All right so another week another nightmare setback. It's not all bad though so I'll start with the good:
Final application of 2K clear for the 102D engine cover went well. In the end it took a total of 5-6 coats of clear on the engine cover but thankfully the fit isn't "thickness critical" since it only sits on top of the monocoque. I will be moving forward with the floor and internals of this build.
Onto the very bad news:
At the same time as 102D, I tried to apply a coat of 2K clear to the 102B as well recovering from the contamination issue from the last update. As I tried to apply it, my airbrush let out a sputter and released some thick globs of clear onto the body. Not a huge deal, but a waste of 2 days of waiting for it to dry, sanding flat, washing, then re-applying. Yesterday I applied another layer of clear, and it went well. Just a few dust specks I had to polish out. I was polishing with ScratchX and my low-RPM dremel + wool buffing wheel (hand polishing 2K simply doesn't work) and was about to do my third and final pass. Things were finally about to come together. I slipped up and let a part of the spinning medal chuck of the dremel ding the engine cover, creating a small chip in the clear coat. Sigh. Fine. This is fixable. Out came the sand paper and I sanded the clear down flat and got ready to re-apply clear by soaking in detergent, giving it a scrub, rinsing off, and letting dry.
Applied a tack-coat, that went fine. Applied a slightly thicker coat which also went fine. Final wet coat? More fish-eyes and craters than I've ever seen in my life. It looked like the surface of the moon at one point with maybe 50-60 craters on just one side of the engine cover. I decided to flood with 2K to lessen the number of craters and to give me a bigger buffer to sand down flat. That's if I decide to even bother honestly, it might be a write off unfortunately. I'm pretty gutted.
Honestly I'm not sure what could've caused this. I thought it could've been residue from the polish, but the fisheyes appeared on the sides where I didn't polish. It couldn't have been contamination in my airbrush or plastic droppers since it applied perfectly fine to a wing piece I did at the same time. I'm thinking maybe I didn't rinse off the detergent properly, but I didn't really do anything differently this time. The one saving grace is that there are a lot of layers of clear so I can sand down quite aggressively without having to worry about going through it, but at this point I'm really wondering if it's worth continuing to pursue this 102B. It'll be very hard to sand down some areas and the panel lines are starting to look quite flooded after so many layers of clear. Stripping and re-starting isn't an option because I'm not willing to pay another $50 for a set of Vector Magic decals.
I'm kicking myself because had I not slipped up with the dremel, it would very likely be in a perfect state right now. I'd managed to get an almost glass-like coat.
In any case, I'll be continuing with the 102D for sure.
