If your finishes fail, where is the problem?

If your finishes fail, where is the problem?

Wherever you lose patience between steps, which I think you mostly see between sealer and primer.

I don't use primer ... either flat black or flat white rattle can to cpes...

I build custom rods also and everytime I screw up a finish its due to me being impatient. Either between steps or waiting for the humidity to drop. But always due to rushing it. Ron

Wherever you lose patience between steps, which I think you mostly see between sealer and primer.

Tish is a good place to begin.... another common problem is sanding the plug to too fine of a finish....and along the line of impatience... not giving each step in the process suffecient time to cure...

How about none of the above....mine fails usually because I don't mix it good enough....or I mix it too much and run out of time before it starts to set up. i use Devcon 2-ton...only got about 5 minutes to make it happen before it sets up

most time if I
m useing cans it will be between the primer and the color...the color coms off with the epoxy

mine fail because I am just a plain idiot sometimes

The answer to your poll should be all of the above at one time or another. It depends on where the failure is ocurring.

If your wood is splitting, your sealer is not working.

If you paint is peeling off down to the wood, your primer/base coat is not compatible with your sealer, you didn;t sand your sealer before priming, your sealer was allowed to dry long enough or maybe you didn't wipe away the sanding dust before you primed.

If your paint is bubbling, cracking or fisheyeing, you have paint compatibility issues or a foreign substance contaminating the surface (oil from your hands, silicone, wax...) Same goes for your clear coat.

If your clear is flaking off down to the paint, you have poor intercoat adhesion there, light sanding or a "scratch coat" is needed. If your epoxy is cracking after your lure is fished, your wood is swelling and a better sealer in required. This is one crazy game we all play! :smash:

Pete I was one of those guys that never had problems with my finish. They went on clean and clear and looked like glass. Well that was until last summer when I started to get an orange peel look. No more clean finishes. I went through everything, Bought new epoxy, checked my materials, started wearing gloves and checking humidity. It was weird I would change something up and get good results but then if I did a run of plugs I would get this uneven orange peel look near the tail. The weird part was that the plugs were coated with enough clear in the lower portion of the epoxy finish to handle beating but weren't up to the standard look I wanted.
I did everything and then said f it. Closed the shed for a month and goofed around.
When I went back in to do some work I went through my process and realized I was using newer brushes. They were the same material but were wider and spread the finish more evenly. I went back to my older thinner brushes and saw that they glopped the finish on thicker than the newer big brushes. Plug finishes have all come out very well.
So now I have two thoughts humidity played a part or the fact that by using a bigger brush gave me driver error.

For a while I was having problems between primer and paint until I was messing with some test plugs that were just rattle canned and realized the adhesion was much better.

Since then I dropped the idea of thinning my createx (esp with water) and the adhesion seems much better and the primmer doesn't get as soggy. Although I'm still going to try straight white out of the rattle can and see how that reacts to the sealer. Even with heat and circulating air the krylon primer doesn't seem to dry.

I have been having chipping and paint separation between the primer and the color coat. I am on a new kick using acrylic primer and then acrylic colors. The separation has ceased. I was using a oil based primer and then acrylic. I find the combination non compatible as well as shellac based primers.

I also heat treat the createx or acrylic color coat. That also seems to help the finish adhere properly.

Are we having fun yet??