I have somehow contaminated my primer - is this silicone?

mrennie

Promoted Users
First, let me state that I have learned so many things the hard way, and I suspect this is going to be another expensive lesson :(

I mixed some epoxy to spray a final blocking coat on my trunk lid, and ended up with fisheyes. These are not craters from laying the epoxy too heavy, rather they are small pits or divots in the film, I have sprayed at least 3 gallons of SPI epoxy in the past and have never had this happen, so I was sure it is contamination from something. It also isn't a product defect as the epoxy I am using is a gallon can that I've already used 1/2 of a few months ago with no issues. The trunk lid had been wiped down twice with 700 W&G remover and left to dry for 60 minutes, also leading me to believe it wasn't contamination on the panel.

So after seeing the fisheyes I stopped spraying and went back to the workbench and looked at my mixing cup, and noticed some clear bubbles on the surface of the primer that I had not seen when first mixing the epoxy...so I looked in the cup of the paint gun and saw the same....then went back and opened the primer can and saw bubbles on the surface in there too...not good.

Does this look like silicone contamination? If not, has anyone ever seen this before and have a guess what it could be?

Last week I washed my motorcycle and brought it into the garage to wax it, and then put some Mother's vinyl protectant on the seat and plastic parts. Never even gave it a second thought, or considered that there might be silicone in either product. I also realized that the wooden paint stick I used for mixing the epoxy had been sitting on my work bench, 15' from where I was working on my bike. My only theory so far is that something got on the paint stick, and I now have mixed it into the primer and contaminated the can.

If this is what happened, I am now concerned about what I need to do to move forward. I'll have to get another gallon of epoxy, use new mixing sticks, etc, but how do I ensure my gun is cleaned out? I completely break it down after each use and use laquer thinner to wash and rinse it out, will that be enough to ensure it is OK or do I need to wash it with something else?

As always, advice is welcomed. Don't tell me I am an idiot, I already know that...
 

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The only advice I can give is to start fresh with material, cups, sticks, strainers, and towels. Clean everything in the garage with dawn or some other type of degreaser, and throw away everything that is not "body shop" safe, in the trash. There are water based protectants with no silicone. Silicone can travel a loooooong way when airborn, and takes very little to completely screw up many jobs to come. Cleaning your gun thoroughly with thinner should be sufficient.
 
Don't be too hard on yourself. Things like that happen.:) Like TK said throw it out and start fresh. Get rid of all the silicone products. Silicone is The Devil when you are working with refinish materials. I almost got fired once when one of my former Boss's idiot son (ironically named after me by a long ago ex-girlfriend, and then his ex wife, weird, I know, sorry off topic, but I had to throw that in there) started hosing down his tires in front of the paint booth. I let go with some rather choice words and we nearly came to blows. I had fisheyes in jobs for the next month because of that. And that was after we changed all the filters and scrubbed the walls. Stupid, spoiled kid. Point is clean, clean, clean, and start using non silicone tire dressing and such.
Oh and be disciplined about keeping paint related stuff like sticks and strainers clean and out of the environment. Zip lock bags work well.
 
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I had a similar situation at a Chevrolet dealership. Painted a car complete, looked great, went to lunch, and when I returned, huge fisheyes everywhere. I went ballistic and marched through the service department grabbing every can of anything with silicone, went straight to the service managers office and threw all of them on his desk. After I was through with him, I went to the parts department and chewed out the parts manager for giving it to the mechanics. That service department was probably 100 ft away from the paint area, but the predominantly south wind carried that junk all the way across the parking lot. The Devil is right.
 
Agree with the above statements, its so minor you will never figure out the cause.
 
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