Intercoat and dry pearls

RosharonRooster

Promoted Users
I've got a project car I bought to mess around with some dry pearls. I'm looking for some ghost pattern effect. Meaning certain angles hard to see. Real subtle. When using dry pearl with spi intercoat clear do you spray the product on wet and heavy or do you just mist it on? I got a scrap piece im going to play with before I start on the car but im just collecting info and materials. Here is a picture of what im after. Its a car I had about 14yrs ago
 

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Spray as you would any metallic base coat. Try to keep the pearl concentration low enough that it takes 2 medium coats to get what you want. It takes very little pearl to show up as "ghost",depending a lot on the color base you are spraying it over. The darker the base, the less pearl it takes. Also, solid color base takes less than metallic or pearl bases.
 
Also, consider walking the side of the car to avoid miss-match.
Three coats on the door next to the fender with two may not match outside.
 
I experimented with Paint with Pearl products using intercoat clear. My problem was trying to figure out how much dry pearl to add to the intercoat clear?
What are you guys using as a starting ratio? 2 ounces/quart or something like that?
 
Paint with pearl basically sells the 25 gram packs (definitely need to double check weights when adding, I have gone from 20-30 grams) and say that goes in a quart of reduced paint. So that has always been my starting point. If you are trying to turn a candy concentrate pigment color bag its usually closer to 40 per quart if you want to finish in 4, otherwise its 6-8 coats. They always say to mix the dry material in the reducer ratio and add that to the base.
 
I just took a look at GM 800J White Diamond in my old system that uses dry pearl, and they show 74 grams per quart of unreduced material. That's a lot! I think other colors probably have less. I'd say take that figure as an upper limit.
 
Okay, thanks.
That explains why I wasn't getting anywhere on my last attempt. Spraying a red pearl over silver metallic but using only 10 grams or so per quart.
 
Okay, thanks.
That explains why I wasn't getting anywhere on my last attempt. Spraying a red pearl over silver metallic but using only 10 grams or so per quart.
we added pearl to the last coat of white on the rally stripes, and its just that blue green, iridescence you see on the outside of a real pearl.

Ghost is going to be a learning curve for me. If we ever finish this Camaro rework and get to the chevelle, that was the plan to do ghost stripes over the silver before candy and orange flake on the rest of the car until it looks like my Schwinn stingray when I was 12. Hell, I have had this car since I was 16 so it seems right.

On the Martin Brothers show, they have that skull on I think it was a caddy or riviera that just appears when the sun hit it, so definitely needs alot of blending. I found a snap on sunlight lamp on ebay pretty cheap, to see the effects. My blend for the Jeep with the big blue metal flake was 35 per quart, still needed candy after to cover the blue.
 
Spray as you would any metallic base coat. Try to keep the pearl concentration low enough that it takes 2 medium coats to get what you want. It takes very little pearl to show up as "ghost",depending a lot on the color base you are spraying it over. The darker the base, the less pearl it takes. Also, solid color base takes less than metallic or pearl bases.
I finally got around to playing with dry pearls. I ordered a skateboard off Amazon. Some hok gold pearl and hok glint gold pearl. Both dry. Some spi intercoat clear. The car in going to paint the is a lincoln. Factory color is ivory parchment tri stage. So I want this car to be a rolling mix of pearls. I 180 grit the wood. Then 320 both on DA. Then 2 coats epoxy then 1 coat 2k primer. Then wet sand 600 and I was ready. I sprayed the ground coat. It's just a cream. Then the factory ivory pearl which looks like intercoat mixed with pearl. Overpriced in shop line for sure. Then 1 coat of intercoat to tape on top of. Then played with tape and sprayed the dry pearls. You were right. It doesn't take much. About half a tea spoon per 2 oz. ...2oz gave me 2 coats of the hok pearls. Did that twice. Then 4 coats of some left over production clear . I'm really loving the colors in the sun. The graphics not so much. Lol. But my buddy is good at graphics so he is going to help me when it comes time for the car this summer. Here are some pictures. I did both sides of the skateboard. In the shade you don't see any of the graphics. I love it.
 

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