I have a quart of brushable and sandable seam sealer. I have a whole lot of seams to reseal after seam welding. What is the best way to go about this and have an attractive result? Any tips tricks or tools I should know about? I've done this before but never been happy with the result so I'm asking before I do it again and I'm still unhappy.
Masking tape parallel lines. Apply seam sealer between tape. Peel tape for beautiful straight lines.
That will work good on the floors and framerails. But how do i do curved 90 degree joints? And mo way to get masking tape parallel in those areas.
Biggest concern is the underhood. Its a 2000 miata by the way.
I've never used the stuff but seems like window glass caulking as far as job discription. make something like a cake decorator's pouch and Squeeze it on then with a Wet Finger give it a wipe. I've never seen a 'Pretty' Job of it, Always has brush strokes but Paint does Wonders.
I wonder if an actual cake decorators pouch would work for this? Seems like a good idea.
If you can make the sealer look even half-decent on application, it'll usually look fine once it's been painted over. Certainly no worse than a lot of factory stuff.
???
Oil can? Would the thickness of the seam sealer work in that?
I've bought seam sealer in a tube to put in a caulking gun.
I've done it that way before in the past. However this time I bought the court can do to challenge budget constraints and I'm trying to do the best I can with it
The cake decorator's pouch would probably be trash after putting seam sealer through it. You might try it with a freezer zip lock bag and cut a corner off. Different sized cut on the corner will yield different size nozzles. Twist the bag up and squeeze and you've got a super cheap and disposable baker's bag. I use this trick all the time in the kitchen and with construction - it's great for applying small touch ups of drywall mud, etc.
ps. No that's not my hand. My manicure is much flashier.
I'm going to try that. Seems like the perfect solution here. And then use the wet finger trick to smooth it out in the corners. Thanks guys!
don't spend any real Time trying to get it smooth, A wet finger and a Quick Wipe.
I use the tape and then run a foam brush soaked in lacquer thinner or acetone to give it a smooth finish. Corners are a pain.
The stuff isn't cheap, but it's fast and it looks good. I have been happy with it.
In reply to JBasham :
Im going to need to remember that exists for future projects.
In the end, a rubber glove coated finger dipped in the sealer and a finger painting approach worked well enough for the stuff i wanted to be pretty. May get another coat just to smooth out the low spots.
Im also going to try to sand it a bit.
In reply to Dusterbd13 :
Good luck with that. I had to remove some and it was a lot of fun...NOT.
Worst case, i paint the white over it and forget it exists. Best case, i paint the white over it, and nobody sees it's existence.
So no brush was used at all? I've never done this myself but need to.
Give me a couple hours and I'll do a much better explanation with pictures
Ive been chipping away on lunch breaks this week. Grinding and cleaning up from the seam welding, then spraying the rustoleum primer on the bare metal. Every bit of brown you see is where we seam welded (that I have final prepped. Lots to go on the drivers side, and still some around the door and kick panel on the passengers)
20180501_191051 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20180501_191103 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20180501_191124 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
I then moved onto seam sealer. There's only two main areas I want to make sure are “pretty”. The floor, and the engine bay. The rest will never really be seen, and if it is, its either because somebody is buying the car, or I ran them over. Neither of which is very likely.
Remember im using the cheap brush-able seam sealer from amazon. It also looks far better in person than in the pictures. I think this stuff slightly self levels as it dries.
In the engine bay, on the 90-ish degree joints, I wanted a fillet look like you would with bathtub caulk. I could NOT find a way to get it in there I was happy with. In the end, I dipped my finger in the can and worked in it with a finger painting motion. I did wear rubber gloves. The gloves did rip. There is seam sealer under my fingernails on my right hand that got me funny looks at work.
The flatter sections, where the factory did a lap weld seam, I used a 1 inch bristle brush to apply, making sure I worked it into the cracks and crevasses. I smoothed it with a foam brush afterwards, but it really didn't change the cosmetic properties any, if at all. Im still not super happy with how it came out, and hopefully another round (light coating for appearance purposes) makes them come out better.
20180503_160323 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
the floors were all lap welds. So all done with the 1 inch brush. I laid it down THICK on the subframe connectors. I need to put something in the gaps where the body plugs were, and do another coat here as well. Im also debating skinning the whole floor with some .030 aluminum to give it a better appearance. Well see what I think after paint and lizard skin. I may do some stucco mesh over the black floor pans for visual contrast and floor traction. Haven't gotten there yet.
20180503_160340 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
in the wheel well, where I don't really care about appearance, I could've used a putty knife or trowel. Instead, I used the 1 inch brush and just worked it in. this will be topcoated in satin black and tire marbles, so should disappear pretty quickly. It definitely needs another coat though.
20180503_160331 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
Well Darn, That's a lot of detail. way to go.
Maybe this is a dumb question but what exactly is the point of seam sealer? Keep water out of places you don't want it, or just aesthetics?
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