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Hot take: I tried that new ceramic clear on a '92 Ford hood and it cured like a rock in 20 minutes flat.
We were used to the old stuff taking a full hour to set up enough for a light sand. The new stuff was so fast we almost messed up the blend on the fender. Anyone else run into this with the quick-dry formulas?
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the_luna1mo ago
Those fast formulas are a total game changer for small jobs. You gotta treat them like a two-part epoxy and have everything ready to go before you even open the can.
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olivere301mo ago
Yeah, you can't treat it like the old stuff at all. I keep a spray bottle with a slow activator mixed and ready in the booth now. Hit the edge of your blend area with a light mist if you see it kicking too fast, buys you a few extra seconds to work it. The tech sheets always lie about the open time.
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tylerw7215d ago
My old shop manager swore by keeping a bottle of slow reducer in his back pocket for exactly that. He'd even thin his basecoat a bit extra on really humid days, like a 10% bump over the data sheet, just to fight the flash-off. It's all about building in your own safety net because the factory times are for perfect lab conditions that never happen in real life. Once you start planning for the product to dry faster than they say, you stop fighting it and just work with it.
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