Enclosure finishing? - sanding paint lines?

[tracer03]

I had some decent success using spray-on enamel, but I've only ever done the 'whole' enclosure. A few days ago I started a Mojo Hand Colossus build for a friend, and I decided to make it look like the old 'Red Army Overdrive' from EHX:



White background, red star, and I would add a black border to the star (and lettering). I sanded, cleaned and primed the enclosure with Rustoleum Painter's Touch Enamel Paint/primer (pretty good stuff, IMO), baked it and let it sit for a couple of days. I then took blue painter's tape and masked off the enclosure to leave a star pattern with red enamel, and sprayed a coat of red. let THAT dry for a couple of days under a low heat lamp, then removed the painter's tape. When I did, I noticed that the paint seemed to be...uneven... between the red and white. A hard, obvious ridge.

I was going to sand it down to smooth it, because I will be lining the border with black enamel (self-leveling Model Master), and then clear-coating it, so it *should* smooth out, but my concerns are a) that I would start to remove some of the surrounding paint (potentially), and b) that the 'line' would become a ridge after I coated with clear.

tl:dr version: anyone have success creating sharp lines with enamel spray paint, and have any tips/advice they'd like to share?

[El_Diablo572]

You could try wet sanding it to remove the "hard" edge from the ridge, but the after a few coats of clear everything should smooth out reasonably nicely, perhaps with a light wet sand between coats. I don't have a lot of experience with enamel particularly, but i find if the colour and clear are all the same formula, the clear coat seems to soften the up the paint underneath ever so slightly, which helps to bury any mask lines. The black outlining will also help to fill the void where the two colours meet

Hope this helps mate

[El_Diablo572]

To be perfectly honest, i usually just bury everything in many coats of laquer and polish any lumps out with t-cut or something, but i use automotive paint, i dont know if the results would be any different with enamel...

[tracer03]

El_Diablo572 wrote

You could try wet sanding it to remove the "hard" edge from the ridge, but the after a few coats of clear everything should smooth out reasonably nicely, perhaps with a light wet sand between coats. I don't have a lot of experience with enamel particularly, but i find if the colour and clear are all the same formula, the clear coat seems to soften the up the paint underneath ever so slightly, which helps to bury any mask lines. The black outlining will also help to fill the void where the two colours meet

Hope this helps mate

Thanks, I'll give it a try. Just wanted to see if there were any tips/tricks available before I make any 'permanent' mistakes..:)

[El_Diablo572]

Masking is a bitch, especially on smaller projects like this. Bigger stuff doesnt get the same scrutiny that smaller items (like pedal boxes, or model cars) are subject to. You can get away with everything but murder when painting bigger stuff cause nobody looks at it quite so hard.

As i say, these are just my own preferences, i've never had any real trouble with anything i've done, except when i flamed licked a guitar, many different layers of paint all within the same mask, and due to the unique nature of a multi coloured flame piece any sanding would have ruined it. I think it took about 9 coats of clear to smooth everything entirely!!

I tend to give things two or three light to medium coats of clear to bury everything and build a fee layers up, and then once that's dried for an hour or so i give it one slightly heavier, or what i call a "wet" coat, as that best describes what i'm doing i guess. The wet coat is a heavy coat that self levels and provides the high gloss finish (depending on what clear you use, the stuff i use is pretty thick and self levels quite well provided it doesnt dry too quickly)

Again, none of this is rulebook stuff, its just what i find works for me

[El_Diablo572]

I might also add though, my "wet-coat" method is quite risky, becsuse it's very easy to over do it with the clear and get drips... Maybe practice on something else first to get a feel for it, you'll see what i mean about the whole "wet" thing once you've tried it