Removing orange peel from lacquer paint over a clear part, a few Questions.

[mirageiv]

Hi guys

 

I have a few questions about removing orange peel from a lacquer paint over a clear part, maybe the car guys out there can lend a hand with their finishing methods.  

 

I'm building an F-16 that needs an exterior tint to the canopy (gold tint will be on the interior), I used Tamiya lacquer clears instead of the usual clear acrylics as I knew I would need to do some polishing. Thinned with levelling thinner and then spraying a final pure levelling thinner coat helped get something really smooth as a basis.

 

 

 

However, there is a real fine orange peel in places that can be seen when looking through the canopy in some lighting. The orange peel distorts the reflection a little so the canopy does not have absolute clarity.

 

 

Even worse when you hold it up to the light at the right angle,

 

 

 

Now my question is, should I just polish up this smoke clear paint to get a non distorted surface? Or, do I need to first apply another lacquer layer of transparent clear ( I have UV cut super gloss) before polishing that up. I'm not sure if applying another layer of paint on top of the smoke and polishing that would solve the orange peel already on the clear part if that makes sense. It would give a smoother outer surface but maybe still these irregularities would be visible? In the past I have sprayed tints with a slight orange peel like this one, then dipped the canopy in Johnson's klear and the distortion caused by the orange peel is still a little visible when looking through, despite the klear layer inside and out. 

 

I have mircromesh up to 12000 and the three Tamiya polishing compounds to work with. For the polishing, what grade should I start at? The painted layer of smoke clear already on the canopy is extremely thin so I'm cautious of using anything more than the polish.

 

Any advice on how to sort this would be greatly appreciated

 

Cheers,

 

David

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[bmwh548]

Are you 100% sure it's orange peel? Clear parts and lacquers aren't a good match, the paint can etch the part and make it look weird.

 

Unless you have a rather thick coat of "paint" on there you're probably going to rub through it pretty quick, I would probably stick to the polishing compounds, no micromesh.

[Steve Noble]

However you polish it you're probably going to thin the smoke layer. If you thin it more in one place and less in another it will appear as different shades. Many years ago I tinted a screen on a Tamiya Suzuki Hayabusa kit with Alclad smoke. It laid down perfectly with no orange peel texture and needed no polishing.

[janneman36]

To be honest I think these on the last pic are tiny fractures that sometimes occurs when handling this sort of laquer  Leveling thinner....maybe you should look at it with a magnifying glass...

If you need to remove this smoke clear you can use IPA to remove it!
If not just cleardip it with Microscale gloss..

 

cheers, Jan

[mirageiv]

18 hours ago, bmwh548 said:

Are you 100% sure it's orange peel? Clear parts and lacquers aren't a good match, the paint can etch the part and make it look weird.

 

Unless you have a rather thick coat of "paint" on there you're probably going to rub through it pretty quick, I would probably stick to the polishing compounds, no micromesh.

 

Not 100% but it looks like it in person. Before I sprayed the tint I polished up the canopy a heck of a lot with the Tamiya compounds and got it super clear with no distortions etc...I have heard what you mention with the lacquers and clear parts but then I've seen some builds online doing the same thing and working ok. I have in the past also sprayed a clear part with lacquer tints and got no orange peel, but this was just luck I think in humid/temp and thinning conditions, the exception and not the rule for sure. The levelling thinner doesn't seem in my experience to damage the clear part other than a slight surface fogging that is easily removed with a little polish, I use it the clean failed canopy tints off in fact. However if you use Tamiya lacquer thinners by comparison, they really wreak havoc on a clear part. 

 

18 hours ago, Steve Noble said:

However you polish it you're probably going to thin the smoke layer. If you thin it more in one place and less in another it will appear as different shades. Many years ago I tinted a screen on a Tamiya Suzuki Hayabusa kit with Alclad smoke. It laid down perfectly with no orange peel texture and needed no polishing.

 

Yep I need to watch out for that, I'm gonna try to polish it as evenly as possible and see. There will be another tint going on the inside of the canopy which may help even out any differences, or it could highlight them! I looked at the Alclad clears, they do a nice gold-yellow also, I think they are gloss enamel based, I might look into them if this fails. 

 

18 hours ago, janneman36 said:

To be honest I think these on the last pic are tiny fractures that sometimes occurs when handling this sort of laquer  Leveling thinner....maybe you should look at it with a magnifying glass...

If you need to remove this smoke clear you can use IPA to remove it!
If not just cleardip it with Microscale gloss..

 

cheers, Jan

 

I have looked real close up and there are no tiny fractures on the clear part from what I can tell, I still do think it is a mini orange peel but could be wrong of course.

 

So I guess what you are saying is don't add another clear layer on top to polish, sort out this smoke layer first. I'm going to have a crack at polishing it up with Tamiya fine compound, then finish and see what happens and not even bother with the initial micromesh. 

 

Thanks for the responses/help guys!

 

David

Edited November 15, 2020 by mirageiv

[mirageiv]

Ok I had a bash this morning. I found the Tamiya polish compounds 'rounded off' the orange peel opposed to truly removing it and flattening things out. So I went with 12000 micromesh first lightly, then polished it up with the fine/finish compounds. I did spray a slightly heavier tint than I wanted originally as I knew some material would be removed so the reduction in tint wasn't too bad. 

 

 

 

It isn't totally 100% removed however and I think if I keep polishing I'll take too much tint off, so for me I might call it as close enough. Even if I tried instead with acrylic clear tints I still will probs get some surface problems too, might try it on the spare canopy to see the difference though. Another option would be to apply a thicker, heavier initial lacquer tint in the knowledge that I'd polish it plenty to fully remove any orange peel and sacrifice tint density.

 

 

 

Anyhow, thanks for the advice guys!
 

David