I have never had much luck with Alclad's black base. Like Keavdog mentions, it takes time to dry. In my case, I waited about 3 weeks before giving up hope that it was ever going to dry completely. I tried several other gloss black base coats to put under Alclad, with MRP's 2K Black giving the smoothest finish. But, three drawbacks to that, its a 2K paint (which kind of scare me now after doing research on them), it took about a week for it to fully cure, and it was actually a little too hard and glossy. The Alclad would flake right off of it. MRP's regular gloss black lacquer was OK, but that dried a little too fast, and made it difficult to get a uniform gloss black. Finally tried Tamiya's LP-1 gloss black lacquer, and that was the winner. Dries quickly, but slowly enough to get a good, uniform gloss.