Harley Benton Jazz Bass kit build

[Simon Barden]

I'm not sure that deciding to clear coat over the blue was such a good idea. I have no idea where it came from, and I was using my 'clear only' spray gun, but a few seconds after I started spraying the clear, a streak of dark brown got spat out from the gun. A flake of something must have fallen in the container in the box I keep them in. Which was very annoying. So I stopped, , tried to wipe it off (stupid), which only mixed it up with the blue on the body. So I left it for an hour and sanded back and it looked OK (if not 100% perfect).

But in sanding I had left a dark mark on another bit of the body, so when I came to spray the clear again, I realised I was coating over this mark. So I left it, tried sanding back, but it left a spot of a very slightly different colour. I had a tiny bit of blue left in my mixing jar, so brushed that on. But that didn't help as all the lighter, whiter, pigment in the paint had settled to the bottom, despite being shaken, and the blue was now lighter and very obvious.

So I managed to thin down the paint that remained in the bottom of original tin and add that to what was left in the mixing jar, and had just enough to spray a complete covering coat of this slightly lighter blue over the body and cover up my mistakes (it ran out as I was doing a final pass for luck). In fact, I've now ended up with just the tint of Sonic Blue I was after. But there's not enough thickness to sand again, but as the finish was flat before spraying, it's good enough to clear coat straight over. So I'll do that tomorrow after a thorough clean of the gun.