Originally Posted by
Simon Barden
Clear either needs to go on as flat a surface as possible, or you need to use countless coats to build up enough depth to sand it back flat. It will just follow the contours underneath it, it won’t just fill up any dips first but also cover the bumps. You’d need a very thinned paint indeed for it to pool in the pits and even then, as mist of that liquid would be thinners, it would still dry out leaving a smaller pit, and the paint layer would be even thinner. A standard spray can is probably 30% paint/lacquer, the rest is propellent and thinners. Increase the amount of thinners and the paint content goes down considerably, so you’d need maybe 3x the number of cans.
Plus, too much thinning affects the paint finish and of course on anything but a horizontal surface, it’s just going to run off and not stick. So, getting the surface as flat as possible first is the ideal solution.
For the bass idea, as it would also have to be in parts (unless you get a new 3D printer), maybe you could make a full solid body bass in a jigsaw-style, so the pieces slot together nicely, provide mechanical strength for the joints and provide lots of glue area? You could also highlight the jigsaw effect if you wanted by having the pieces slightly different heights.