Best clear to use with flattener?

Brad J.

Oldtimer
Flattening some wooden spoked wheels. I have MS, Euro, and production clear on the shelf. I have three coats of MS on the spokes and sanded with 400 grit. I'm looking to spray a couple coats of flattened clear without a bunch of experimentation. Could someone lead me in the right direction to start from and I'll do some sprayouts to get where I need to be. I've used SPI flattener several times but there is a lot of differences between the three clears as far as thickness and reducer levels. Thanks for any help to get it done quicker. It's been in the upper 80's and 75% humidity lately.
 
You might consider the production clear, mix 4:1:1 with medium activator and medium reducer.
Then 20-30% by volume should get you what you want.

Spoke wheels, I have seen on the older cars, I would guess 25% will be real close as far as a low sheen look but not totally flat.
 
Thanks Barry,

That will be my first run. I thought to myself the production might be good as it is a thinner clear that might work good for two coats with less mils. When I've used it before I used it with HS clear and never added any reducer. Previous posts have lead me to believe a reducer a step slower works better. Or is it faster? I always want to flip flop the two.
 
I tend to go faster usually, except with large surfaces. Also, the higher the solids the less effective the flattener will be.

The problem I see with spokes is getting perfectly even coverage all the way around. Getting small areas wetter than others will cause the final gloss level to vary over the part. A slight over-reduction might help minimize this potential problem.
 
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