Removing dust from clear coat

[spacekid71]

hi everyone,

I am new to the forum and I have a question about removing dust from the clear coat of my byoc pedal.

I have built my first pedal which is a byoc ESV Fuzz pedal. It is all working well so I am pretty happy about that.

I have now started painting the aluminum box with spray paint and it has worked well. I have put on the white spray paint
which has primer in it. After I have used paint pens to draw the artwork. So far so good.

Two days ago I tried to put Krylon Clear Coat over the white and the black artwork, and I got loads of dust into the clear
coat. From reading a bit online about this, other people have similar problems but I am not sure how to continue from
here.

I am wondering how to remove the dust specs first, and after that to get the clear coat on properly without having
dust specs.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Mart

[EBK]

Welcome to the forum!

I suspect that only sanding will remove the dust at this point.
As far as avoiding dust, you may want to consider covering up your enclosure with a large bowl, propped up on one side for air flow, while it dries/cures.

[spacekid71]

Thank you for your response. Just to clarify, the dust got onto the enclosure during the spraying of the clear coat. Like the dust and particles were
getting sucked into the spray paint stream. Is this a common issue? Anyone else experiencing this?

[EBK]

Thank you for your response. Just to clarify, the dust got onto the enclosure during the spraying of the clear coat. Like the dust and particles were
getting sucked into the spray paint stream. Is this a common issue? Anyone else experiencing this?

I think I might see what you're getting at.  Potentially weird question (perhaps one of many): was your enclosure more or less on a floor or up on an elevated surface like a table?

[R.G.]

It is very, very difficult to keep environmental dust off glossy coatings of paint from "rattle cans". Pretty much nothing will do this perfectly except carefully maintianed downdraft spray booths. That's the advice given me by my friend who restores vintage cars in his home garage. He made his garage convertable into such a booth with plastic drapes and large fans drawing in filtered air.

[spacekid71]

I think I might see what you're getting at.  Potentially weird question (perhaps one of many): was your enclosure more or less on a floor or up on an elevated surface like a table?

I had the enclosure about 4 inches off the floor on a improvised cardboard stand. So quite close to the floor...

It is very, very difficult to keep environmental dust off glossy coatings of paint from "rattle cans". Pretty much nothing will do this perfectly except carefully maintianed downdraft spray booths. That's the advice given me by my friend who restores vintage cars in his home garage. He made his garage convertable into such a booth with plastic drapes and large fans drawing in filtered air.

Thanks for the advice, it makes sense that isolating would make it less likely to catch dust..

Are there any other techniques for clear coating guitar pedals other than spray paint?

[Ice-9]

Yeah the dust problem is a real problem when spay painting at home, this is as R.G. has mentioned why in the bodyshop industry a dedicated room with extraction is used, these are also the heater baking/drying room.

Of course you can't do this at home.

One solution I use to good effect is to use one of those 'Kitchen/bathroom/ plant feed spray bottles.  Fill it with clean water then give the room you are spray painting in a good spray around with the water spray set on a fine mist, this drags the dust out of the air and gives you a fighting chance of a dust free paint job.

[LightSoundGeometry]

lighter colors help..black is the worst !

im in a 70 year old home fighting dust on everything daily ..I can dust a table seems like twice a day around here..and my dog is one hairy skin shedding beast

[tubegeek]

Envirotex is a good clear-coat alternative: it's what they use for bar tops, essentially.

I've had better luck with that than with clear rattlecans.

[davent]

I switched to an airbrush (much lower pressure then rattle cans) and don't seem to suffer to the same degree with my always present dust, than i did with spray cans.

I learned to embrace the dust and use paint splatter a lot as well as various other non-homogeneous paint techniques so the dust blends into the design.

Paint well away from the ground where the dust settles and will get kicked up by the blasts of air. I mount the pedal on a little stand i can hold in my hand while painting and paint in front of a drop cloth/newsprint hung on the wall.

Cover the wet pedal as soon as done. I use a big zip lock, garment bag tent.

Very thin multiple coats of clearcoat followed by a very light fine grade wet sandpaper sanding between coats.





dave