Goalie Mask - Clear Coat Is Staying Soft

[soxfanjake]

I decided to dabble in airbrushing and repaint my Goalie mask. I stripped the entire mask (because of some deep dings and scratches) down to the bare kevlar. Gave it a good cleaning and de-greasing. I sprayed it with a high build primer from the auto parts store. This revealed some imperfections that I leveled with fiberglass filler, re-sanded, and re-primed (a couple times). After I was happy with the smoothness, I sprayed a 2 base coats of flat black rustoleum enamel (my initial intention was to keep it a flat look). Everything looked fine and I waited two days before airbrushing my design on the mask. The base coat seemed hard. I had a flat clear enamel from rustoleum and a gloss "crystal" clear from rustoleum. I decided at the last minute to go with the gloss. I sprayed one coat of the gloss, waited 2 hours and sprayed another. Then I went on vacation for a week. I came back and the clear was still soft. I could make a dent with a fingernail and if i pressed hard, it would leave a fingerprint.

Spray conditions: In my garage, 75° when I sprayed (ac was on), 90° when i left for the week (ac off and a heat wave in Nashville). I don't have RH #'s but I don't believe it was extremely high. There was a light scuffing between all coats with scotchbright (except after airbrushing of course), a good color sand on the base, and a final sand with 1500, 2000, and 4000.

I do have a nice compressor and spray guns that I use to shoot actual automotive projects. I just didn't want to get all set up for just a mask. I don't want to start over since the airbrushing took me a week to get "right" (for a first time airbrusher anyway).

Thanks in advance for any insight.

 

[TAZ]

I'm not for sure what it could be.
Possibly you just had so much base and airbrush paint stacked up, that when you clearecoated, the paint under it, did not have a chance to cure. So it's trying to cure through the clearcoat and it can't. Plus the clearcoat is non-catalyzed which doesn't help the matter.
My guess would be that it would eventually get hard, but, it will take some time. You'll probably find that the paint will chip fairly easy.
Possibly you can let it cure really good, wetsand it, spend the time to setup your clear spray gun, and spray some regular automotive clear over the existing.

 

[soxfanjake]

Thanks for the input TAZ. I decided to wet sand (to open up the finish a little) and set up an industrial dehumidifier up for about 24 hours. The finish hardened over night. I guess the humidity was a factor. It didn't seem high. The dehu brought it down to 17 percent, but i didn't get an initial reading. I',m going to shoot it with some automotive clear with a flattening agent tonight just to give it a little more durability.

 

[TAZ]

Great to hear!