What Results Can I Expect With Painting

[c_r_thomson 0]

Hi all, some little idiot decided it would be big and clever to see if his house key would fit in the wing of my car. It didn't! however he did continue to try all the way along!

 

The lacquer was already coming of at the top of this panel so i was considering painting the whole thing using the aerosols from halfrauds.

 

Anyone done this with reasonable outcome?

[c_r_thomson 0]

Paintguy? Anyone?

[Rom 0]

Painting with cans can provide ok results. If your good with them. Personally i suck with them,i may aswell let a child do it

I dont think youll get it looking perfect, but certainly passable id think.

[steve@cornwall 100]

Paintguy? Anyone?

 

What colour?

 

Doing a complete panel by panel spray of my cherry red with aerosols-will put up some pics tomorrow of panels done if it helps.

 

You can get a superb finish if you're prepared to spend a lot of time cutting back the applied paint with fine grade wet and dry- it tends to come out of the can as if you've drunk paint and spat it at the panel.

 

Colour match probably won't be great against a 15 yr old car, though, so test first by spraying something flat and comparing to the car.

 

Spend enough time though and a complete spray for under £200 is possible, although I've probably put 20-30 hours into two panels alone.

[c_r_thomson 0]

Graphite grey!

 

Some pics of your work would be great.

 

I don't mind putting the work in after all, i'm Scottish and shelling out for stuff i can try myself always pains me

[steve@cornwall 100]

Graphite grey!

 

Some pics of your work would be great.

 

I don't mind putting the work in after all, i'm Scottish and shelling out for stuff i can try myself always pains me

 

 

get some pics tomorrow. I found that ford graphite grey matched my old cti with paint from hlfords, BTW, pug colour was too "blue"

[steve@cornwall 100]

get some pics tomorrow. I found that ford graphite grey matched my old cti with paint from hlfords, BTW, pug colour was too "blue"

 

 

 

 

 

Needs a polish again, but you should get a reasonale impression.

 

Rear quarter and door only re-painted at the moment

Edited September 14, 2006 by steve@cornwall

[pugpete1108 62 1 Cars]

you can get a good finish from a can, but you need quite alot and and many coats , i did a wing on a cavalier i used to have and to be honest it looked better than the rest of the car.

[Guest cknotty]

I might have a go at respraying my Graphite bonnet at some point in the near future. Current spray can finish (not by me ) is somewhat less than perfect: you can see how often I have to open and shut the bonnet by the paint wearing down to the primer in between the headlights! Will use some lacquer this time though...

 

Chris

[c_r_thomson 0]

That job looks spot on mate! i've seen paintshops do worse jobs. Nice one!

 

Like you said before, must be in the prep work. So you reckon the halfords pug grey asn't a good match?

 

Nice dog by the way! (Springer?)

[steve@cornwall 100]

you can get a good finish from a can, but you need quite alot and and many coats , i did a wing on a cavalier i used to have and to be honest it looked better than the rest of the car.

 

yeah,at least 2 large cans of colour per panel- I ordered 2 cases of "red 32" from my locl factors!

[steve@cornwall 100]

That job looks spot on mate! i've seen paintshops do worse jobs. Nice one!

 

Like you said before, must be in the prep work. So you reckon the halfords pug grey asn't a good match?

 

Nice dog by the way! (Springer?)

 

That took a lot of flatting of the new paint- scotchpad, 1500 grad wet and dry and t-cut. I reckon a machine polish would really set it off too! I have deliberately not laquered it.

 

I found the ford colour a better match to my graphite. I also picked up a tip for metallicpainting years ago, which is to start spraying 6 inches before the panel and not stop 'till you're 6 inches past the end of it.

only spray in one direction and build up in many coats in non-overlapping strokes. keeps the concentration of metallic particles even and reflecting the light uniformly. Two joinng panels ,one sprayed left to right, and one right to left can look different shades. worked well for me. If a little wasteful on paint. Watch a pro "flick" the gun effortlessly and then see me muddle through with a can and you can see that every little knack helps

 

Yup! that's Frasier our mud-monster, interior wrecking springer! "the foreman"

[Paintguy 0]

Some good tips there Steve.

 

Painting past the end of a panel is particularly important, for a number of reasons. Firstly it'll damp down any inevitable dust / overspray on the surrounding masking, preventing it from blowing back into your job later. Also, if you paint just to the edge of a panel, you're arm speed naturally slows just before you get to it, leaving the paint thicker there. This can lead to all sorts of problems, including runs and colour difference.

 

Putting the paint on in a uniform manner is also important as you say, especially with metalics. Give two painters the same pot of paint, and they can come out with surprisingly different shades. In fact, give me a tin of silver, and I could get several different shades out of it, just by varying application technique, and things like air movement and temperature.

 

You don't nessesarily have to do it with all the coats though. You can throw on a couple of cross coats (2 coats sprayed at 90 degrees to each other) just to obliterate the colour underneath, and then finish off with one or two of your lighter, more carefully applied ones, to even up the metalic.

 

-------------

 

To answer the original question - as you can see by the pics above, a great job can be done with aerosols, but as with anything, you either have to trust to beginners luck, or play it safe and practice practice practice!

 

Try and find some old panels (scrap yard, bodyshop) and try your skills out on those first. If you make an absolute balls of it first time around, at least there's no harm done

[c_r_thomson 0]

Thanks for the fantastic advice guys! I've got to give it a go now.

 

I'll start stocking up on the stuff needed now and hopefully have the mechanical bits finished soon so i can get painting! (Well.... prepping anyway)

 

If i can find this thread again when i'm doing the job, i'll post up some pics

 

Thanks again all

[steve@cornwall 100]

This is what I mean by "looks like crap straight out of the can":- couple of hours cutting it'll look o.k!

 

 

Will post pic after cutting/polishing

Edited September 19, 2006 by steve@cornwall

[Paintguy 0]

Sorry Steve, I had to show the difference a spray gun can make:

 

 

(click for BIG pics)

 

Both are straight from the gun (£400 worth of SATA RP2000 digital for colour coats, and a £300 Iwata W400 for the lacquer)

[steve@cornwall 100]

Sorry Steve, I had to show the difference a spray gun can make:

 

 

(click for BIG pics)

 

Both are straight from the gun (£400 worth of SATA RP2000 digital for colour coats, and a £300 Iwata W400 for the lacquer)

 

 

Think my booth is cheaper than yours too!- That hatch will take me about 7 hrs to get close to acceptable but only about £25 , with the whole respray costing about 1/2 a spray gun! I'll then spend the next 6 months praying to every god going that it doesn't all craze and leave the whole car looking like a scrapyard leper!!!

 

I got several casual quotes for painting which were encouraging, until I tred to book the car in- when proper pricing took all quotes around the £1k mark- I'd have loved to get a proper job done (plus just drop it off and pick it up all shiny a week later) but just don't have the cash.

 

Worth every penny if it looked like that though!!!

[steve@cornwall 100]

 

 

 

 

[Paintguy 0]

Much better

 

It's amazing what a bit of spit and polish can do

[c_r_thomson 0]

What a difference!

 

What technique/products did you use to get that finish?

 

Oh yeah, and how long did you leave the paint to harden before cutting?

Edited September 21, 2006 by c_r_thomson

[steve@cornwall 100]

What a difference!

 

What technique/products did you use to get that finish?

 

Oh yeah, and how long did you leave the paint to harden before cutting?

 

 

Cut back with wet and dry paper- 240- then 400 then 1800 grades- by hand (no block as I found this thinned the raised edges too much) with lots of fresh water and rinsing. Then a good rub with t-cut and some mer polish (should hold 'till the next shower ) three and a half large paint tins on there- one was used on edges alone to stop rubbing through.

 

Less than 24 hrs between painting and cutting!

 

Would I be wrong to suggest a couple of coats of lacquer on the colour coat before cutting with a metallic finish?- i.e don't rub down the paint, but the lacquer? ( I have found the metallic a lot less "lumpy" out of the can)

[Paintguy 0]

Yes Steve. No need to sand the colour before putting on the lacquer.

 

For an 'ultimate' finish, you could: colour, lacquer, sand, re-lacquer.

[smckeown 1]

Yes Steve. No need to sand the colour before putting on the lacquer.

 

For an 'ultimate' finish, you could: colour, lacquer, sand, re-lacquer.

 

interesting. Would never have expected not to cut after spraying. Always assumed it would be before laquer. How come andy ?

 

Sean

[steve@cornwall 100]

interesting. Would never have expected not to cut after spraying. Always assumed it would be before laquer. How come andy ?

 

Sean

 

sanding matallic coats makes the paint very patchy, think it's because it upsets the even distribution of the metal particles?

[Paintguy 0]

interesting. Would never have expected not to cut after spraying. Always assumed it would be before laquer. How come andy ?

 

Sean

It's extremely rare to get a 100% flat and blemish free finish. Sometimes the item just needs a light sanding to remove any dust that has landed in it, but more often than not some amount of 'orange peel' occurs. A big part of this is down to the underlying paint that the clearcoat (lacquer) goes on to. Although lacquer flows out very well, if it's going over the top of a 'bumpy' surface, then it'll just reduce this bumpiness, rather than completely eliminate it. (note the use of very technical terms )

 

As Steve said, sanding the colour coats before application of lacquer can cause odd effects in metalic colours, so it's not the done thing. Sanding and polishing the lacquer afterwards is the way to go.

 

The double lacquer technique I mention above is a way around it for an extreme finish (show cars etc) All the unevenness is sanded out of the first application of lacquer, then the second one flows out like glass, as it's going over a perfectly flat surface. Even then, it's usual to sand and polish again, for perfect results.