**The Art of Painting with Clear Coat**

When it comes to painting with clear coat, there are several things to consider in order to achieve a smooth and glossy finish. One of the most important things to keep in mind is not to apply too much paint at once. The author of this article experienced this firsthand, and was able to use the excess paint for touch-ups later on.

To get started, mix your clear coat according to the manufacturer's instructions. Once you have mixed the correct amount, it's time to apply a thin layer to your surface. It's best to start with a small test area to ensure that the paint is going on smoothly and evenly. As the author notes, "you can see right there it's really shiny but not". This indicates that too much paint was applied at once.

Once you've applied the first coat of clear coat, let it dry for 30 minutes before touching up any imperfections. The author uses a wet sanding technique to smooth out the surface, starting with a coarse grit sandpaper and gradually working down to finer grits such as 1200. This helps to remove any orange peel or other imperfections that may have formed during the drying process.

After sanding, the author applies another coat of clear coat, letting it dry for another 30 minutes before applying a third coat. This ensures that the surface is fully protected and ready for additional coats of paint. The author notes that they are using three coats in total to achieve the desired level of protection and shine.

As the article progresses, we learn about the importance of wet sanding and how to remove imperfections without damaging the clear coat. When removing any excess paint or debris, it's best to use a simple green solution mixed with water. The author demonstrates this by rubbing a small area of paint with the solution and watching as it disappears.

The article also touches on the importance of cleaning up any mistakes quickly and easily. The author uses nail polish remover in one instance to remove excess clear coat, but notes that it must be used with caution to avoid damaging the paint. Similarly, acetone can also be used to clean up mistakes, but should be applied carefully to avoid damage.

Finally, the article concludes by showing how to apply the final touches to your project, including applying the trim and cleaning up any remaining imperfections. The author notes that it's essential to use a sharp angle when removing the plastic or metal trim to ensure a smooth and clean finish.

**Tips and Tricks for Painting with Clear Coat**

* Mix clear coat according to manufacturer's instructions.

* Apply thin layers of clear coat, allowing each layer to dry before touching up imperfections.

* Use wet sanding techniques to smooth out surface, starting with coarse grit sandpaper and working down to finer grits.

* Remove excess paint or debris using simple green solution mixed with water.

* Clean up mistakes quickly and easily using nail polish remover or acetone (with caution).

* Apply trim at a sharp angle to ensure a smooth and clean finish.

**Conclusion**

Painting with clear coat can seem intimidating, but with the right techniques and tips, you can achieve a beautiful and glossy finish. By following these steps and using the right materials, you'll be able to create a professional-looking surface that will last for years to come. Whether you're working on a car, furniture, or any other project, painting with clear coat is an essential skill to have in your toolbox.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey guys this is chrisfix I'm gonna go show you what I'm doing today the trim on my truck is really faded pretty badly and I don't like how it looks here's what it is supposed to look like this nice dark black has a little bit of glow to it so I'm gonna try to get it back to nice and black I tried you know the products like Back to Black and you know the the classic products but none of them work they don't restore it armor all compounds it'll look good for like two weeks and then just go right back to this faded black gray whatever you'd call it so just to give you an idea of what this is gonna look like when it's all done you'd see the gloss finish on it very low gloss kind of like the factory original it is raining out so no sunlight but you get the idea so here's what you're gonna need for this project you can eat some paper towels a microfiber cloth would be good as well especially for when you're rubbing the isopropyl alcohol off so it doesn't leave any small pieces of lint I got 600 grit sandpaper it's gonna be wet wet sand and then they have this really cool trim and bumper paint it's supposed to be like the same OAM black as most cars for a trim and bumper and some primer also if you have water and dawn to initially clean this off that's going to be needed as well you're also gonna need some garbage bags to bag off the window so you don't want to get any paint on the window or on your nice paint so you're gonna put a bag here in the back here and to hold that down you're gonna use tape and that's all you need to do this project first thing we're gonna do is I already started but just to give you an idea you just get a little screwdriver and you pop out this they're plastic so there's one there one there and just go all along and you're trim will come right off I'm gonna leave the front this is on really tight and the the weather stripping is really good in here so I'm gonna leave that on I'll just tape it here the weather stripping's bed you can see it doesn't line up so I need to like stretch it out I'll probably get a heat gun stretch it and set it in place but this will make taping it on this line nice and easy so now we're gonna go clean the surface so first step is going to just get a paper towel and you want to clean the edge from here inside and you want to clean all of this with Dawn so some type of soap that strips it from wax it strips it from all the contaminants Diamond water works great and just clean it really good and then let it dry then after you do that you want to get some isopropyl alcohol this is just regular rubbing alcohol and this will give it the final clean but you're gonna do this only right before you spray paint you don't want to do it like an hour earlier or a day earlier you want to do it right before you put the coat of primer on and you also want to do it after you sinned so I wash it with soap and water now I'm gonna go sand this we're gonna get the surface prepared here's the 600 grit sandpaper I'm just gonna add some water just like that so as you sand you want to go in circular motions you want the sand paper be nice and flat and you want to be wet very wet in between it's not wet take your spray bottle or water bottle or whatever and get it nice and wet the other thing is you can see here how it's it's light and then that's dark so as you send it'll get darker so that's how you know if you missed a spot so you can see here you see how it's darker here and lighter here so that means I missed in here so I want to try to get in here and you can see it gets darker so now we're gonna just do this for the whole surface and once you're done I'll show you what to do next now with the paper towel at the same time you're trying to get it clean so you want to make sure you don't see any black on here and remember painting is 99% prep so all this the better you do this the better it's going to come out so now this is what my paper towel look like before when it was still dirty and this is after now it's white before it was Dark One make sure there's no dirt on it at all and once you do that now we're gonna start using alcohol so we're gonna use rubbing alcohol just take a little bit put on your paper towel and you do this step after everything is dry so this really gets it clean and alcohol evaporates really easily so it'll dry it even better make sure there's no moisture at all you can see how much more comes off after you use alcohol so I'm going to do another I'm gonna let it dry and then wipe it down one more time with alcohol you can see more is still coming up so make sure you get it really good so your surface is prepped you'd see came out really nice it's nice and smooth this gradient here is nice and smooth you Center this down nice and smooth it's clean the paint has a surface to grab now we're gonna start putting down tape on all the places we don't want to paint so it's gonna look like this we're gonna have a nice thin layer of tape here right on the edge so I'm still taping obviously very important do a good job taping I'm gonna show you a little trick so it's hard to like follow the lines of the weatherstripping so just put it over the weather stripping and dig your nail in like that and you can see it follows it really well and then you just take a straight edge at an angle and then you pull it off and it comes off nice and smooth and you get a perfect edge just be careful that you don't cut into your paint and you don't cut into your weather stripping and you're good got it all taped up and now we're gonna put plus bags on nice sharp lines here that go all the way around and looks good one thing you want to watch for is inside your door jam because paint will get in here and it should blend naturally and it should look good so I don't think there's really much when you doing here just make sure you tape it up right so I open the window and I was able to put it around the glass now I'm just taping the bag so as you can see I got the front window all taped up and all bagged up now time to do the back window and it's pretty simple I just cut out a piece of bag you just take a scissors go out that so I'm just going to put a little piece of tape to hold it in place really quick this is easy to do just make sure you spend time on it you don't spend time on it you're gonna mess up and you get paint everywhere trust me it's all in the prep remember gonna be blasting air at it because there's air in that can so you want to make sure you know when this moves around there's no spots that that get in to your paint to your windows whatever the case might be okay so the windows are are taped up now it's time to get the surrounding areas of the truck yeah look at that nice and covered now you're probably wondering what about like right over here well what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna use a box and when I spray it I'll just do that now we're just gonna go check make sure all this is good it looks really good like that that looks nice got it going over and above so now I'm gonna spray paint change into a shirt you can get messy I'll probably wear some goggles just so I don't get in my eyes I'm outside so I don't need a respirator but if you're indoors you don't want to breathe this stuff in so now we're gonna go paper towel alcohol and do one final rubdown now use the microfiber cloth now there's no lint on there and now comes the spray painting part so first thing we're going to use is primer so it says here that you need to for spring conditions use an open area blah blah blah 50 degrees Fahrenheit to 90 degrees Fahrenheit and humidity below 85% and do not put it on heated surface such as the surface in the Sun shake cam vigorously for one minute shake off and hold upright and 10 to 16 inches from surface okay so that's what we're gonna do right now it's gonna take at 70 degrees 30 minutes to dry now you don't want to put on thick layers you just want to keep it moving once you start spraying so that's the first coat take a look relatively even and it's gonna be impossible to get completely even with a spray can outside but I think it came out actually pretty good you don't want to put too much on I actually started to put a little bit too much on here you can see right there it's really shiny but not it's not gonna turn out bad the good thing is you could wet sand this right after you put it on and it dries and that prevents something called orange peel which is you can see it's wavy if it dries like that little orange peel so we don't want that I actually want to touch up right here and then we'll let it dry for 30 minutes 30 minutes has elapsed so now I'm going to shake the can and apply another coat good now I'm gonna let that dry for another 30 minutes and then I'm gonna apply my coat of black okay look I'm pretty good I'll let it dry overnight just cuz I was running out of daylight but you only have to let it dry for an hour before you wet sand it and now I'm gonna wet sand it and the reason I'm gonna wet something you can see there's a little bit of a bubble here it's actually pretty smooth otherwise I could feel little bumps it's not bad time the wet sand so you get your sandpaper 600 grit maybe even find her now finer would probably better 1200 we'll probably the best get a nice and nice and wet and after it's wet get your surface way so that's what the bump was completely gone it's important any imperfections you see now we're gonna be translated to your final spray so now we're just gonna overall wet sand this just to get the orange peel off now once you're done what sanding everything get it wet with a paper towel and you want to try to get all that extra debris off after you're done wiping it down let it dry and then gonna wipe it down again with the dry towel or a microfiber cloth so that you don't get all fuzzies all over it and then we're gonna go over it with alcohol now we're gonna get our alcohol and put it on a paper towel and rub it down now we're gonna let that dry and once that dries we're going to touch up with a microfiber cloth and then we're going to start spray painting again now it's time to start painting get your first coat on and then let it dry let it dry a little bit go back over good now let it dry a little bit and then we'll put one more coat on so I just put a coat on 20 minutes ago let it dry now I'm gonna put one last coat on so it'll be three coats total it's looking pretty good already still wet but came out really nice that's gonna dry so nice now it's just let it dry so we'll see how that looks in in four hours two hours we're gonna go take off the plastic so when you're removing this you want to make sure you do it at a ninety degree angle this isn't a big deal so you want for this I want to keep a sharp angle like that and that sharp angle will keep the paint from like tearing off and looking horrible get a nice sharp angle just like so nice clean edge once I put the trim on look good so you can see mistake here got paint on the paint I'll show you how to take that off but that's not good and I'm gonna wait to clean off you can see like some of the glues stuck on here I'm gonna wait to clean that off let this dry even longer but it came out really nice look at that it's nice so as you can see there's some extra on here and I take some this is simple green you could use dawn and you just rub it and since it's fresh it'll come right off and if it doesn't come off you could use acetone or nail polish remover but you want to be careful after you if you use that it could also ruin your paint so you want to wipe it off really quickly don't let it soak in and you also want to clean it in the area off with Dawn or simple green and water show you how good nail polish remover really works I have some on this towel you see this spot right here it just like dissolves it so but you want to be careful you immediately follow up with another paper towel and water a simple green there we go good as new again when using the nail polish remover be very careful same with acetone they're the same chemicals you don't want to use that and keep it on your paint so now we're gonna put the plastic trim back on actually it might be metal but whatever we're gonna put the trim back on and job complete so now this metal trim just snaps just like that doing make sure you like the video and subscribe you could click on any of these videos to see other how to'shey guys this is chrisfix I'm gonna go show you what I'm doing today the trim on my truck is really faded pretty badly and I don't like how it looks here's what it is supposed to look like this nice dark black has a little bit of glow to it so I'm gonna try to get it back to nice and black I tried you know the products like Back to Black and you know the the classic products but none of them work they don't restore it armor all compounds it'll look good for like two weeks and then just go right back to this faded black gray whatever you'd call it so just to give you an idea of what this is gonna look like when it's all done you'd see the gloss finish on it very low gloss kind of like the factory original it is raining out so no sunlight but you get the idea so here's what you're gonna need for this project you can eat some paper towels a microfiber cloth would be good as well especially for when you're rubbing the isopropyl alcohol off so it doesn't leave any small pieces of lint I got 600 grit sandpaper it's gonna be wet wet sand and then they have this really cool trim and bumper paint it's supposed to be like the same OAM black as most cars for a trim and bumper and some primer also if you have water and dawn to initially clean this off that's going to be needed as well you're also gonna need some garbage bags to bag off the window so you don't want to get any paint on the window or on your nice paint so you're gonna put a bag here in the back here and to hold that down you're gonna use tape and that's all you need to do this project first thing we're gonna do is I already started but just to give you an idea you just get a little screwdriver and you pop out this they're plastic so there's one there one there and just go all along and you're trim will come right off I'm gonna leave the front this is on really tight and the the weather stripping is really good in here so I'm gonna leave that on I'll just tape it here the weather stripping's bed you can see it doesn't line up so I need to like stretch it out I'll probably get a heat gun stretch it and set it in place but this will make taping it on this line nice and easy so now we're gonna go clean the surface so first step is going to just get a paper towel and you want to clean the edge from here inside and you want to clean all of this with Dawn so some type of soap that strips it from wax it strips it from all the contaminants Diamond water works great and just clean it really good and then let it dry then after you do that you want to get some isopropyl alcohol this is just regular rubbing alcohol and this will give it the final clean but you're gonna do this only right before you spray paint you don't want to do it like an hour earlier or a day earlier you want to do it right before you put the coat of primer on and you also want to do it after you sinned so I wash it with soap and water now I'm gonna go sand this we're gonna get the surface prepared here's the 600 grit sandpaper I'm just gonna add some water just like that so as you sand you want to go in circular motions you want the sand paper be nice and flat and you want to be wet very wet in between it's not wet take your spray bottle or water bottle or whatever and get it nice and wet the other thing is you can see here how it's it's light and then that's dark so as you send it'll get darker so that's how you know if you missed a spot so you can see here you see how it's darker here and lighter here so that means I missed in here so I want to try to get in here and you can see it gets darker so now we're gonna just do this for the whole surface and once you're done I'll show you what to do next now with the paper towel at the same time you're trying to get it clean so you want to make sure you don't see any black on here and remember painting is 99% prep so all this the better you do this the better it's going to come out so now this is what my paper towel look like before when it was still dirty and this is after now it's white before it was Dark One make sure there's no dirt on it at all and once you do that now we're gonna start using alcohol so we're gonna use rubbing alcohol just take a little bit put on your paper towel and you do this step after everything is dry so this really gets it clean and alcohol evaporates really easily so it'll dry it even better make sure there's no moisture at all you can see how much more comes off after you use alcohol so I'm going to do another I'm gonna let it dry and then wipe it down one more time with alcohol you can see more is still coming up so make sure you get it really good so your surface is prepped you'd see came out really nice it's nice and smooth this gradient here is nice and smooth you Center this down nice and smooth it's clean the paint has a surface to grab now we're gonna start putting down tape on all the places we don't want to paint so it's gonna look like this we're gonna have a nice thin layer of tape here right on the edge so I'm still taping obviously very important do a good job taping I'm gonna show you a little trick so it's hard to like follow the lines of the weatherstripping so just put it over the weather stripping and dig your nail in like that and you can see it follows it really well and then you just take a straight edge at an angle and then you pull it off and it comes off nice and smooth and you get a perfect edge just be careful that you don't cut into your paint and you don't cut into your weather stripping and you're good got it all taped up and now we're gonna put plus bags on nice sharp lines here that go all the way around and looks good one thing you want to watch for is inside your door jam because paint will get in here and it should blend naturally and it should look good so I don't think there's really much when you doing here just make sure you tape it up right so I open the window and I was able to put it around the glass now I'm just taping the bag so as you can see I got the front window all taped up and all bagged up now time to do the back window and it's pretty simple I just cut out a piece of bag you just take a scissors go out that so I'm just going to put a little piece of tape to hold it in place really quick this is easy to do just make sure you spend time on it you don't spend time on it you're gonna mess up and you get paint everywhere trust me it's all in the prep remember gonna be blasting air at it because there's air in that can so you want to make sure you know when this moves around there's no spots that that get in to your paint to your windows whatever the case might be okay so the windows are are taped up now it's time to get the surrounding areas of the truck yeah look at that nice and covered now you're probably wondering what about like right over here well what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna use a box and when I spray it I'll just do that now we're just gonna go check make sure all this is good it looks really good like that that looks nice got it going over and above so now I'm gonna spray paint change into a shirt you can get messy I'll probably wear some goggles just so I don't get in my eyes I'm outside so I don't need a respirator but if you're indoors you don't want to breathe this stuff in so now we're gonna go paper towel alcohol and do one final rubdown now use the microfiber cloth now there's no lint on there and now comes the spray painting part so first thing we're going to use is primer so it says here that you need to for spring conditions use an open area blah blah blah 50 degrees Fahrenheit to 90 degrees Fahrenheit and humidity below 85% and do not put it on heated surface such as the surface in the Sun shake cam vigorously for one minute shake off and hold upright and 10 to 16 inches from surface okay so that's what we're gonna do right now it's gonna take at 70 degrees 30 minutes to dry now you don't want to put on thick layers you just want to keep it moving once you start spraying so that's the first coat take a look relatively even and it's gonna be impossible to get completely even with a spray can outside but I think it came out actually pretty good you don't want to put too much on I actually started to put a little bit too much on here you can see right there it's really shiny but not it's not gonna turn out bad the good thing is you could wet sand this right after you put it on and it dries and that prevents something called orange peel which is you can see it's wavy if it dries like that little orange peel so we don't want that I actually want to touch up right here and then we'll let it dry for 30 minutes 30 minutes has elapsed so now I'm going to shake the can and apply another coat good now I'm gonna let that dry for another 30 minutes and then I'm gonna apply my coat of black okay look I'm pretty good I'll let it dry overnight just cuz I was running out of daylight but you only have to let it dry for an hour before you wet sand it and now I'm gonna wet sand it and the reason I'm gonna wet something you can see there's a little bit of a bubble here it's actually pretty smooth otherwise I could feel little bumps it's not bad time the wet sand so you get your sandpaper 600 grit maybe even find her now finer would probably better 1200 we'll probably the best get a nice and nice and wet and after it's wet get your surface way so that's what the bump was completely gone it's important any imperfections you see now we're gonna be translated to your final spray so now we're just gonna overall wet sand this just to get the orange peel off now once you're done what sanding everything get it wet with a paper towel and you want to try to get all that extra debris off after you're done wiping it down let it dry and then gonna wipe it down again with the dry towel or a microfiber cloth so that you don't get all fuzzies all over it and then we're gonna go over it with alcohol now we're gonna get our alcohol and put it on a paper towel and rub it down now we're gonna let that dry and once that dries we're going to touch up with a microfiber cloth and then we're going to start spray painting again now it's time to start painting get your first coat on and then let it dry let it dry a little bit go back over good now let it dry a little bit and then we'll put one more coat on so I just put a coat on 20 minutes ago let it dry now I'm gonna put one last coat on so it'll be three coats total it's looking pretty good already still wet but came out really nice that's gonna dry so nice now it's just let it dry so we'll see how that looks in in four hours two hours we're gonna go take off the plastic so when you're removing this you want to make sure you do it at a ninety degree angle this isn't a big deal so you want for this I want to keep a sharp angle like that and that sharp angle will keep the paint from like tearing off and looking horrible get a nice sharp angle just like so nice clean edge once I put the trim on look good so you can see mistake here got paint on the paint I'll show you how to take that off but that's not good and I'm gonna wait to clean off you can see like some of the glues stuck on here I'm gonna wait to clean that off let this dry even longer but it came out really nice look at that it's nice so as you can see there's some extra on here and I take some this is simple green you could use dawn and you just rub it and since it's fresh it'll come right off and if it doesn't come off you could use acetone or nail polish remover but you want to be careful after you if you use that it could also ruin your paint so you want to wipe it off really quickly don't let it soak in and you also want to clean it in the area off with Dawn or simple green and water show you how good nail polish remover really works I have some on this towel you see this spot right here it just like dissolves it so but you want to be careful you immediately follow up with another paper towel and water a simple green there we go good as new again when using the nail polish remover be very careful same with acetone they're the same chemicals you don't want to use that and keep it on your paint so now we're gonna put the plastic trim back on actually it might be metal but whatever we're gonna put the trim back on and job complete so now this metal trim just snaps just like that doing make sure you like the video and subscribe you could click on any of these videos to see other how to's\n"