I basically have two jobs right now; working at Apple by day, and being a car painter at night and on the weekends. I’ve been working really hard to get the primer all sanded smooth and just perfect for painting the color. I tried to do some “block sanding” (good idea, Mark!) by getting some foam sanding blocks and using those to hold 400 grit wet/dry sandpaper on and wet sanding till it was perfect. I think it helped, and I’m glad I did it, as it also let me get rid of some orange peel left by the primer. After I did it with 400, I did it again with 600. I also filled in a few small indentations I found, but in the end I missed a few small dimples that didn’t show up until after I hit it with color. I could have caught those by doing true block sanding by first spraying a light coat of a dark color over the primer and sanding until it was all off (the low spots being left dark, meaning they are low spots). I masked the top of the car off and sprayed the fenders and lower body all nice and metallic red.
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I had some problems with the door looking striped when you looked at it just at a certain angle. I solved that by putting more coats on (4 or 5 I think). One side still has a little bit of a stripe, but it is hard to see it. I may paint one more coat on to get rid of it. I tried to take a picture of the problem, but it doesn’t show up. It just looks glassy smooth (and this side is perfectly glassy smooth — the finish turned out REALLY nice!).
The fenders have 3 coats on them. One has a little dimple at the top, but you’d have to look hard to see it.
It looks great so far.
Note to self: the primer goes on really thick and slightly orange peel’ish, no matter what I do. Sanding to 400 grit seems sufficient to get a good finish (I don’t think 600 was necessary), and I need to spray with a wide pattern to avoid stripes. The wide pattern is when the gun nozzle is slightly turned in from level; too far in, and the pattern is too “tight” and doesn’t fan out enough.
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Looking good, the primer sure hlps show imperfections
trick to painting and getting it to fan just right
lookslike you are figuring it out
have a great fourth
dad
Going with a different color on the top?
-jcr
hey john, it’ll be silver on top. I have it all masked and ready to paint; tomorrow morning will be judgement day to see how it all turns out!
I ended up painting one more coat on the doors, and I realized I also wanted the frontal small area red (so I did that today). There’s still some small striping on the sides, but I don’t want to resand and start over, so it is how it ends up being.
corbin