Prep Work…
The long process of smoothing out all of the print lines continues…
Since I seem to not really be making any rapid progress getting rid of the print lines, I’m going to try a slightly different approach. I’m going to apply the actual final paint, and then try wet sanding it to see if it will fill better. For the end of this piece, I shot some of the gunmetal gray…
Once the gunmetal gray was dry, I masked it off…
And, shot the remainder of the part with semi-gloss black…
While the semi-gloss black was still shiny, I took note of how pronounced the print lines were…
Once the semi-gloss black was dry, I wet sanded the entire piece with 220 grit sandpaper…
This resulted in removing some of the print lines, but I believe I need to apply another coat of the plastic metal. So, I did…
There’s another technique I’ve read about where you mix the plastic metal with acetone to form a thinner consistency. That is brushed on the piece, and supposedly fills in better than applying it at full strength. The advantage of this process is to fill the lines much faster and require less sanding. Application on this new piece went pretty well. Some areas got a thicker coating because the mixture gets thick fairly quick because the acetone evaporates pretty fast. So, you have to keep adding in new acetone to keep it consistent. The final finish is much smoother than applying it straight out of the tube, but we’ll see how the sanding goes…