Glossy car finish?

You could give it a gloss coat and move on or you can polish out the paint using one of the available polishing kits. To get a smoother finish at the painting stage, you need to thin the paint a little more and/or lower the pressure to the airbrush to about 15 psi. Also, your paint strokes could be too fast as well. Finally, for painting auto subjects, you may want to switch to an enamel. I've never been thrilled with the gloss from acrylics.

Oops, almost forgot. To rub out the finish with toothpaste, all you need is your favorite brand and a good flannel cloth and work it in like wax. You may also need to sand out your paint with 1500 or 2000 grit first, depending on how rough it actually is.

Good advice given above Rob. It also pays to snad down the primer coat to a smooth finish with 1500 or so grit before the top coat (a bit late now but when you do you next one!). I use the Tamiya polish to get rid of anything in the top coat then apply the gloss overcoat. I've not used Future myself but many swear by it. I use the Tamiya clear gloss.

For future reference it's better to use white primer under transparent colors such as red and yellow. Gray primer kills the overall appearence of these colors. Since your already beyond that stage I'll move on.

What exactly is the problem with your paint? Is it just dull? Does it have dust in the finish? Is it orange peeled? Please be a little more specific. On a scale of 1-10 how bad is it? With 10 being a total piece of crap.

If your problem is that it's just dull you can spray a gloss clear coat on it to help. If you have dust or orange peel no amount of gloss coat will give you that glass smooth finish your looking for, you will need some abrasives.

Here's a basic guide...If your model is a 3 or less on the 1-10 scale above, then toothpaste might help. If it's a 4-6 then I would try Novus polishing compounds 1,2 and 3. If were talking a 7 or more then you need a polishing kit. I use a MicroMesh kit which works great. It's worth it's weight in gold in my opinion.

Darren

It's actually not that bad, somewhere around a semi gloss. If it was a tank finish or HMMWV, I'd be pleased with the results. I did smooth out the gray before painting the red. I chose gray over white since the plastic was yellow. Yellow seems to be a tough color to paint over.

I'll give the toothpaste a try. If that doesn't really give a smooth sheen, then I will move to abrasives. I am comfortable working with Future and have a lifetime supply handy. I guess I could just as easily grab a can of some other gloss though.

Thanks again.

Rob I use future on cars for the gloss coat alot now. It works great for me. Just be sure to wick away any excess that builds up along the bottom edge of the body though.

Try using Color Place Clear Gloss. Works wonders for me!! Any spray gloss works, I just haven't had too much experience with future. Yet.

Good Luck!