Michael Joel wrote:
I have only tried to lacquer some metal once.

I first buffed the metal to polish it then wiped it down with
denatured alcohol to get any waxes/residue off. After the lacquer
(said it worked for metal) dried it was easy to get off. Any amount of
firm handling and it would start scratching right off.

Anyone used any lacquer to preserve a polished metal?


Oh - where to start... Ok - you read the instructions and you interpreted
them in a reasonable way, given a limited understanding. If you had read or
researched further, you would have easily seen that a good primer (and maybe
even an etching primer) were required to get a good bond. But... stop to
think - hundreds of thousands of cars have been painted with lacquer. If
they worked and your technique failed, where do you think the problem lies?

I will guarantee you that if you had read the instructions for your lacquer,
you would have found it is not a DTM (Direct To Metal application. I will
also guarantee you would have found that a highly polished surface is not
what you want to paint to. It does seem that you have not researched spray
painting at all, for you to have posted your experience. Not a problem -
it's things like this that help us learn, after all. Hell - if I had a
nickle for every damned mistake I ever made, I would be relaxing on a beach
in the Carribbean, sipping on drinks with umbrellas in them, and admiring my
wife in the sunshine. Alas...

Get your metal to a smooth, flat level (not polished!) and shoot a primer on
it. Flatten that primer with a 500 grit paper - unless you can shoot good
enough to shoot a nice level primer coat. THEN shoot your lacquer at it.
I'm a big advocate of shooting an etching primer on bare metal before
shooting a sandable primer at it - even if the primer is DTM. That may be
an "old habits die hard" statement.

You would have no such such problems as you have described, following this
technique.

--

-Mike-