clear coat and a pearl question

[afmcorp]

hello everyone i have a couple of questions. i made a search on clear coats but didn't find an answer.

#1. i've shot my metallic silver base. i then shot a clear of 2 coats and got greedy and tried for a 3rd on my tank only and as luck would have it ran out b4 i was done so i ended up with with a partial coat on one side and it feels rough.

to fix my problem i was going to wet sand it smooth so here is my question. b4 going on to start my color coat (sems mandarin orange over met silver) should i buff the clear to a smooth clear finish or do i wet sand the whole tank and leave it then spray my color. (the clear has only 2 extremely small lint/specs in it that i will fix as well). so taking this to the finishing coats of clear do i wet sand between the final clear coats or just add the finishing clear coats to the shiney clear coat finish??

#2. adding pearl. my paint scheme is silver met base with candy mandarin orange top. Ghost flames of the silver base and then a couple of candy after pulling the tape. i'm using sticky paper to mask the flames and i'm not wanting extremely sharp edges i kinda want a hazy blending edge.

so i would like to add a shifting pearl of (orange to purple) but when and where do i add this pearl to my paint. color coat or clear coats??

any help is very much appreciated.
tks
craig

 

[hoss]

you should leave your clear sanded /800grit so that your next layers will have something to grab on to. just make for sure that your clear has cured completly before you apply your next basecoat and clearcoat b/c it will react on you and you'll need to do the job over again. not fun!

what clear did you use? some are better for this than others.

as for the lint. if you're doing flames and after sanding the lint is still showing, try to get it sanded smooth and apply your graphics over it to cover.

the only paint that i'm awair of that needs a buffed surface before it's applied is that chrome stuff.

you could free hand your flames fro a fuzzy edge. very hard though and a sharp edge looks alot better, unless it is a background effect. if you want your fuzzy edged flames to be the focus of the attention, i don't think you'll be happy w/ the result

good luck!

 

[Ultra Al]

To answer the question of adding pearl to base or clear, my experience is if you add it to the base it will kill about 90% of the pearl effect. I recently wanted this effect on a cream color I mixed, wanting the gold pearl to be very subtle. Most offten though I mix dry pearl to clear, being carfull not to add too much pearl (easy to do) I like about a teaspoon per quart for ghost flames, for other effects, less is more, what looks just right in the mixing cup can easily be too much on the substrate. AL