"Help fixing clear coat disaster" Topic

I built some 1/144 plastic planes. These were F-Toys and Bandai factory pre-painted models, so I'm not certain of the type of paint, but since acetone seemed to remove the paint (experiment during building), I'm assuming it was acrylic.

After I applied decals I clearcoated the planes in Duplicolor gloss clear to armor and seal them. That worked great, but the gloss coat was way too shiny. These are late war Pacific War dark blue F4U Corsairs, so I do want them to look glossy, but the full gloss coat made them look soaking wet.

To tone down the gloss, I tried two brands of satin clear, Krylon Satin Clear and the new Rustoleum 2x UltraCover satin clear. The good news is that the surfaces that dried properly look great; the bad news is that many surfaces dried crinkly. (That swearing you heard in the background was me. For people within 1000 miles, sorry if I melted your windows.)

So, now two questions:

1. How do I fix this?
   
2. How do I prevent this from happening again?

Unless advised otherwise, the first thing I'm going to do to fix this is find out what kind of thinner works on the top coat (lacquer thinner or acetone) and rub it with that, *trying* not to rub all the way down to the paint. Any better ideas?

I sprayed outdoors on a dry day (in San Jose, CA, so I do mean dry), as light a coat as I could manage with a spray can, ambient temp about 68° F (20° C). After spraying, the planes went into a covered space to dry (the bed of my truck under a bed cover). I have no idea how the crinkling happened. Did I spray too thick a coat? Was there a reaction with the gloss coat? Was the air too dry? How do I tell?

If I can find the reason, next time I'll probably just use the satin clear and skip the gloss coat. Fewer steps, works well enough, looks better, etc.

- Ix

I Think the coats were too thick.As you say, it would be better to just use the satin varnish.

Doeshe Rustoleum paint still use a fish oil base? Could be incompatability in solvents used to carry the satin coating?

Only ever use Testor's Dullcote as a Matte finish. I've never seen it produce weird random results as I have seen with Krylon, Rustoleum and other "flat" clear coats.

I'm reasonably sure your painting has been ruined and, well, I'm sorry for you. I've been there and it is no fun.

Sorry, virtually impossible to remove crinkles. Clouding yes.
My advice strip and repaint, otherwise you will never be happy with the result.

Ouch. That's harsh. I sincerely hope I can prove you wrong. :-)

- Ix

I hope you can prove me wrong too. I could not fix the ones I did many years ago.

So far, you're right. No joy with mineral spirits or acetone. :-(

For now, I'm giving up and using them as is. It's probably better use of my time to buy new ones and start over than to clean up a crinkle-coat disaster.

- Ix

Today I also tried paint thinner, lacquer thinner, and a top coat of Future. None of those worked.

On the bright side, Future can de-fog canopies. I had one Corsair canopy fogged up with clearcoat overspray [long sad story about how hard it is to mask a 1/144 canopy deleted], and the Future cleared up large parts of it. I think if I had done a better job removing as much of the oversprayed clearcoat as I could, it might have worked even better.

- Ix