Some time back I wrote articles on paint faults and how to deal with them (Part 10: Paint Faults (1 of 2) and Part 11: Paint Faults (2 of 2) ), but they were a bit light on actual photos of issues I'd had.
Well, it's taken a while, but I now have some evidence of what happens when overspray and foreign bodies afflict your paintwork.
Overspray
This is a term that (unhelpfully) also gets used to describe masking failures, and when paint is sprayed at too high a pressure, resulting in it partially drying before it hits the target ... in this context however I mean partially dried paint from the area you're spraying, drifting on to a different area, then when you spray that area - it comes up looking and feeling like sandpaper.
This was my own fault - trying to spray the dregs from the suction jar on the inside of the cab, intermittently sucking up just air - and not noticing the resulting paint dust settling on the outside - because it was the same colour as the paint.
I sprayed over that on the next coat - and the result looks pretty nasty.
Image 01 is a crop of an extreme closeup taken at an angle/with lighting to make it look as bad as possible, so it's not quite as nasty in normal viewing, but still something that needed correction - in this case a light rub down with 1200 grit paper, wet - you can tell when enough has come off by the change in sound - then carrying on painting.
Several coats later, the finish it the texture & colour I'd intended.
Foreign Bodies
Apparently, 2015 is a good year for Pollen Beetles 'round here, according to local news reports they're causing a nuisance due to their large numbers and attraction to bright colours. This (image 03) is what happened when a particularly big one (5-6mm long) was "attracted" at high speed to the wet clearcoat on a Scorcher shell.
Normally I'd advocate leaving bug hits like this for long enough for the critter concerned to not only die, but completely dry out too - but I noticed after two days this one was still wiggling. I can't tell you if he/she had a long and fulfilling life afterwards, but it seemed to crawl off ok after separation...
Initial light wet sanding (2000 grit wet & dry) and polishing (Novus #3 and #2) out of the marks/ridges left by the bug unfortunately showed it had gone through to the white underneath (image 04), so a bit of touching in was needed.
Due to using paint out of a different jar and brushing rather than airbrushing the paint came out a bit darker (image 05) - but (after sufficient curing time) further sanding and polishing off the excess has left a repair you have to look very hard to spot (image 06).
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Written by TB member Jonny Retro
