Quoted from greatwichjohn:You missed out on the notorious seminar at Pintastic this year. I seem to know my wood products & what to do with them. Repairs to pinball cabinets, & vids, along with hundreds of new wood playfields. Been painting all my life since I was a kid, & my grandmother showed me. I also did painting at work for 25 years for the pools & steel railings. But go with the John does not know anything about anything, as you wish.
Guided Avi on sanding, painting, & clear coats. All he needs is some more experience, & maybe cranky older guys can come off as dicks giving advice. But we are just trying to guide him from our many years of experience.
GWJ, I wanted to think about this one for a while. I can tell you this. There are guys who have been painters for 30 years that, quite frankly, I wouldn't let paint my garage, let alone a dog house. There are guys that paint on the side that do a spectacular job, but don't want to do it full time and are hard as hell to hire. It's like body work on a car. You can take the same car with the same damages to 3 different body shops and I guarantee you will get three different degrees of finishes all due to processes, materials and craftsmanship.
I never said you didn't know what you were doing, but processes and craftsmanship are all subjective and judged by the eye of the beholder. What passes as good enough for you just might not be the same for everyone else.
If it were my cabinet? I would fix the damages, sand it up, primer it, sand it again and then hit it with Rustoleum Turbo Spray in Satin Black. I think they come out beautiful this way without a need for clearcoats.
My Grandmother taught me how to cook, not how to paint.
You know what you are doing, it's the GWJ way.