old Ford car colours.
I'm following the Reranch "Rule of Threes" when spraying.
Here it is in the "spray booth" - wiped down with tack cloth, and just received a couple of light passes with the spray.
Tilly watches from a distance - keep your hairs to yourself - or there'll be trouble!
And here's the body hung up out of the way of wind blown dust and other crud, drying.
OK, the initial blow over's dried overnight, I've checked for any nasties stuck in the finish - none!
Wiped with tack cloth, and held horizontally in the trusty Workmate.
Here it is after its first coat of the day:
I repeated this twice more over the day, and then left it to dry overnight.
Finish quite "orange peel-y", but I'm expecting that. Time for the wet or dry treatment,
using White Spirit as the wetting agent - 400 then 600 grade. And then I made my big mistake -
I used IPA (isopropyl alcohol) to wipe off the sanding residue. And suddenly I noticed that the surface was getting sticky -
the IPA was dissolving the lacquer. So, leave to dry, wet and dry again, then wipe off with plain clean rag with naptha and then use a tack cloth. Phew!
Few more coats added, and I've noticed what has been termed over at the Reranch forum "fish eyes" - dimples in the surface,
where perhaps the surface wasn't clean enough. Either that or it could be where the epoxy didn't get into the grain and the wood's sucking the clearcoat in.
You can see it in the picture below, particularly to the right of the control cavity.
Fortunately for me, successive coats are covering these up.
However, I've stopped spraying, and have dropped some clear coat with a small brush into the dimples. Time for another batch of wet and drying!
Here's how it's looking now (before wet and dry!)
I then spent a few more days faffing about trying to sort these dimples out, with mixed results.
In the end I used a touch of superglue to try coating the spots that sucked out the clearcoat.
Not a great success, but now it's wet and dryed it looks OK. I still wonder if it was all back to my mistake with the IPA. Ho hum - live and learn.
After a final blast of clear coat, I left the body for around three days to harden off, before wet and drying (wet) with 600 then 1000 grade.
Here it is in its matt state
I then used T-cut car polish to get the shine back, and it's looking pretty good - certainly if you happen to be passing by on a galloping horse.
I've realised that the surface is till quite soft though, so the body's now gone back to hang up for a week or so to harden off before I start attaching hardware to it.
Hanging around waiting for the clear coat to harden
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