Thread: Garage Painting for Dummies

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I figured I'd start this thread seeking advice in a general sense for that first home paint job. I'm looking to start painting the truck this Fall, and thought if someone could condense down the steps of painting it would be helpful. General stuff like what primers in what order, sanding starting with grit to finish, then any prep for base coat color, and sanding and drying times between coats, how many coat, to clear finish, and how many coats sanding with what grit to the actual buffing with what, compounds. I've got a book but it's older and doesn't seem to be what I read on people's threads here! Thanks, Steve.
I should say that I want to use a House of Kolors Kandy Purple paint. Thanks.

I'll be reading this thread to keep up with it. I painted my car in the garage in the past and found it to be tight and messy.
A buddy and I painted a 70 Ford Mach 1 under a wide carport about 2 years ago and worked out real nice. Before painting the first thing we did after wipeing down the car was to hose down the cement to keep the dust down and to keep the paint from sticking to the drive. I don't know if this will help you just letting you know how we did it.
Kurt

I will start by saying........if you are a rookie painter, you DO NOT want to start your first paint job in candy!!!.
Candy is the hardest paint to lay on correctly. If you do not have experience especially in HOK candy you can "tigerstripe" the paint, run it and lots of other things that can happen. I have been doing custom paint work off and on for 30+ yrs. And I won't attempt candy because I have not done enough candy paint jobs to be good at it. If you make a mistake with candy, you must start all over again, there is no fixing it.
If you practice with other paints, you can use HOK pearl. The pearls are more forgiving. There are many videos and books out there to help point you in the right direction but the main thing is to get experience and practice, pratice,practice.

Steve - It will take a LOT more then a condensed version to do this right. The new paints - they can get complicated. I would also like to steer you clear of HOK paints. This is not because they are bad, they aren't. It's because they are very expensive and usually not available at your local auto body supply. You would be better off with PPG, DuPont or R-M which you can buy locally. You also have another major problem - California!!!! They are starting to require water based paint with little or no VOC's and that's a bag of worms ,most of us elsewhere in the US don't have a clue about how to paint this stuff yet. And do you want to do a dark color as your first paint job?

Here's a great website for painting http://spi.forumup.org/index.php?mforum=spi and here's some more good info with lots of reading:http://www.crankshaftcoalition.com/w...y_and_exterior

(The exam will be tomorrow morning to see how much you learned)

Somthing I heard the other day.. Cal. using waterbase paint but the clear is still the same. I ask why bother

Steve, I hope to get some information as well with this thread. So thanks for posting.

The last car I Painted in the garage was a 79 Vette in 1990 and a lot has changed since then so I essentially would be starting all over again with primer, paint and the HVL set up. My garage had over spray still lying around when we moved 5 years later.


Richard

Not to be a wet blanket Steve, but I think the advice about not trying candy on the first go round is good advice. Even straight bc/cc or single stage is a challenge in a home garage, but candies generally need to be applied in very controlled conditions. Even a booth is no guarantee one will turn out good.

We'll see what some of the paint guys think, but I am betting candy might be too ambitious for the average hobbyist to get good results from, shooting at home.

Don

let your primer be your practice at spraying .. if it runs sand it off .. a little bit of practice goes a long way .. spray something laying flat .. then spray something standing up .. hoods /tops/ and deck lids rarely see runs in paint .. doors fenders and quarter panels get a lot .. use two part epoxy for your first effort ,, if it fails it`s hard enuff to do again in a few days .. i cant help you with body work .. i can find every speck of bondo i put in all my vehicles .. i can sand dents into perfectly straight panels .. that`s why most everything i own is white .. i sometimes count as i spray .. 1 , 2, 3 ,4 .. about 1 count per foot ..

Steve, I recently did "a driveway" paint job on my 32 high boy. I'm in California also so I had to go with the new waterborne paint. Here's some reference points from my experience.

I live in a metro area and needed to be sensative to the nieghborhood (dust, noise, paint smells, etc.). The best advice given to me was from Ken Thurm, to powdercoat everything that was in bare steel with powdercoat primer. This was less costly than paying for media blasting and also buying epoxy primer material. It was also quick, and gave me time to finish the metal work without eveything rusting. I just block sanded, filled, then epoxy primed over the powdercoat. They did a phosphate treatment after the media blast for rust and adhesion.

I did everything in my driveway from bare metal work, to final block sand and buff, everything "except for final shooting on the sealer, basecoat, clearcoat", which I hired out to a friend with a booth. I used PPG Envirobase ($350/gal). I painted 27 parts inside and out, and still had some of the original gallon of base color left over. I was very happy with the final results, but was worried going with the new waterborn paint for the first time. I would agree that on a street car you want to stay with a paint system that will allow you to make easy repairs in the future.

My single "most important" suggestion is to find a paint dealer that you are comfortable with and stick to their advice to the letter. It's not difficult, it was hard work but still interesting and fun project.

The cost of materials was way more costly than I expected. From sandpaper, to primer, sealer, clear, compound, etc., every trip to the paint store was $300 to $400. It's a very time consuming process, but if you take your time, don't rush any step, you will have a nice result and save many thousands of dollars. I completly understand why it costs $10 to $15K to have a nice paint job done. I worked almost every weekend for a year to do mine.

John brings up a point that Jay (Hotrodpaint) and others have mentioned.....you are going to spend more on supplies than you ever thought. Every time we walk out of the paint store we have a little box and a tab of several hundred dollars. Thank God they throw in the paint sticks and strainers!

I don't know if it has been mentioned in this thread, I may have missed it, but you want DRY air coming out of your compressor. Drain the tank before you start, if you have an inline dryer bleed it, and maybe even use one of those little ball dryers that screw right before the gun. With humidity in Summer you have to do all you can to keep moisture from getting into the paint.

Don

Originally Posted by Itoldyouso

John brings up a point that Jay (Hotrodpaint) and others have mentioned.....you are going to spend more on supplies than you ever thought. Every time we walk out of the paint store we have a little box and a tab of several hundred dollars. Thank God they throw in the paint sticks and strainers!

I don't know if it has been mentioned in this thread, I may have missed it, but you want DRY air coming out of your compressor. Drain the tank before you start, if you have an inline dryer bleed it, and maybe even use one of those little ball dryers that screw right before the gun. With humidity in Summer you have to do all you can to keep moisture from getting into the paint.

Don

I didn't even touch on the cost of supplies. Just to spray paint cost me in the neighborhood of a thousand plus bucks - and that's only the equipment which included a 50' copper line and valving, two dryers, a supplied air personal safety system, two separate paint guns(primer and finish), shoot suits, face masks. Then there was the 7 quarts of DuPont BC paint at ~$150/quart, the 6 quarts of CC at $50/quart plus the required reducers for more $$. A gallon of Rage Gold plastic filler was ~$40 then the 4 quarts of epoxy primer at~$50 quart and the dozens of sheets of sandpapers at $1-$2 a sheet (80 - 2000 grit). Then there's the cut and buff materials - a 7" buffer at $250, pads at $12-$15 each and the Presta 1500 and swirl removers at $25 each. And of course 3-4 rolls of 3M 'green' masking tape at $7 each. And that's just the big stuff I can think of right now

Every time I walked into my supplier, his big smile told me that he was going to be able to pay the employees out of the gross that day instead of his pocket

Thanks guys for all the info. I have oscillated on this home paint job for over a year now.
Strategy 1 has been to strip everything to bare metal myself, hit it with Mar hyde rust converter, then bondo and primer as I go. When one section or panel is done, I hit it with epoxy primer. Next the plan was to get some of the color I want to paint with and do the interior or a fender and see how it goes.

Strategy 2 - is to stop after getting everything in primer and take it to a Maaco, or Miracle Auto paint place and pay more to have them clean up the body and paint using my brand of paint.(a couple of hot rodders around here have gone this route and ended up with beautiful paint jobs for under 5k.

I really appreciate the warnings about Candy and HOK. Not set in stone on this one.I think I can still buy paint from Summit that is non h2o based as well.

Lastly - I'd still love to hear the process for sanding and painting to give it a try on a small panel. Thanks everybody, Steve.

I guess you failed the 8:00am test then

I've been stocking upon body work supplies myself the last few months.
Got my duraglass and sanding stuff, couple differant air sanders mask, spray guns, driers
3m tape. I thought I had some primmer allready but it will wrinkel with the new paint.
So my paint is gonna be over a grand with the primmer,3 paint colors, a inner clear and the clear at the end. Life used to be so cheap.
Kurt

This is what i do. Hope it helps

Epoxy primer bare metal 2 coats
Key epoxy with 120 grit and do filler work, grits starting at 80, 120 & 180
apply 2 more coats of epoxy followed wet on wet by hi build primer
Apply 2 pack stopper if needed
Flat primer dry with a block and with guide coat with 360, finish with 600 for straight colour or 800 for mettalic
Paint and then flat & polish.

TIPS
Steer clear of the polyester surfacers if its a steel car as they suck up moisture like a sponge, I sometimes use them on glass cars but it needs to be sealed as soon as possible.

Try and stick to 1 product line

Read the spec sheets

Get a proper mixing stick

Don't use cheap filler

Get your primers tinted to body colour as the stonechips won't show so bad

Use good quality masking tape, the cheap ones leave the glue behind

Use a block when flatting not your hand

When checking the surface for irregularites use the other hand to what your flatting with

Use a good 2 pack stopper

When applying primer/paint get the area up to temp

Buy some Red & Grey scotchbrites