Ed Huntress wrote:
"William Noble" wrote in message
...

notes on lacquer

1. it is brittle and it shrinks as it dries - thick coats will crack - I
have to redo some of a car that has never been out of the garage for this
reason


Right. Not sanding *every* coat is a mistake. But the sanding goes very
quick.

I understand what you in the US call lacquer is what we in the UK call
cellulose. I have sprayed a number of cars in cellulose in solid colours
and metallics having taken advice from a semi-professional
bodywork/spray friend and while sanding each coat might be done on
primer coats, using contrast coats to highlight high/low areas, would
not be done on top coats unless a show car finish was required. All the
hard work being in the primer filler preparation finally ending up at
P600 IIRC (a bit finer than US 600 AFAIK), the topcoat application being
the easy bit. Multiple top coats being applied rapidly one after the
other as required and the paint then allowed to dry. This does assume
that you can spray the paint straight from the gun and get a high gloss
finish without runs which I have been able to do. Many shy away from
applying the paint that thick and suffer orange peal effect which
subsequently needs to be flatted and polished.

Regarding shrinkage I wonder how many coats that would take. I have
applied 10 coats of cellulose topcoat before and never had issues with
that cracking. The only time I have seen paint coats crack is when
preparation has been poor or incompatible paint system have been used.


2. it is not available in districts where VOC is an issue, such as much of
California


Time for a road trip...g


3. a trick with lacquer - sand to about 400 and get it flat, then spray a
thin coat of slow thinner - that will give you the shine and let you
quickly see if your job is any good - not like a buffed shine but plenty
good enough to look for little ripples and whatnot


I forgot about that one. A really good painter can even fix some mistakes
with a shot of thinner.

--
Ed Huntress