Color sanding question
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easy now…lets not start throwing that “crap” term around..
:whistle: 😛
If I had to polish all my jobs, let alone sand any thing I painted with 400, I would be fired.
I prefer P180 to start my colorsanding
Yeah, you’re right.
Those guys don’t know what they’re doing,
That guy at SPI who wrote “the perfect paint job”
surely doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
All those cars that won paint awards
were just lucky.
My 35 yrs experience could never offer anything here
so I won’t try.A good buffer doeth turn the average guy into a great painter :p
Yes, I am sure every award winning show car was sanded with 400 and then worked up to 1500 or finer. And the ultra thin layer of clear that is left after all that sanding probably looks pretty good and will hold up forever…
I wish I didn’t go to school, or do an apprenticeship, I could have learned all the “right” ways on the internet and be the next Chip Foose. Now where is my Pro Form clear coat and lacquer putty, I have another show car to start…better stock up on the 400 grit now.
it would take me 35 years to buff out 400 grit as well.
I hate buffing. I would just as soon clip and reclear, unless your looking for the show finish. The 3000 grit Trizcut makes it a lot easier, after the 1500 wet. You kinda have to have a FEEL for the spraying. I try to move like the robots you see on the HOW it’s MADE show. Looking at the spray as it hits the surface, knowing where my gun is headed. Jimmo4life has a great stroke too. RULE: Anytime you add reducer you are taking something away from the solids and performance. My Matrix mixes 4 to 1 and that’s it. No reducer in my clears ever. I prefer to move faster with a 1.4 tip, but some painters move slower with a 1.3 Kinda depends on your flow of movement. Make long strokes, I used to paint a panel at a time. Now, I walk the car from front to back like Jimmo4life videos. He is the only online painter I have seen that spays like me. Another RULE: You better make sure your gun is spraying a perfect pattern, or you ain’t got a chance. If it shoots a heavy stream up or down… your paint is doomed. Invest is a paint gun cleaning machine. Test you spray pattern everytime. There is a fine line between dry/wet/ and runs. The paint needs to flow a bit after it is on. Kinda lay out. Bill
[quote=”Ben” post=27062]Yes, I am sure every award winning show car was sanded with 400 and then worked up to 1500 or finer. And the ultra thin layer of clear that is left after all that sanding probably looks pretty good and will hold up forever…
I wish I didn’t go to school, or do an apprenticeship, I could have learned all the “right” ways on the internet and be the next Chip Foose. Now where is my Pro Form clear coat and lacquer putty, I have another show car to start…better stock up on the 400 grit now.[/quote]
Don’t think I saw anyone saying use lacquer putty for show cars. :huh:
Anyway….I’m not sure on the arguements here…….there are just 2 different mindsets. Does anyone believe that you can win the Riddler Award with an out of the gun finish? Jeez…they even cut and buff the frames and suspension components, if painted. There are people that compete for that award that aren’t “popluar” or “known” builders.
Are the guys/gals that win these big awards any less skilled than the guy painting everyday for the majority of his life? I don’t think so and vise versa.
:silly:
[quote=”Ben” post=27062]
I wish I didn’t go to school, or do an apprenticeship, I could have learned all the “right” ways on the internet and be the next Chip Foose. Now where is my Pro Form clear coat and lacquer putty, I have another show car to start…better stock up on the 400 grit now.[/quote]Wow, all that knowledge and never heard of sanding clear with 400.
you really need to get out more.
Go to the car shows and start asking about sanding the clear
to some of the really nice show car owners like I have.
Sure a lot being sanded with 400 or even 320 first.
And you’ve never heard of it or think it’s wrong???
wow! where have you been?
Perfect example of someone that”knows it all”
Can’t learn anything new, that’s for sure.[quote=”Ben” post=27056]If I had to polish all my jobs, let alone sand any thing I painted with 400, I would be fired.[/quote]
Exactly,
you’re doing collision repair, not “show car”, Big Difference.
But for someone to say sanding clear with 800 grit is a no no,
that’s just plain wrong.[quote=”JCClark” post=27072][quote=”Ben” post=27062]
I wish I didn’t go to school, or do an apprenticeship, I could have learned all the “right” ways on the internet and be the next Chip Foose. Now where is my Pro Form clear coat and lacquer putty, I have another show car to start…better stock up on the 400 grit now.[/quote]Wow, all that knowledge and never heard of sanding clear with 400.
you really need to get out more.
Go to the car shows and start asking about sanding the clear
to some of the really nice show car owners like I have.
Sure a lot being sanded with 400 or even 320 first.
And you’ve never heard of it or think it’s wrong???
wow! where have you been?
Perfect example of someone that”knows it all”
Can’t learn anything new, that’s for sure.[/quote]The problem I am having is this 320-400 grit non sense. Why would you sand that coarse and how much mil build is left when you are done (if you suceed at removing those scratches via sanding/polishing). The average car at most car shows is a finish off the gun, good or bad, period. The numerous people I know that do the high end restoration stuff either clear, then sand with 800 or so and re-clear…or, if they polish the entire car, it is performed with more suitable grits than 320-400. 800 is really coarse, and in a pinch if you have a bad fawk-up you might use it in a small area. But to say that everyone doing award winning jobs is polishing everything and starting the sanding process with 400 is simply wrong.
The collision side and restoration side are somewhat different, but a good painter (irregardless of background) should be able to get a finish off the gun that is pretty damn good, even for a show type car. Will it win the riddler award without being wetsanded and polished? Maybe, maybe not, but in any case, it can still be pretty nice.
I also find your lack of respect for the collision painters here to be unnecessary. There are several collison painters on this site who occasionally do resto type work and achieve excellent show quality finishes off the gun. Saying I/them are narrow minded is, rather, a reflection of yourself.
Open your mind are realize that many people do things differently, and there is often more than 1 correct way…but starting wet sanding with 320-400 is not one of them. There are a lot of corners people cut and methods that aren’t recommended. Not because they can’t work, but because there is such potential for problems to occur, maybe even problems that have been overlooked, such as delamination due to in adequate film thickness.
:whistle:I had a guy bring his 58 Caddy to show me hew nice it was. It was great, tangerine color tri coat. I asked him “how many times did he paint it” He replied that he blended it in 7 times.Jeeez, As a real world painter, I have to get it right the first time. I saw a restoration show where they pulled an old enamel BMW out of the barn and they started with 400, and worked the shine back from there. It had to be thin in the end, If you attack a run with 1500, seems like often you go through next to it before you flatten the run itself. Some times I’ll knock off the bulk of a run with 600, then go finer. If you got 6 coats of clear, I guess you could start with 400. As you go finer and finer you end up with a 3000 grit finish before you start buffing. If my finish was so bad I needed 400 to get it flat, I would just repaint it. My 2 cents
I have no disrespect for collision painters, I am one.
I don’t do show car work, I don’t sand my customers cars with 400,
it’s unnecessary for sure for collision repair.
Most cars I do don’t get buffed much, I do a lot of bumpers and seldom
do any buffing on them for sure. That’s not the point.
All the cars I’ve seen at the National Street Rod meet here in my home town
have been cut and buffed. I have never seen one that wasn’t so far.
Most started with coarse grits.
I have tried the 400 and can see the difference for a really straight paint job.
I tried it on my own car to see. It does make a difference.
You can sand with 400 after only 4 coats of clear and still have enough mills.
Don’t knock it till you tried it.BTW: No such word as irregardless (LOL)
I have been to hundreds of car shows in my area as well as some big cities,even had a couple of my paint jobs win best paint at street machine weekend in my home town.I have also seen many award winners at big shows that I attended like nace and sema.Not all “showcars” are the same,I would say 1 in 100 is actually worth having that title.I always see plenty of sand scratches,haze,swirls,dirt,dried up polish,etc on most of these so called “high end jobs”that look worse to me than a damn nice off the gun finish.Don’t even get me started on the crappy metal work,panel fit/gaps etc 😛
I always tell people if they want it perfect it has to be sanded and polished(very few people have the talent to pull it off).Maybe I’m a hacky collision painter but I would rather have a job that was sanded and recleared VS a cut and buffed job any day.
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