I am shooting clear today. For a bipe I normally shoot both wings and both stabs at the same time. I am only doing one wing and both stabs today. What happens is after 24 hours or so, the clear starts to cure so hard that it's really difficult to level all the surfaces, so one wing usually gets moved into the next day and by then the clear is just very difficult to work with.

I like to let clear cure for about 24 hours before I start to level it so I will start on them tomorrow afternoon.

A bit about clear. In one word I "HATE" to shoot clear. Walk into a custom car painting shop and ask for the best painter they have and chances are it's the guy that shoots clear. With base coats you have lots of latitude, with clear, you have almost none. The problems we have with clear is we are always walking on the edge of the cliff. Too little and we get lots of orange peel, Too heavy and it runs. It's a very fine line.

That being said, I do have suggestions and a lot of them are based on me making lots of mistakes. First off, DO NOT try to shoot clear with a small touch up gun. Touch up guns are for base coat, not clears. In my opinion use the right tool, and the right tool is a full sized gun with a 1.3 or 1.4 tip and needle. Clear by its nature is think stuff and if we try to shoot it in a small gun it's just not going to atomize properly and you will wind up getting lots of orange peel or worse.

So now we step up to this big huge gun to shoot a little bitty stab. In our mind we are thinking, "this is way to big of a gun so I better stay way back away from the surface or I am going to blow on way to much clear......wrong. At the beginning I talked about the "sweet" spot on a gun for optimal atomization. What happens when we move past that sweet spot the little bitty particles of clear (paint) are starting to come back together in larger drops and we wind up with the same orange peal problem. As I said at the outset of this thread the best way to find that sweet spot is to open the gun with full air on (no paint) and put your hand in front of the gun. Now move your hand towards the tip of the gun and the point you hear a distinct change in sound...you found that sweet spot distance. My guess is, it's a lot closer than you thought it would be. Most full sized guns are going to be about 6 inches from the surface or less.

OK, I shoot on a lot of clear, but I also take a lot off. When you are doing the type of graphics I am, you will have lots of ridges that the only way you can level them is to start with a lot of clear. I shoot a medium tack coat and two other fairly heavy coats. A tack coat is just a medium coat that the next coats have something to grab on to. If you just start out with a heavy coat, the chances are good you will have lots of runs. The other thing is to give them plenty of time between coats or you can get what is called "solvent pop". Solvent pop is when you shoot to much clear too soon and it traps the solvents so they can't escape. What happens is as the trapped solvent escapes it can create little pin holes in the clear. I have had it and you see it when the rubbing compound dries.

Now most guys are going to be fine with just shooting one or two coats of clear and calling it good, but I am after the best possible finish I can get. To get that "show car" finish, we are going to have to do what is called "cut and buff". Anytime we shoot clear (or paint for that matter), we always wind up with what is called "orange peel" which is named after the look of an oranges skin. The process starts by leveling the surface with sandpaper and working our way up in paper grit and finally using buffing compounds.

I prefer to start with 1,000 grit, but with all the leveling I have to do, I usually start with 600 grit paper. Now, I may go against the tide, but I do not use a sanding block when I sand clear. Now everything you read will tell you to use a sanding block, but keep in mind, what you are most likely reading is about finishing cars with flat surfaces. Well therein is the issue. I haven't seem many pattern planes (especially wings and stabs) that have lots of flat surfaces. I always sand wet with just clean water with a few drops of dish washing soap added for lubrication.

Our first sanding is by far the most time consuming as you are sanding, cleaning, drying and checking. What you are doing is removing all the little high spots and orange peel. After that step is done, we are now only removing the scratches from the prior sanding.

More later