larksp said:
larksp, you can do a thick film build with a foam roller using high gloss alkyd paint. Roll on 3 to 4 unthinned coats, giving just enough time to dry between coats(4 or 5 hours).
Let it dry for a few days then wet sand flat with fine paper. If you are careful, you won't sand through. It can now be polished, waxed and buffed to a very descent finish.
sploo said:
HI Again Sploo,
Nitrocellulose lacquer and acrylic lacquer have two advantages:
1. Fast dry times
2. Very easy to polish
Otherwise, they offer worse overall performance than alkyd paint. Durability and chemical resistance is fairly low.
There is a certain cachet associated with lacquer that implies high quality, that just doesn't apply today.
With more modern materials available, yielding better results and providing longer lasting protection, it's hard to justify the use of lacquer.
As far as 2 part finishes go, not worth the potential brain damage, even though anything non-water based is not good to breath. Spraying urethane requires a fresh air source also, as a cartridge mask will not capture the fumes.
Good luck with the new samples, but remember it's been my contention from the start that excess moisture in the MDF is the biggest problem. Get rid of this moisture, and things are bound to work out better.
MJL21193 said:With more modern materials available, yielding better results and providing longer lasting protection, it's hard to justify the use of lacquer.
A friend of mine works in a body shop and often bangs on about clearcoat and even after spraying more products in a month than you, me and sploo put together would in a lifetime he still uses clearcoat where the highest levels of gloss are required. He's just finished spraying up his own mk1 VW Golf and frankly its the best finish I've seen on any car. The gloss is unreal(its a mirror basically) and makes my own speaker related attempts look absolutely pathetic.
The only clearcoat brand he uses for his own work is AGK Clearcoat HS.
MJL21193 said:
thanks i guess something i will have to play about with it.
i have / and getting better more i do it just i tending to get past the point and have to say maybe wait a few more days, after it has already taken a couple of days coating/ painting. before having to wait a few more days hehe.
(not looking for the ultimate finish here just good enough smooth and say if get bit dirt on there and scratch it off with ya finger nail it going going to mess it all up)
sand flat could this be done with a parm sander elec and wet sand sat 1200 ?
i do normaly do wet sand by hand but might push a bit hard im not the lightest of touch
i use mdf if that helps 2
ShinOBIWAN said:
Hi Shin,
Don't take me the wrong way, I use clear coat, just not over paint. I don't want my painted things (not just speakers) to have the added "depth" from clear. Makes it look too plastic IMO. Highly polished then waxed is my preference.
Also it's lacquer that I'm picking on, urethane clear coat is miles and away a better finish if properly done. It's harder, stronger, and more durable. It will polish as nicely as any lacquer.
I know you are trying to put things in perspective but not by any stretch could your finishing efforts be called pathetic.
Shin, I read your thread on high gloss finishing and I have a couple of questions: If I recall correctly, you say you don't wet sand your base coat - just go straight to clear. Is this right?
In your polshing process, do you use a buffer or is it all by hand?
I use a high speed buffer, and can't imagine doing it by hand.
larksp said:
Oh, It won't be the ultimate, but I'm sure you would be very pleased.
It's crucial to wait till the paint is absolutely dry before sanding, the longer you wait, the harder the paint becomes. A few days, or better, a week or two.
Sand by hand using 1000 grit paper first, then 2000 grit. Use water with some dish soap in it to lubricate. Take the time to wipe it off and inspect it often. The last thing you'll want is to sand through the paint.
A trip to an automotive detailing shop to find polish and wax. Lots of elbow grease if you don't have a buffing machine.
Goodluck.
tinkerbell said:
Yes, automotive products.
The random orbit sander will make things a little faster, but there's no comparison with a true high speed buffer. I have a 7" Makita variable speed from 600 to 3000 rpm.
It actually takes longer for me to wet sand as I do that by hand, than to polish.
Best results are from a tough high gloss alkyd or urethane based paint. Not really anything special, just the kind of paint the average Joe would paint his wheelbarrow with, available in any paint shop.
thanks MJL21193 i will do that normally never sanded the last coat or polish is as such make wipe with a cloth lol
i do have one of them orbit car polisher things in the garage not sure who it was brought for but i will give that ago i never done that part before just painted then top clear coat and left it as that
well with a bit sanding here and there
some did the high gloss finnish with the g3 compound on the forums is that a good idea to use or not really needed
i do have one of them orbit car polisher things in the garage not sure who it was brought for but i will give that ago i never done that part before just painted then top clear coat and left it as that
well with a bit sanding here and there
some did the high gloss finnish with the g3 compound on the forums is that a good idea to use or not really needed
MJL21193 said:
Ah, I see. I always assume lacquer and clear were the same things. BTW it does have a plastic feel to it, especially when done speaker cabs rather than cars.
I know you are trying to put things in perspective but not by any stretch could your finishing efforts be called pathetic.
I'll get a picture of the sprayed up body shell when I'm next round there. It seriously good and can't compare my work to his - nor would I want to!
Yes, I don't sand the basecoat(the stuff I use doesn't like to be sanded and can gum up).
I'm still try to refine my finishing but for now I use an electric palm sander with 1200 grit then move to 2000. After that its on to the hand block with 2000 again. All wet sanding only.
From there I buff the whole thing out by hand as described in that thread.
I do have a variable speed buffer but it scares the hell of me. I'm not very good with it TBH, sometimes I do a brilliant job on one panel. Then I get to the next and I go through clear into the base or primer - usual by accident on one of the corners. Using that machine tends to cost me time, so I like the hands on approach of manual buffing to ensure I've got full control over what happening. Unfortunately that means I'll probably never get any good with the rotary buffer because I avoid it!
MJL21193 said:
Like ShinOBIWAN, I also thought lacquer always referred to clear coats!
One problem I've found when talking to paint shop guys (and paint stores) is that they assume you know lots about paints already. They'll talk about single pack and two pack primer and clear coats, but asking them about base coats generally gets the response 'it's base coat'. Yea, but what base coat - cellulose, water based, acrylic, some other solvent etc. etc.?
I'll certainly look out for that alkyd paint, as I'm not particularly attached to spraying a particular product. I just want something that coats well, doesn't result in the lines in the finish, and doesn't kill me whilst spraying it!
MJL21193 said:Good luck with the new samples, but remember it's been my contention from the start that excess moisture in the MDF is the biggest problem. Get rid of this moisture, and things are bound to work out better.
Understood.
I would've thought that changes in the moisture level would be what causes movement, so any coating that prevents water transmission should keep the work stable.
That said, the test pieces I'm currently coating have been sitting in my house for more than a week, so should've dried out a bit.
ShinOBIWAN said:
Got a mate that runs a spray shop too. He's trying to convince me to just take finished (painted) items to him so he can drop some 2K clear coat over the top.
Interestingly, his position is that you don't need lots of coats to create a really deep shine. Not sure about that, but he's the guy with experience I guess.
MJL21193 said:
An interesting and perfectly valid point. It's true that some of the clear coated stuff does tend to look a little plastic.
I've finished a couple of picture frames using just cellulose base coat (last few coats with lots of thinner) and it does give a reasonably nice finish. I might try polishing then waxing one sometime. Always worth seeing if I like the finish.
MJL21193 said:
Well, Ant, it sounds like we need to find a UK source of urethane paints. No luck via Rustoleum though...
ShinOBIWAN said:
I've found flatting a cellulose base coat to work quite well. Are you using acrylic?
sploo said:
I'm not sure what it is myself.
Most of the paint products I use are made by these people:
http://outrageousfinishes.com/index.cfm
sploo said:
Tis very good stuff and came highly recommended as one of the best for custom car finishes.
The paint tech and mixup they use are state of the art but so are the prices. They probably do the best flip finishes out there.
I played around with some of their highend flip stuff and it was stunningly eye catching but OTT for a loudspeaker finish:
This particular one shifts through black, green, purple, red and blue depending on the angle your looking at it from. I didn't have a compressor setup when I did this one so had my paint supplier stick the flip finish and base coats into cans! Which made it a challenge to lay the flip coat evenly. The process for this sort of finish is primer->base->flip->clear.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
This was another less extreme type of flip paint but I'd used a red basecoat instead of the black I used above. Changing the base coat colour changes the effects and colours obtained quite dramatically.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
One product I'd love to try is their Prismatic Spectraflair finish. I recently saw this in the flesh at 'The Donny Show' on a Toyota Supra and was just blown away. It kinda like a very fine silver with an almost alive quality running throughout and a subtle rainbow effect on the peak highlights. Its impossible to explain but I can imagine it would look superfine as a replacement for the flat silver finish on my baffles. The only thing stopping me is the price, its £530 for 1ltr! Ouch.
As to where to get the stuff from the company is actually British, although you'd think it was American looking at the website, so its easy to get over here.
I use these folks for all my paint needs since they will supply pro products in small quantities without charging the earth:
http://www.paints4u.com
"As to where to get the stuff from the company is actually British, although you'd think it was American looking at the website, so its easy to get over here."
Hey, wait a minute, I resemble that comment... You saying some Americans are loud and obnoxious? If so I'd have to agree. 
By the way, I LOVE your woodwork and finishes.
Hey, wait a minute, I resemble that comment...
You saying some Americans are loud and obnoxious? If so I'd have to agree. By the way, I LOVE your woodwork and finishes.
ShinOBIWAN said:
HI Shin,
The base coat in a base coat/clear coat finish is what you will be seeing. It's like a mirror, the silver on the backide of the glass has to be perfectly smooth. Sanding the base should make a visable improvement.
High speed buffing takes practice, for sure, but can save you time and materials. Maybe te next time you spray, you could spray a practice piece (just a largish slice of MDF). Once you have the hang of it, you'll never go back.
I have a link here for list of Q&A about automotive paint finishing that I found a few years back that is very helpful. It's set up by a proffessional car painter, who knows his stuff. Worth reading through:
http://members.tripod.com/~bobstory/faq.html#
Link takes you down a few. Scroll up.
Hi John, feel free to call me Ant BTW (I often regret choosing such a silly cyberspace username!)
I can understand what your saying but for me that's only an issue with metallics.
With the paint system I use the clear creates the reflection and is formed on the surface of that and not the flat colour of the bases(sprayed alone and without clear they're actually a dull matt finish and remains slighly tacky to give the clear better adhesion. The base cannot be used without clear.) Once the clear is sprayed the base colour intensity is brought upto what its intended to be.
I only do about 3-4 light coats of the base and I tend to thin it down slightly more than usual, set the gun on higher PSI, widen the fan and spray at around 30cm from the work. This method thoroughly atomises the paint and ensures light but even coverage with very fine and uniform droplet sizes. Building multiple layers up in this fashion to ensure coverage yields a near flat surface that wouldn't benefit much from sanding. This technique works excellently for metallics and flip colours where even coverage and surface texture really do matter.
Only problem with the above is that it wastes a lot of paint material. I just bought a 4 stage HVLP turbine hoping it would be better than what I already use in this area. Unfortunately I don't like the HVLP. For starters it feels strange when spraying with a gentle gust of air from the gun and doesn't seem to atomise the paint as well. It certainly looks useful for spraying primers where you don't need that atomisation but otherwise I prefer compressed air.
sploo said:
Hi Sploo,
Great results from alkyd, better from urethane. The place Ant buys his paint actually sells gloss urethane paint:
http://www.paints4u.com/ProductDetails.aspx?productID=206
Available in 1K or 2K. Worth checking out. Seems to be a bit expensive though for .5 litres? I typically pay $45.00/gallon for the Varathane paint, and for automotive urethane it would be $110.00/gallon, $40.00 for hardener and $30.00 for reducer.
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