Painting/priming process?

I want to add one other thing I've learned. Don't trust your eyes to determine if the surface is flat or not.  On the primer stage, close your eyes and feel the surface.  You will feel things you can't see, and those things will come out when you paint your project if they aren't taken care of.

Steven Kephart

Adire Audio 

Alright gentlemen,

I'm having some trouble too on Paint and Primer. This is what I've done so far. Any help I would love.

1. Bondo on the enclosure entirely.

2. Sanded with 60 grit, then150grit, last 220 grit.

3. Clean it with prep all, primed it with thick even coats.

4 Went back and fixed all the blemishes(more body work).

5 Wipe it down with prep all again, primed it again.

6 Hit it with 800 grit and clean it with prep all again.

7 Laid my first basecoat of victory red.

8 I'm stuck! Do I spray more Paint or do i sand the basecoat and then paint?

9 are you supposed to color sand the paint, then clear coat it? won't that take away the shine if you sand the paint?

or are you suppose to paint the enclosure then clear coat it after with no sanded, then sand the clear coat and buff?

Please help me!

u should lay down about 3 coats of paint to ensure an even color, but if u notice that u screwed up let the paint dry 24 hours and sand it down, u can paint over the dry paint with the same or compatible paint if u wait for it to cure the 24 hours, but the 3 coats should be laid down with about 15 minutes between each coat to allow the solvents to flash, basically it should be slightly tacky but not wet.  when u do get to the clearcoat stage u want to wetsand with 1000 gritt, the clearcoat doesn adhere right if u use higher than 1500 gritt.  Wetsanding will take away the shine, but it will come back with the clearcoat or even a good polish if u do it right.  u can pretty much eliminate the orange peel with a bit of effort by doing about 6 full wetcoats of paint so u have extra film build to sand down, then u can sand with 600 or 800 grit depending how bad the orange peel is and work your way up using as many grits as possible (if u can find 3000 gritt that would be the last grit but i used 2000 since thats the highest i could find) make sure u spend enough time with the finer grits to remove the scratches from the coarser grit.

Before

Wetsand 800/1000/2000, didnt come out that great since i didnt have any 1500 and i didnt spend enough time with the finer grit, in person u can see the small scratches (i'm going to resand now that i have finer paper though to get rid of the scratches)

After wetsand and Polish.  the paint still has a slight orange peel to it but is about 70% reduced, i was informed that this could be because of "ghosting" which brings back what the origional spray pattern was like, the "ghosting" occured because of the heat from the rotary polisher.  with orange peel the paint cures at slightly different times due to the high and low spots and with the heat from the polisher it caused the solvents to shrink or something which brought back the slight orange peel effect.  I'm going to hand polish the next attemp to see if it still happens.  It should be fine with clearcoat though as u dont need to polish it the same. still turned out da#m good though. 

smaller projects will be easier to perfect as u can concentrate more time into it.  The orange peel was pretty bad on this door due to gun and compressor problems...so i tried to fix it without repainting.  hope it helps some.  oh yea...i have about 6-7 full wetcoats on this door, took off a fair bit with the process and i have to remove some more.

Hey thanks placid warrior,

I laid about 5-6 coats of victory red on the enclosure. I'm letting it dry tonight and in the morning I'll wet sand with a 1000 grit, wipe clean, then spray 2 last coats. After that I'll hit 7-10 coats of clear, wetsand with 1000grit and spray 2 last coats of clear. Then buff to a shine.

Does that sound right? 

Am I suppose to sand the last coat of paint before I lay down the clear coat? From your post I think you said to wetsand with 1000grit the last coat of paint then spray the clear coats on? Why not spray clear right after the last coat of paint is on. Wouldn't it be better?

actually with the Paint color itself i believe the reccomended is around  600,  the 1000 grit is for before the clearcoat.  U can spray the clear right on the paint without sanding, the sanding is to give it bite if the paint has dried and will slightly reduce the orange peel as well.  u dont need to apply 2 more coats on the 5-6 u already sprayed, if u want to get a slightly smother finish then u can wetsand with 600 and then spray, otherwise just do the 1000 grit and clearcoat, the difference should be minimal.  how it turns out also depends on how u spray the paint, multiple coats of light misting will turn out worse than a few fairly heavy coats (just dont get runs) 

If u do spend the time to sand all the orange peel out, paint the 6-7 layers first, then do all the wetsanding, no need for wetsanding between coats.  If there is no desire to remove the orange peel then 3 coats followed by a 600 grit wetsand followed by another 2 coats is enough, the wetsand between coats helps, but so does the way u spray. 

If the wetsand job look like this picture than u havent effectivly removed the orange peel.  It will look fine, but if your really picky about orange peel the entire thing has to look dull (obviously)