The great general painting thread

[DoomBuggy]

OK time to finish this up.

Perhaps one of the hardest parts of painting is getting that glass like finish once you've laid your paint down. My techniques are a combination of basic mechanics and a lot of feel!

If this was a one color paint job it would be easy, you would just need a medium coat of clear, which you would then lightly sand just to remove any orange peel, gnats, or garage dust and then buff out. However here we have multiple layers of paint to deal with and a lot of detail work to boot.

The techniques I use will work with either, there is just a lot more finesse when you have all these layers.

So to start with what I did was lay a tack coat and then two medium to heavy coats of the clear. This is one of the areas where a catalyzed paint comes in handy, as it is a chemical cure rather that an evaporative cure you can go a bit heavier while still knowing it will dry evenly.

TO do this job I will use several clean rags, several grits of sandpaper, 800, 1000, 1500, and 2000 to be exact. My big buffer stays in the case and this little Harbor Freight unit comes out. I will also use two grades of cutting material, one is a heavy cut the other is a fine finishing cut.



Because we did light sands between each coat of paint and because a catalyzed clear tends to "lay out" when curing, there is absolutely minimal orange peel so sanding should go fast. To start I take the 800 grit and rip off a 2" x 4" square, the work we will do is all with our fingers. I soak that in water as I get my towels and such ready.

Once I am set up I lightly go over the whole area, I am just looking to dull the finish a little bit, this will server as a guide to where more work needs to go. As I move from the side tot he front, to the other side I make sure to dry off the area I worked on. This allows one to see the low spots. And low and behold there is a small run on the front.



I will work a bit more with the 800 going VERY lightly and keep LOTS of water on the area I am working on.



Generally speaking once I scuff the whole project I then work on small areas at a time.

[DoomBuggy]

What I am trying to do is feel the surface below where I am sanding, I want to feel the ridge where one color meets the other so I know I am still cutting into clear and not color. IF YOU GO TO FAR you are repainting the tank, period.

After a few minutes I have knocked down any heavy spots and that run now looks like this. As a note, on runs I used one finger and lightly do a circular motion right on the nub, your wife will appreciate the practice you are getting! The whole tank should look like this, the flat areas are uniformly dull and there are a lot of shiny areas where there the colors meet.



It is now time to change over to the 1000 grit. This is the last of the heavy cutting papers, be sure to pre-soak your pieces. BTW, it took 4 pieces of the 800 to do the entire tank. So now using the same technique I work on the areas where we have shiny spots. I do not expect to get all of the out, but you should get 80-90% of the area dull. Notice how there is very little of the run left and the design area is getting more even.



So far I have a total of about 15 minutes of time into this. At this point I switch over to the 1500 grit, I am not expecting this to take much material off and I go evenly across the whole tank. LOTS of water here, you don't want a little goober to scratch the surface. So again I will want to feel the tank underneath my fingers and just sand long enough that I don't feel the paper pulling against anything.



As a final touch I break out a couple of piece of the 2000 and again just lightly touch the whole tank keeping that circular motion going and keeping it really wet. ( She said ).

As you can see there are still a few glossy spots in the design, I felt I had gone as far as I could and had two choices here. If this had been a customers bike I would have shot another coat of clear back after the 1000 grit, but I know that only a couple of people will know that I cheated here.

[DoomBuggy]

There are three pads in the picture above, heavy, medium, and fine. I load up the heavy with the Diamond Cut compound, what I do is squeeze some lines around the pad, then take a finger and rub it in until there is a light even coat across the entire pad. It seems to throw less off. On the little buffer I set the speed to 3 and I apply a light pressure. I am not kidding when I say it takes less then 5 minutes to go across the entire tank. If I see an even, semi-gloss finish then I can change pads to the medium pad and move to the fine-cut, otherwise I will add a little more compound and make another pass.

With the Fine-Cut I use even less pressure, seriously I am moving it slowly across the surface just pressing hard enough to feel the pull of the machine. Once again, because of all the prep we have done this step only takes a few minutes. Once that is done I put some good old Johnson's paste wax on the fine pad and take the time to get an even coat on there. I like the Johnson's as I also use it on all the slides for my woodworking tools, lol.

Once that sets to a nice haze I get a clean 100% cotton towel with the seams cut off and polish it all up. Here is the final project out in the sunlight.




And with that I open this up for any questions.

[Hoghead]

And with that I open this up for any questions.

Yep. Can you do my Pan next? the girlfriend loves the art deco logo, she's impressed with how it got it's metallic look.

[DoomBuggy]

Sure reach out to me after July 1st,

You design it, I can paint it, lol