Directions often say that if it's been more than 48 hours you should sand or rough up the surface of the finish before applying a second coat. I have three rods with one coat of LS Supreme over metallic thread. They've sat now for over a week and I need to apply a second coat. Even light sanding will ruin my decal and scuff my metalic thread. Am I ok to apply without roughing my surface? Any alternatives to help the new coat bond with the old?

Clean it with alcohal, or lightly with acetone. Dry and apply your second coat.

Caution
Do not ---- repeat----Do Not wipe your first coat with any solvent, especially acetone. This is the cause of many a witch hunt. The idea is not to roughen the surface as with sandpaper. The idea is to create a surface acceptable to wetting of the second coat. Do this by briskly abrading the first coat with either xxxx steel wool or preferably Scotchbrite type S #7448 Grey, Ultra fine. Solvents are vastly over rated and do more harm than good when attempting to clean a surface for bonding. In the aerospace industry there are reams of data supporting this position.
Ralph

It is a funny thing, but it seems like any time I have cleaned anything with a solvent and then put finish on it, I have had problems. IPO is about the only thing I haven't had problems with. Unless you know its dirty or contaminated I'd just scuff it and wipe it off with a clean cloth and proceed from there.

Ralph, I'm curious now, how do you clean the surface after abrading?

Dewey
YOU DON'T. Abrading is always your final operation. If you have a badly weathered, or severly dirty contaminated surface -- clean it with a soap solution or mild solvent, denatured alcohol. Then do your abrading job. There will be some dust, maybe a little abrasion residue here and there -- leave it- you can lightly brush away most of it with your abrading pad-- the remainder does no harm, it merely becomes a filler in your adhesive which is probably full of fillers anyway. Don't spoil your abraded surface by contaminating it with solvents or even supposedlly clean dry rags. You cannot improve upon a properly scotchbrite abraded surface. There will be an article in rodmaker expounding upon some of these principles if I can ever get my act together.
Ralph