I've never liked clear coating very much; not to make it sound like I've been doing it for years, I just started about 9 months ago, but my first attempt was not a good one............. Since the., although I've had more successes, I've never liked it. It's the last step in painting/decaling a body and you can ruin a lot of good paint and decal work with a poorly applied clear coat (profound grasp of the obvioius, right? :lol: ).
So, I started with the products, to find the one that was easiest to work with. The clears that I tested were: Tamiya, Testors and Auto Zone's Dupli-color. No particular reason for testing only those 3; they were the ones that I had on hand. Of those three, Tamiya was the hottest (ate decals quickly), Testors was less hot and Dupli-color was the least hot. So, I chose to continue with Dupli-color clear.
Next was how to best apply it. For this, I made up a series of styrene strips, painted them as I usually do, decaled them and set them up for 6 different regimens of clear:
1. 1 heavy coat
2. 1 light coat + 1 heavy coat
3. 1 mist coat + 1 light coat + 1 heavy coat
4. 2 mist coats + 1 light coats + 1 heavy coat
5. 2 mist coats + 2 light coats + 1 heavy coat
6. 3 mist coats + 2 light coats + 1 heavy coat
When I say a heavy coat, I mean a wet coat.
I'm spraying them up now and will post pics of the 6 variations later today.............
Allan