Looking for some advice from someone knowledgable about paints. I am determined to do some touch-up painting. I'm talking about with a brush and following-up with sanding and polishing. Is this possible with today's paints? I have purchased some SherwinWilliams Ultra 7000 which I believe is a Urethane paint along with some Basecoat Stabilizer BCS600. The guys at the store called the stabilizer "hardener". A web site called it a "reducer". I have already tried spreading some of the paint alone and paint+stabilizer on a piece of scrap metal, followed by rubbing-out with an abrasive polish. I did not build up much paint thickness, but this turned out looked very promising. Both paint and paint+stab seemed to dry at about the same rate, and both seemed do dry thoroughly and were very hard (resistant to scratching). SO, do I even need the stabilizer/reducer/hardener? The stabilizer just seemed to thin the paint, making it take more coats. Second issue: What's the deal with clearcoats? I heard of a guy who was painting an older car and just used basecoet and polished it. He did not want clearcoat because the car was older and he wanted it to look original/authhentic. SO, do I need to worry about clearcoat? My car is not a show car, just need to fix up some minor damage and want it to look halfway presentable (and on the cheap).

Wow....where to start.

When you are talking about brush painting are you talking about panel painting or just chip touchup? Panel painting......no. You cannot paint a panel with a brush. Chip touch-up? Yes......with mixed results. You had some success with brushing, but it's hard to work with.

I don't know what the stabilizer is because I use PPG products. Get some literature from the Sherwin-Williams guys and get the explainations.

Yes.....you need a clearcoat. Paint that is designed for base/clear is just that......designed for clear. You can buy some colors in what's called 'single stage' paints that do not require clear, but not all colors can be purchased this way.

As for this guy that wanted an authentic single stage paint job, he most likely wanted a color that didn't require a clearcoat. Lacquer, when it was still around, was a base/clear paint unless the factory color was a single stage, just like urethane. So, if you need a clear on the color, that's most likely the way it came from the factory.

I hope that helps. Good luck, and if there is anything else I can help with, let us know.

Mark

CDMan,
The guy you talked about probably used one of the lacquer basecoats, because even when lacquer was widely available as a finish paint, it still dulled down and had to be buffed, and maybe that was the look the guy was trying to achieve, but I wouldn't make any bets as to its longevity. If you want to do it cheap and still have a good result (I think what the guys at the paint store sold you was a single-stage acrylic enamel w/hardener) use a single-stage enamel, such as DuPont's Centari, with a hardener. Stay away from metallics, because they are harder to obtain a consistent appearance overall using the single-stage paints. Unless you're talking about fixing scratches less than 1/8 inch wide, don't use a brush, unless you want something that looks like Aunt Polly's fence. Having said that, however, you CAN fix scratches IF: you clean all the wax and dirt out of the scratch, build up the touch-up paint above the surface of the old paint; use 400 grit or finer sandpaper on a sanding block to bring the touch-up paint back to the level of the original paint (by far the trickiest and most delicate part of the whole thing, especially if there's clearcoat), and then polish the whole area using a fine 1200-1500 grit paper and a polish such as 3M's Perfect-It. It's a lot of work; but likely to produce a better result than painting the whole panel with a brush. Hope that helps, and good luck.

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[This message has been edited by Vonov (edited 05-08-2004).]