Thread: lacquer / enamel

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Ok, probably apples n oranges thing here:

I had always thought lacquer and enamel were incompatible.

I picked up some red lacquer at the hobby store, to repaint the SE badges on my charger.

Ok, well I ran out of red enamel, working on a plastic model, so I figured what the Hell, I'll try the lacquer. Only to my surprise, the lacquer lays over the enamel just fine, and vise versa.

?

Lacquer is compatible with acrylics, but not Urethanes

It's the solvent in lacquer that is "hot" and will cause the lifting. Once the solvent evaporates off then painting over lacquer shouldn't cause lifting. The other way round, lacquer over enamel, if the enamel isn't cured hard the solvent could/will bite into the undercoat and lift. That's why lacquer thinner is used as a gun cleaning agent, because it's so aggressive, though if a catalyzed usethane has kicked even lacquer thinner probably won't break it up. Couple things might be going on here. Because of VOC regs, the thinner in the lacquer you're using is minimal thus flashes off faster than it can attack, and/or you had sufficient heat to draw the solvent off before it could work down.

Just don't try to paint your car that way. :-)