I have a couple questions.
Do you have to cut and buff a single stage urethane? Or will it give you an OEM shine like the old Acrylic enamels will?
Depends. Generally a single stage urethane is going outshine the OEM acrylic enamel. As far as "having" to cut and buff, that's up to you. Most of us don't have high dollar paint booths and have to make do with what we've got. We don't have the perfect weather conditions, we have to spray at night... etc, etc. If the paint lays in right, you have no orange peel, no runs, no drips, no errors, and are happy with the overall job, don't. On the other hand, if it needs a light sanding (1500 grit or finer) then go for it.
lowbudget said:
Why cant you spray metallic's with single stage?
BWAHAHAHAHAHA! I love this myth being spread all over the place. I ask you: before base/clear what do you think the collision guys were spraying? Single stage! With very heavy metallics!
Seriously, this is the biggest thing I've heard from guys who use base/clear as a crutch. Long before base/clears the old timers had to use single stages to get the jobs done. Lay a tooth coat. Easy enough to do: crank the pattern of the gun wide open, increase the pressure and lay a fine mist of paint over every square inch of the car. Let it sit for a little while (about half the flash time of a "regular" coat) and then start laying on coats like you normally would. Of course, you need a good gun that will break up the metallics so it doesn't stripe, but that should be a given. After the job is done and you have your proper film build, lay on your "metallics" coat, which is just like laying on your tooth coat.
Most guys are under the impression that you can't cut and buff single stage metallics. Guess what, you can. I've done it on lacquers (doing work on 70's and 80's GM's) to enamels, (everything not GM).
I was laying down single stage metallics before the first production clears came online and doing so in high volume shops. (I was also doing blends on 'em... seems to be a lost art these days.)
lowbudget said:
I was just thinking if a person had to cut and buff out an engine bay it would be a pain. I'm on the fence on what to use. I suppose I could just shoot it with Acrylic Enamel and be done with it.
Thanks Mike
Mike, there's little to no difference in laying down a single stage from one system to another.
Here's a little example:
This car was done in PPG's Concept single stage mixed one to one RTS with 2002 Concept clear. I laid down three coats of single stage, gave it 36 hours of flow time (kicked back just a bit on the hardener and just a hair more reducer) then wet sanded it with 1000 to give the next mils something to bite on. I then laid down three coats of the single stage/clear mix (a trick, since the clear is thinner and you can have too much flow... kick back on the thinner in the clear), gave it the same amount of flow time, then sanded it down with 1500 going to 2000 before giving it an overall buff with an aggressive compound before going to a polish and finally a cleaner/wax also with buffer.
The car is white. A very forgiving color to work with and one in which it's hard to get a gloss from like a darker color. Yet, when you look at this car in full sun, wear your sunglasses.
I have six quarts of Wild Plum Purple in single stage Concept sitting out in the shed waiting to go on my '74 Barracuda. (That's for inside and out.) I'll be using the same technique - single stage/clear mix. And it's a very heavy metallics.