should of sanded between the coats. as in paint the clear and let it set up for 24 hours and then sanded and then cleared your second coat

 

If the valleys are still clear, keep sanding, otherwise you need another coat.

 

I sprayed another coat just to be safe. Thanks!

 

Does your clear coat have a hardener? make sure the clear coat is not fully cure,then sand it down some more until its smooth and you only see scratches.Then use a medium cut compound, then light cut compound, and then polishing compound. This will take a while, start in the middle of the hardtop then buff your way out. Depending on the size of your buffer it might take you 4 hours or more. If you have 3000 grit sand paper use it because it will make your buffing time shorter.

 

I was using duplicolor acrylic enamel. I'll get some of that stuff

 

I'm in the middle of painting my car. You used an aerosol can? (spray paint) it's not really meant to be sanded down. It never really cures that hard. Compared to a single stage auto paint that uses hardeners.

The orange peel is usually the paint, not the clear. You should sand the paint down with 1500-2000 grit wet. Then from there you spray clear. But aerosol can clear coat lays down really thin. So to build up enough for a proper wet sand on the clear coat you'll need 5+ coats.

Hope this helps. After the wetsand of clear (200 grit wet) you should use a 2 stage wax (cut polish and a finishing wax) with a machine buffer

 

hmm. everywhere I've read said not to sand the base coat before putting on clear. But yeah, i used spray cans. I watched some videos on it being done but it's a much longer process...

 

If you don't smooth out the base coat, your clear will just show what's underneath it. But I guess maybe that's me. I've always followed that process. Either way, clear from a can lays down super thin. It will take lots of passes to build up a good place to start

 

You shouldn't wet sand color before clear, it is never normal practice. That said, you also don't clear mistakes. So if you must sand an area that is rough before clear, than do so. It just shouldn't be normal practice to sand the colro before the clear. If you wet sand it it needs to be buffed to a shine first. Buffing it requires product, product makes clear not stick. You would have to wet sand the color, polish it back up, let everything dry really well, remove all polishing/rubbing compound THUROUGHLY, then apply clear. Its just not a good thing to do.