Oh NO! Please Help :( Crazing finish?

[RobinHoodFan]

  I just noticed today that in some areas it looks like the finish is crazing/separating? And where this is happening, the area around it is shiny. It's not sticky at all..it just looks like i glossed those areas and the gloss is crazing/cracking/coming apart or something. Feels smooth to the touch though...

maybe a layer of sealer underneith somewhere wasn't fully cured before i continued and that layer is coming through now?

the crackling look is mostly happening on the non-display side in these two areas only but it's starting to get a little "glossy" in some other areas on the front too.

Is this fixable? Would i be able to touch this up and re-seal? Maybe use dullcote this time? I have been using Krylon Matte finish without problem... I dont know...what's happening..please help!!

I spent so much work and time on this little one to have this happen I'm really hoping someone can help me fix this.

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[bagheera86]

maybe the repose is fighting you! I have the same thing on my cheetah ponies chest. that was caused by either too much gloss or it dried too quickly since these were scorcher days i was painting on.  Another patch was with the spots and the gloss to seal the pastel was forcing the paint to bead/split.

my solution was another coat of final varnish (i use a spray) and did three coat, leaving it to dry for 2 hours between coats. on the third coat i left it over night and went and did the spots again in the morning.... they haven't split/cracked yet... the chest is still cracked though.

but the chest was me following bad advice and taking a hair dryer to the pony. i think it cracked because the heat make the plastic expand and then retract and making rectangular crack like patterns.

so it could be any of those... or none. was there anything different you done lately? has it been left somewhere too warm? or too cold? maybe look at other customs in your house, has anything happened to them?


Post Merge: March 16, 2012, 08:01:43 AM

edit: but it does look like the coat underneath is fighting the top one like it ain't suppose to be there x_X

[RobinHoodFan]

Thanks! That does kinda help...i didn't use gloss though which is odd why these areas are becoming glossy....luckily it's not the apoxie or anything that's cracking..it just looks like the last layer of paint is splitting to show the layer underneith it and it's all happening under the sealant b/c you cant feel it at all...i mean the photos make it look worse than it really is...but its still there 

I may need to sand those areas down and repaint Just really sucks...

I haven't done anything different...she's been sitting in a closed dark cabinet (with a frosted translucent door) since her completion. I mean, it's turning spring now and it could be the temperature fluxuations. Her base is fine and just checked a few other customs i have here but they're all breyers and they are fine.

The only thing that's different is that she has been there longer than usual...My ponies usually sell within a few weeks but i went on vacation this time and needed to add her face marking since i forgot before putting it back up...and now i notice this....

How long before you noticed the cracking on your cheetas?

[bagheera86]

like within the same day it was very frustrating (woulda been handy if i were doing a jaguar!). took me a while to figure out how to fix it, as for the gloss, could something have gotten on the custom? would someone else have touched it with oily hands? did you use a new kind of paint? sometimes i was just thinking that the pigment might have been damaged, with too much thinner or water and it might not have adhere'd in the first place, and if it did it was a thin layer and over time just gave up at sticking together and shrunk/split

maybe add a tiny bit of liquid matt/sealant to it, then paint over it again. if that doesn't work then you might have to sand it (i really hate sanding =-=;)




Post Merge: March 16, 2012, 09:02:53 AM

i hope my advice won't be responsibil for making it worse...

[RobinHoodFan]

Nope, nothing different...same paint etc....although could have been too thin like you said...This took about a month or two to happen..must have just happened within the last day or two....i didn't notice it yesterday while working on the face but today i did....


I'm just worried that this is signs of it going sticky? But wouldn't that have happened already? I'm thinking it has to do with a layer further down that wasn't cured/dried before i sealed....sigh....so bummed i was finally happy to get her face marking done to put her back up for sale..and now this!! Grr! I thnk i need to put her aside for awhile to catch my cool before i do any further damage trying to fix her 


This is just so upsetting...why THIS custom?!




Post Merge: March 16, 2012, 09:44:26 AM

I'm wondering if it was a temperature thing in my house...because i did just notice not too long ago that some of my pricey Disney porcelain statues began crazing....maybe something happened with the temperature one day or something...i dunno...i'm just sad and hoping this doesnt happen again/get worse....

[bagheera86]

oh with porcelin it does happen quite a bit eventually, i dunno but I thought that custom was fabulous. Good thing it didn't sell other wise a buyer might have been all cranky!

Well with the problem i had with my gloss/sealent that it was still tacky after I used it, for days... so the product company said to use a hair dryer. I lol'd but then curiosity got the best of me and I tried it. And voila! still tacky but now all cracky! but the thing the company complained about and blamed was our humidity. I've heard of it and don't know what that is and certainly can't tell the difference between a dry heat or a humid heat.

so maybe like you said, it didn't cure properly or you probably thought it was cured but something prevented it from drying completely. Maybe it'll just peel off?

[WeepingPiano]

Honestly... to looks kind of neat. It gives it a porcelain statuette feel. *so not helpful* >.> sorry I could not be helpful.

[bagheera86]

Honestly... to looks kind of neat. It gives it a porcelain statuette feel. *so not helpful* >.> sorry I could not be helpful.

i thought the same thing actually xD

[RobinHoodFan]

Lol!

It just bummed me out b/c I'm not positive on what's happening and not sure if it's going to get worse and because 1) of all the work i put into it and 2)I dont know 100% what went wrong so as NOT to do it again.

Upon thought and inspection...my conclusion is that it most likely was due to humidity and one layer did not cure properly before i started the next and it began to "sweat" and separate the top layer when the temperature fluctuated...but you think ths would have happend alot sooner...it's been at least a month...but maybe the extreme temp change didn't occur till recently so now is the time it decided to go.  To be sure, what I"m going to do is keep it for myself for awhile and see what happens to it.  That's most likely it b/c i can be pretty impatient sometimes    Maybe in the future I'll get the nerve to take out the sand paper and  fix it ..It's just not worth my time right now b/c I've .got too many other projects going.

 It's a shame b/c I could have really used the income from it But i guess it makes up my decision if i should keep her or not. I guess she really wanted to stay

[Griffin]

Upon thought and inspection...my conclusion is that it most likely was due to humidity and one layer did not cure properly before i started the next and it began to "sweat" and separate the top layer when the temperature fluctuated...but you think ths would have happend alot sooner...it's been at least a month...but maybe the extreme temp change didn't occur till recently so now is the time it decided to go. [...] It's a shame b/c I could have really used the income from it But i guess it makes up my decision if i should keep her or not. I guess she really wanted to stay

That's probably it, the paint sweating does not sound normal, I've never heard of that happening. :O But to be honest, it doesn't look that bad to me, I'm sure she would still fetch a nice price. But maybe it's best, like you said, to keep her for a while and see if continues cracking. I've had the same happen on some ponies recently, I think it has something to do with certain types of vinyl (the softer ponies maybe, it gets worse when you squish them) and colours with lots of white mixed in. Might also be my cheap paints... But so far I've been able to fix it with another layer of polyurethane sealant.


/edit to add a missing word.
 

[RobinHoodFan]

Upon thought and inspection...my conclusion is that it most likely was due to humidity and one layer did not cure properly before i started the next and it began to "sweat" and separate the top layer when the temperature fluctuated...but you think ths would have happend alot sooner...it's been at least a month...but maybe the extreme temp change didn't occur till recently so now is the time it decided to go. [...] It's a shame b/c I could have really used the income from it But i guess it makes up my decision if i should keep her or not. I guess she really wanted to stay

That's probably it, the paint sweating does not sound normal, I've never heard of that happening. :O But to be honest, it doesn't look that bad to me, I'm sure she would still fetch a nice price. But maybe it's best, like you said, to keep her for a while and see if continues cracking. I've had the same happen on some ponies recently, I think it has something to do with certain types of vinyl (the softer ponies maybe, it gets worse when you squish them) and colours with lots of white mixed in. Might also be my cheap paints... But so far I've been able to fix it with another layer of polyurethane sealant.


/edit to add a missing word.
 

"Sweating" is just my guess...it doesnt' feel any different than the area around it..it just appears glossy and cracked in those areas for some reason...not actually cracked per say...it's more like crazing under the final layer of pastels... It's smooth to the touch but just looks cracked under the surface... 

Actual cracking i can understand and would be able to easier pinpoint what was wrong ....but it's happening within the paint layers. Shouldn't be the quality of paint b/c i use expert grade high quality acrylics and pigments.

Another layer of sealer may fix the glossyness..but it wont fix the lighter color paint showing through the "cracks". (There are many shades on top of the base layer of pigments and pastels....so the areas where it's happening, a lighter color is showing through the dark shading--think like the look of crackle nail polish). To get the color uniform again, i'll probably have to sand down those areasand build them back up...hoping i can match the surrounding area.

It's definitely not that bad as the photos make it look ..the only reason i noticed it was because of the "glossyness" in some areas and  then when i looked closer, i noticed the separation. ...If i do decide to try and sell it again, I just want to make sure it doesn't get worse..so I'm going to keep it for a long while to see what happens to it.

I'm blaming humidity again...i've had some humidity issues in the past with cloudy sealer but never this!

[bagheera86]

pastels you say? maybe the pastels weren't sealed as well as you thought.

[RobinHoodFan]

that wouldnt cause defined cracking though...I've worked with piments pastels ALOt and you can't go onto the next layer until they are sealed enough otherwise they wipe right off.

[ZeldaTheSwordsman]

I have no clue. The heat sounds like a plausible answer to me, but I'm no expert on this. Likewise, touching up and re-sealing sounds like it should work to fix this. I have to say, even with the crazing that's still a nice-looking Epona..