re spray paint finish help?

CUBEical

Hi there i have just re sprayed my mtb frame , decals and have just finished applying last coat of lacquer. i want it to shine and was wondering what is best to use now the guy at wilcos said to use t cut but i read the instructions and it says do not use on freshly painted surfaces , now do you know of an alternative or would that be fine ? what have you guys used in the past ? thanks

CUBEical

maybe something like this ?
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/NEW-300ML-AER ... 53f2e44e09

or was thinking of getting this which is t cut
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/375ML-TCUT-T- ... 231e6829c7

gt-arrowhead

Does it not shine anyway, since youve lacquered it and its brand new?

CUBEical

GT-Arrowhead wrote:

Does it not shine anyway, since youve lacquered it and its brand new?

yeah it does in a way but it more of a matt shine I want it to proper shine ....

Chunkers1980

When it gets covered in mud and dust you'll never know? Go for a spin and not worry?

gt-arrowhead

Perhaps it might be a good idea to go for the Tcut but apply it after a week or so, or however long it takes for your paint to be classified as "not freshly painted". But i cant see any reason why either of those two wont work. Though Tcut is a more well known brand.

CUBEical

GT-Arrowhead wrote:

Perhaps it might be a good idea to go for the Tcut but apply it after a week or so, or however long it takes for your paint to be classified as "not freshly painted". .

will leave it for a week and try it on a bit of it i reckon see what it looks like

felix.london

This is a mountain bike you're talking about, right?...one of those things that you through down hillsides, splash through rivers, smash over rocks, crash into bushes and send skidding sideways down gravel tracks?

CUBEical

felix.london wrote:

This is a mountain bike you're talking about, right?...one of those things that you through down hillsides, splash through rivers, smash over rocks, crash into bushes and send skidding sideways down gravel tracks?

yeah lol

stubs

Coat of car wax

The Rookie

The right stuff for the job is rubbing compound, wait a week ideally before use.

bazza333

There is nothing wrong with using T-Cut (or any other compound) but you have to let the paint harden for a week or two.
If you want to spend some cash then go for Farecla G10 or the cheap option is Brasso.

gt-arrowhead

I didnt know Brasso works on paint...I never actually tried it. I use that on chrome or polished aluminium. And it is actually amazing. Like properly amazing.

CUBEical

i tried the t cut and it did not have any noticeable effect really

PashleyRider

If you have an orange peel effect then you will need to use wet and dry first, then progress to cutting compounds, then polish and seal. Any chance of a decent (in focus) close up picture?

Kowalski675

CUBEical wrote:

i tried the t cut and it did not have any noticeable effect really

You've probably cut right through your not fully hardened lacuqer, lol...

gt-arrowhead

I use a product called "Auri". My spray paint finish on my bike is almost 3 weeks old, and i used Auri on it and it made it shine like crazy! I had a look on eBay though and i couldnt find it for the life of me. Not sure why t cut didnt work...

It has Teflon in it and once you use it the surface of the paint because very slippery, and it is considerably harder to get the paint dirty again. It gets rid of any hardened dirt and grit very very easily, and makes a fantastic shine as i said.

How long did you leave the polish on your frame before you wiped it off? With most polishes youre ment to rub it on then leave it for 4-5 minutes until it turns into a dry powdery sort of texture, then wipe it off with a dry cloth. Maybe if you just rubbed it on and rubbed it straight off it didnt have its full effect.

Kowalski, you may be right, but only if he left the polish on for too long. After i did my polishing with the Auri yesterday, i noticed a small patch that i didnt rub off several hours later, and i rubbed it off and it left a blue mark on the cloth (my paint is blue) and that didnt happen before.

Kowalski675

T Cut isn't a polish, it's a cutting compound - far more abrasive than polishes, and not meant for regular use, it works by removing the top layer of the paint (even over zealous regular polishing can remove lacquer top coats over time - if you're shining regularly you should be using waxes). If you've gone at new lacquer that's not fully hardened with T Cut, you could easily have cut right through it.

gt-arrowhead

Ohh? I thought it was a polish. Havent looked at the can of T Cut i have in the shed in ages.
How long does it take for a Lacquer to harden?

Kowalski675

No, it's not a polish, it's for cutting heavily soiled and/or scratched paint back, by removing the top layer. Use T Cut on a regular basis and you'll be removing your paint, especially with modern tree hugger friendly paint finishes. Even regular polishes are mildly abrasive - for regular use you want wax based products that shine by adding a layer of wax, not removing the surface.

gt-arrowhead

Thats good to know. Thanks!

CUBEical

i did not leave it on long enough lol did not have the guts to yeah i know it a cutting compound. just wanted it to flatern out the top layer and make it shine but it did not really have an effect i did not leave it on longer than a minute lol. i have just put a cm scratch in my brand new painted frame fiddling around with the seat adjusting it ? what you reckon is best to get rid of it ? just got one of these a second ago on a whim http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/251266086550? ... 1439.l2649. oh and i dropped the screw that holds on my back mud guard on a bar at the back of my bike too something tells me it not going to stay nice for long at all i have not even finished building it yet lol

gt-arrowhead

Ahh.....mate, i know exactly what you mean. Its genuinely heart breaking!!! Ive got a healthy amount of little scratches on mine already! I just have a little left over paint and i just spray the area if its really bad. Looks like nothing ever happened.

I got several marks from building it too. Dropping tools by accident, adjusting mech height etc.

Maybe you can try some of that "Mantis" thing that you see on TV being all magical. Apparently it actually works, so ive been told. The Mantis thing is essentially that product that you linked, so it should do the trick.

Kowalski might tell you what to do, as im pretty sure he knows alot more about this stuff than i do, considering he has many custom motorbikes with custom paints :P

Kowalski675

GT-Arrowhead wrote:

Kowalski might tell you what to do, as im pretty sure he knows alot more about this stuff than i do, considering he has many custom motorbikes with custom paints :P

Give it to the powdercoaty man, point at the the colour you want and ask when you can come back to pick it up, lol...

gt-arrowhead

Haha

Kowalski675

GT-Arrowhead wrote:

Ahh.....mate, i know exactly what you mean. Its genuinely heart breaking!!! Ive got a healthy amount of little scratches on mine already!

Imagine how you feel when you find a scratch on the wheel of your new seven grand bike. Actually, that one didn't bother me, cos they were coming off for powdercoating anyway, as part of the process of turning a seven grand bike into an over nine grand bike, lol. I still remember the day I got my first stone chip on the front of the fairing on my brand new Bandit, 15 years ago, I was gutted, lol.

This stuff is very good for removing minor scratches:



On a lacquerd paint finish, as a general rule of thumb, run a fingernail over the scratch - if you can't feel it then it'll polish out no problem, if you can feel it then it won't. An arsehole neighbour keyed my last car all down the left side (a metallic Irn Bru orange colour), but didn't press hard enough, and a couple of hours work had the scratch removed completely.

paulski1966

To get lacquer to really shine there are two things you need to do - firstly apply lots of it - lacquer tends to go on much thinner then normal paint so you will likely need a lot more coats - the more coats the better.

Now to get it to shine - when totally dry sand with wet and dry (start with 800-1000 and finish with 1500) helps to put a tiny bit of soap in the water too as this stops the paper clogging - you want the entire thing to look "misty" you will notice that there is an orange peel effect on the lacquer when you start sanding it - the idea is to totally flat the lacquer. Once this is done you need to use a polishing compound. Rattle can lacquer is pretty soft so I would recommend something like Farecla G10 (you can get this ebay pretty cheap) - apply a small amount and keep polishing - don't keep adding polish though, as the polish itself is designed to break down to smaller particles and therefore a finer polish (g10 takes a while to break down as its a machine polish but still works fine) . After this you can use a standard car polish if you wish and then finsih off with a layer of wax, but the sanding and polish is what makes the real difference. This was a rattle can job I did on a bike I made for my son.

gt-arrowhead

That is absolutely gorgeous. I wasn't aware that it would be a good idea to use wet and dry over lacquer. Very useful information. How do you know when to stop sanding with the wet and dry?

paulski1966

GT-Arrowhead wrote:

That is absolutely gorgeous. I wasn't aware that it would be a good idea to use wet and dry over lacquer. Very useful information. How do you know when to stop sanding with the wet and dry?

The first time you do it its bloody nerve wracking! Taking sand paper to fresh paint seems very strange at first, so its best to start with a very fine grade like 1500. You need to be careful not to sand through it - hence why the more lacquer you can get on the better, plus more of it will help give a "deeper" shine. Its hard to spot at first but the paint will have an orange peel effect to it - this is a picture of a vintage Lambretta I sprayed, you can see the effect I mean here



if you look around the edge of my reflection you can see that it's not sharp, that there are irregular shapes, this is because the paint is not perfectly flat, its dimpled like orange peel. When you first start sanding you will only hit the high spots of this peel - essentially what you will get is the high spots turn misty, the low spots will be shiny - like this



The second those low spots start to turn "misty" you know its flat, be warned though when sanding cylindrical objects such as frames you do not remove paint evenly, as you cannot apply even pressure to a round object so take it easy. As soon as its flat then break out the polish. The process of sanding the paint flat is known as "colour sanding".

To show the difference it makes here is the Lambretta I sprayed after being colour sanded and polished (I should point out this is not a professional job - this was the first vehicle I've sprayed and it was done in a gazebo in my parents garden with an Earlex HVLP gun - ghetto style )



And here you can see the difference between a colour sanded panel and straight out of the gun finish - the side panel has been sanded and polished - the running board and leg shield have not - the difference in shine is pretty obvious



One final thing - which is probably not a great deal of use to you now - be especially careful when you sand, as I'm assuming that you would not have sanded the primer flat when you sprayed it - for future reference sand the primer flat first before you apply the colour - primer gets orange peel as well so essentially you are not spraying the paint onto a flat surface - which means you need to apply more paint and laquer to ensure you do not sand through to the high spots of the primer.
There are two pieces of advice I was given that proved helpful - the first and most important is that a decent paint job is 90% prep 10% actually painting. The second is that there are two approaches you can take - either apply the paint really well and end up with a great finish - or apply lots and lots of it quite badly and then spend quite a bit of time making it look better by colour sanding and polishing. Both will give the same end result - one in theory is a lot less work, but requires an awful lot more skill.

Kowalski675

a decent paint job is 90% prep 10% actually painting

Very true.

gt-arrowhead

Wow, that is actually a massive difference, but a noob like me wouldnt think that it could get much better than just fresh lacquer....lol. I see what you mean about orange peel now, ive seen it before but i didnt know it was called an "orange peel" effect. If i saw that after i sanded paint (talking about 2nd picture) id be like "ahhh bollox ive messed it up"

I definitely would have tried the techniques youve described on my bike but as you said its too late now. Maybe on my next frame respray (retro raleigh), which i think might be a metallic black/dark greyish sort of a colour.

Thanks for the info, and nice job on that bike!

Heres how my frame turned out btw. No seriously thorough preparation as such, but it wasnt a bodge job by any means.