Hot Rod Forum banner

Fixing Wet Sanding Oops

1K views 7 replies 5 participants last post by  Rambo_The_Dog 
#1 ·
I painted my '50 Chev P/U with Dupont SS Urethane, stock color, no flake. As an amateur in too much of a hurry and without a nice gun, I got some peel and dust nibs. Started to wet sand and, being the amateur, I have sanded through to primer in a couple spots. What is the best way to fix? Do I need to primer spots and recoat or can I just scuff and recoat? Will I have a problem with blending if I just mask off around the damage and spray? The paint went on about 3 weeks ago and I may not be able to paint again until spring due to unheated garage booth. Thanks in advance for any advice.
 
#2 ·
As long as you didn't go all the way through to bare metal I'd scuff the entire panel and re-coat. Don't try to mask off just the bad spot as it will show when you're done. Just scuff the panel and re-shoot.
 
#3 ·
I see no reason to have to spray primer, if you didn't go thru to bare metal. On the other hand, if you still have some of the same paint left, I would probably spray the whole panel. If you try to mask off a section of a panel, and just shoot there, I think it would be obvious.

Aaron
 
#4 ·
Thanks for the replies. I do have the same paint and did not go through to metal. Unfortunately the damage is on the cowl in front of the windshield of '50 Chev cab. This means the panel is basically the whole cab, that is to say connected as one piece to outer cowl sides and up the front windshield pillar to the roof and down the cab back etc. All for a spot smaller than a dime. Do you think masking off at the lower bend at the windshield pillar would be that noticeable? Or should I just respray the entire cab? And again no worries about spraying just paint over fully cured paint if scuffed and clean. Thanks for any advice from someone that is trying hard to learn this stuff.
 
#6 ·
Nifty 50 said:
I painted my '50 Chev P/U with Dupont SS Urethane, stock color, no flake. As an amateur in too much of a hurry and without a nice gun, I got some peel and dust nibs. Started to wet sand and, being the amateur, I have sanded through to primer in a couple spots. What is the best way to fix? Do I need to primer spots and recoat or can I just scuff and recoat? Will I have a problem with blending if I just mask off around the damage and spray? The paint went on about 3 weeks ago and I may not be able to paint again until spring due to unheated garage booth. Thanks in advance for any advice.
This stuff does take some patience!

First - how many coats and amount of paint did you get on the truck? What grit/type of sandpaper are you using?

Second...Did you wet sand the entire truck yet? If you just started on the cowl and sanded through to primer I would do the rest to make sure there are not other areas - or so many that it would be best to reshoot the entire truck!

If it is limited to the cowl area - you should be able paint the cowl and blend up on the "A" pillars as this is a narrow area _ BTW what color is it?

It may not be perfect but if thats what you're going for you probably wouldn't be doing it yourself in an unheated garage!
 
#7 ·
Rambo_The_Dog said:
It may not be perfect but if thats what you're going for you probably wouldn't be doing it yourself in an unheated garage!
Rambo, good call. No, not perfect, it will be a driver and it will be used as a truck. But it is uncanny that you can tell yourself, good enough, and then say wait, no it isn't. I consider this my practice rig before I start on my '64 Lemans Convert. And boy have I been learning. I do have a home made plastic and dry wall booth, just no heat. The truck is a full resto with some vintage upgrades on engine and brakes. Done it all myself. Two years since complete tear down. Color is stock "mariner blue" (a little on the dark side of medium blue). Shot one light, two medium to heavy coats. Started with 1000 grit and went to 1500, was going to finish with 2000. Wife came to garage and said, 'looks like their is still some orange peel here and here.' So back I go with the the sanding with 1500, I will show her, oops, guess I showed me.
 
#8 ·
Nifty 50 said:
Rambo, good call. No, not perfect, it will be a driver and it will be used as a truck. But it is uncanny that you can tell yourself, good enough, and then say wait, no it isn't. I consider this my practice rig before I start on my '64 Lemans Convert. And boy have I been learning. I do have a home made plastic and dry wall booth, just no heat. The truck is a full resto with some vintage upgrades on engine and brakes. Done it all myself. Two years since complete tear down. Color is stock "mariner blue" (a little on the dark side of medium blue). Shot one light, two medium to heavy coats. Started with 1000 grit and went to 1500, was going to finish with 2000. Wife came to garage and said, 'looks like their is still some orange peel here and here.' So back I go with the the sanding with 1500, I will show her, oops, guess I showed me.
What kind of spray gun where you using? Air pressure? Temperature?

Hmmm - single stage with a color sand and buff - I would have put at least 1-2 more medium to heavy wet coats of color to start with...it makes me wonder if you're not going to have lots of areas of trouble sanding through...depending on the amount of peel and imperfections...

If you can salvage the rest and have some of the original paint left you should be able to reshoot the cowl and be ok as far as matching. There's tricks to blending the paint and I haven't worked with the Dupont SS in a while, blending with a BC color is a bit easier.

If it looks more like you're needing to re-shoot the rig - I'd open the paint by scuffing lightly with 400 wet dry, let it sit a couple of weeks (or longer) to let the solvents escape. Then block sand the body with 400 grit til primer starts showing through the color then seal (if needed) and reshoot the color.

Its a lot of work and paints not cheap but you don't sound like you're afraid of jumping in and getting your hands dirty!

Seriously whenever I do a high quality paint job - I ALWAYS paint the car 2x in the above fashion...In my experience no matter how many times you block primer - due to the color and reflective properties you always miss something - or some part of the underlying work shrinks back and you just can't see something until you get some shiny stuff back on there!
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top