Hi all. I'm a new user and this may be a common question, but I'm having the worst time with clear coat finishes!
I'm fixing up an old Les Paul copy for a friend. I stripped and filled the wood, primered it, did the paint, polished it a bit, and it looks great. Naturally I wanted to put a clear coat over it to protect the paint, so I used a spray lacquer (Painters Choice... Green spray can) that looks great when it dries. I let it sit for a day or two to harden and then put the body on a soft clean towel to lightly polish it and buff it up before assembling everything. I polished the front, and when I went to flip the body over I noticed that the towel left marks all over the back of the body IN THE FINISH! The first thing I did was switch towels, flip the body over, lightly sand out the marks with very very fine sand paper (1500 grit) and then tried to polish it up. And thats when I found that the new towel left marks on the other side of the body now as well!
So I sanded the body to get some of the lacquer off, cleaned it, and then tried respraying it with a few light coats. I let the whole thing dry for over a week... and had the SAME PROBLEM (towels leaving marks IN the finish)... So I sanded the lacquer off and decided to try enamel instead... I sprayed the body, waited 4 or 5 days for it to completely dry, and ended up with... THE SAME PROBLEM!
In a frustrated fit I sanded the enamel off and decided to go with polyurethane... anyone want to guess what happened? If you said "THE SAME PROBLEM" you'd be right... and it's not just leaving tiny, almost invisible marks in the finish, it's really texturing the finish! I know it's not the towels, they're all clean and there were no chemicals, fabric softeners, etc used... just tide and other than that they're clean. Anything I rest the body on leaves a mark in the finish.
I asked at a few paint stores and got a lot of blank stares, but one guy who seemed to know what the was talking about mentioned that I should let the polyurethane dry for 2 to 3 WEEKS before letting anything touch it... but the can says 48 hours TOPS... is this guy wacky or is he onto something? Whatever the solution, it has to be done with spray cans, since my budget currently doesn't allow compressors, spray guns, etc...
HELP! I'm going nuts trying to figure out how to get a clear, solid coat over the paint! Any advice?
Thanks in advance