I am clear coating some of my plugs to start molding. I clear coated one on friday and have some questions. I am not a painter nor really do any painting in my composite business. The clear coat seems to be soft, I can scratch it with my finger nail. Is this normal or is it not cured enough? I also go little pin sized holes in it as well. There was no drying instructions or nothing on the container. I sprayed it out of my HVLP gun at the specs it suggested. Did I spray the clear too thick maybe? This is my first attempt at clear coating! I have not used that dutec high build primer before, If I buff that and add the glossy additive, will that be glossy as clear coat. Sorry for the crappy english, I hae migranes and I take hydros for it and sometimes it makes me dumb 
You can add some fisheye additive to take out those pinholes. Normal automotive clear can be wet sanded after 24 hours. You can heat cure it and speed it up to as fast as 4-6 hours. Some of them won’t even cure for 48 hours. Even then it’s still going to be a little bit gelly like. Why don’t you just use the duratec primer? Did you know that poly tooling gelcoat can have weird reactions with the automotive clear?
I use this for mold resurfacing. You might have noticed that I wasn’t too concerned with my plug finish in the mold thread I am working on. I’ll use this product to finish it. Much easier than spending days on the plug.
http://www.duratec1.com/ag05.html
and this for finishing pieces.
http://www.duratec1.com/dp06.html
Beware of prices, the cheapest I found locally to get the topcoat was $70/gal.
Evan, what would you suggest for my surface of a plug then?
I dunno. I just use the Duratec gray surfacing primer. Wet sand and polish. Black is cool too but my tooling gelcoat is also black so I want a contrast between the plug and the mold.
yes, For plugs I use surfacing primer as well. I just don’t take the time to polish it.
as far as I know it comes in white and orange too. You just have to pay more. I emailed them and they said you can pigment it just like gelcoats so I do pigment the gray primer black and spray on before I overlay pieces.
I just never got around to using it, I can not get it local either 
what reactions does the tooling gel have with the clearcoat?
It’ll eat into your clear coat. When you go to demold from the plug, the mold surface is wrinkled. Not unlike alligatoring.
what he said 
I never tried regular clear coat. I just figured it was best to keep poly with poly.
The duratec products are poly so they will bond well with your gels. All of my mold surfaces are black poly tooling gel mixed 50/50 with duratec clear hi gloss additive then finished with clear top coat.
The clear top coat is the way to go with finishing parts. You can build it up pretty high and fill holes which is near impossible with automotive clearcoat. Plus with heat you can cure and sand it in within 1 hr.
Well good, I just ordered a couple gallons of it