edited July 3rd 2017
I was a little concerned with the quality of the clear coats I’d tried previously. They seemed okay, but I wanted something a little tougher, also they seemed a tiny bit ‘sticky’ if you held them for too long (this may have been because the spray needs a week or more to really dry properly, although it is dry enough to handle after a few hours).
I’m always trying to improve the quality of my products so I kept pushing on. I decided to jab the end of a 1/4″ jack right into the paint job of a couple of pedals. In a couple of cases they chipped. But after a little more experimentation I reckon I’ve got the clear coat a lot closer to what I’m after!
Firstly, here’s one from experimental batch 4 that had issues.
In part 3 I showed some other paint that had crackeddue to applying too much acrylic with the posca pens. This time however the flaking paint you can see is a result of using this can of matte Americana as a base coat.
The posca paint didn’t take to this well at all, as you can see. It looks like, in some cases, the posca acrylic paint cracks when it is painted on the Americana. Obviously different colours react differently (science!) but we need something that works across the board.
I also tried the Americana as an initial coat on one of the bases (left).
As you can see, it has highlighted each pen stroke. This isn’t the case with any of the other sprays. I have since repainted these two and they’re both looking good now. Bye bye Americana.
research, research, research…
So let me introduce you to my new best friends. All these products are by Duplicolor, and they’re designed for automotive use.
For my first experiment I went for the Duplicolor matte finish on a build I was doing for myself.
As you can see, it makes the bare metal appear grey and dulls the colours. It’s quite a cool effect, but doesn’t suit everything, and this probably would have worked better with gloss. Not to worry though. It’s lovely and thick, and not sticky in the slightest.
I’m generally not a fan of gloss, and I’d hoped that I could get away with the matte finish, but I was canny impressed with the gloss, check these bad mamma jammas out.
I tried the ceramic finish, and the acrylic enamel gloss clear coat on these ones. The ceramic seems a wee bit thicker, but the gloss acrylic enamel is spot on too. These pedals had either already been finished with Krylon acrylic clear coat or I applied the Duplicolor straight to the posca.
I tried applying the Duplicolor to two pedals that I’d used the troublesome Americana spray on, and here were the results. As you can see the posca paint didn’t like being sandwiched between the Americana and the Duplicolor.
The best results were from using the Duplicolor adhesion promoter, followed by the poscas followed by the ceramic clear coat. See below.