New to painting

[BA3]

I though "hmmm" meant that you had another idea but guess i was wrong.
Anyhow, thought i´d share the pointlessness of putting the valve on the side of the tank, rather then the bottom.
Usually when i opened the valve while the tank was still under a little bit of pressure, some water came out, but not much. So yesterday when i opened the valve after the pressure had gone, the water started dripping out. Ofcourse the only way that would happen is that water had filled the tank up to the valve hight, so i took the tank away from the compressor, opened the valve and tilted the tank. After that it took quite a while for the water to drain out...all i can say is there was a lot of it.

Unfortunetly i dont have a welder at the moment, but soon as i get one, i will get rid of the valve on the side and but one on the bottom...untill that i just have to take the tank away from the compressor and pour the water out before any painting can be done. Also dont know what to do about the rusting of the tank´s insides.

(Lets be clear that i didnt but the valve on the side, although i said that it had to be on the bottom, the guy still welded it on the side just because there was a hole there before...he´s an idiot anyway so guess that was the problem too)

 

[BA3]

It´s a little orange peely on the sides but i think im gonna paint it one more time when all the doors/hood/bootlid are attached. Need more light and less dust

Couple of dents still remain, guess i couldnt get em´ all but still pretty good for a first go at this.

 

[eil]

looking pretty good there well done.

 

[BA3]

Yes, i´d say its acceptable for a first timer

I´m planning on spraying the car one more time like i said in the last post, but that probably wont happen before spring because the weather is getting a bit cold (it was even colder on the days i sprayed the car but nvm that)

Here are some questions again:

1.What grit should i use to go over the paint before i´ll spray it again? Thinking of dry sanding this time because dont want the sludge everywhere again.

2.I had a few runs on the panels and one on the car so im gonna have to fix that. What grit should i use with those? Thought i´d start with 240 but what do you guys think?

3.How to apply the last coat/coats? Do i spray a tack coat again and full wet coats on top of that or should i just thin the paint a little bit more and hope it would flow out smooth?

Was thinking of thinning the paint more because although flat surfaces were almost orange peel free - the vertical surfaces had a lot of orange peel...but that may just be because of the bad lighting i had and couldnt really see it all right.

 

[eil]

I woulden`t go rougher than 400 ish dry or 800 wet myself if you are putting just the topcoat on.

 

[BA3]

Now that its finally a little bit warmer, i have sanded down the runs and other imperfections. The question i have is that is 16-18 degrees enough for painting?
The paint is synthetic/alkyd enamel like said before.

And here is a crappy pic of what it looks like right now, in the middle of sanding the paint.

 

[ColourweldUK]

To be honest although it says on the tin 3:1 mix paint to thinners, all of the synthetics enamels we sell (and we sell a lot) are only thined to a maximum of 10%. Drop the thinners back a bit. Also drying times on synthetcis are normnally 1-2 hours as this says 45 mins, seems like some kind of hybrid of synthetic and the cheaper Alkyd Quick Air Drying Enamels. Play around with the thinners and give it a touch longer to dry before overcoating with your 2nd coat.

Just realised you have moved on from the first few posts. Decent job you have done with it

 

[BA3]

To be honest although it says on the tin 3:1 mix paint to thinners, all of the synthetics enamels we sell (and we sell a lot) are only thined to a maximum of 10%. Drop the thinners back a bit. Also drying times on synthetcis are normnally 1-2 hours as this says 45 mins, seems like some kind of hybrid of synthetic and the cheaper Alkyd Quick Air Drying Enamels. Play around with the thinners and give it a touch longer to dry before overcoating with your 2nd coat.

Just realised you have moved on from the first few posts. Decent job you have done with it

Actually i found myself adding even more thinners than the tin says, the paint consistensy varies with each tin i think. With the hardener, the ratio is said to be 100 parts of paint, 20 parts hardener and 10 parts thinner.
Drying time of 45 minutes? I think you looked at the part where it said at 80 degrees, at 20 degrees it takes 24 hours to dry. With hardener its suppose to be 7 hours.

I was going to paint this weekend but the weather turned on me and now its raining, oh well, better luck next time.

 

[BA3]

Sprayed it again yesterday, messed it up again. How do you know when the paint viscosity is right? When i thin it like the spec says it looks way too thick, but idk how much more should i thin it.
As for messing up, the gun started to sputter half way through the job. Im getting depressed with this

 

[steveo3002]

id just add a drop more thinners and keep trying until its how you like it

another trick is to warm the paint , sprays nicer but isnt so thin so shouldnt run off

 

[Engineer]

Best way to thin synthetic paints is to heat them up, rather than using thinners, which makes runs very likely. Heat the paint until it seems thin enough to go on smoothly, then try it on some scrap material. You can heat paint in a large pan of boiling water, but an old kettle element suspended in the paint itself works much faster, but obviously you need to be very careful if using this method as you dont want paint to get too hot. Dust is also a big problem with this type of paint, but the heat method reduces this a bit, as drying is quicker with no thinners being used.

 

[GeorgiePorgie]

I'll always remember this.....

My old fella was a car sprayer and I watched him do it....the one thing that struck me was on his final two coats he would not start until the room tempreture was warm ie he felt the car bodywork and knew when it was just right ie the car metal was warmish to the touch and he also told me that the guns pressure had to be right on the final coat.

 

[GeorgiePorgie]

Best way to thin synthetic paints is to heat them up,

Thats why me old fella heated the car bodywork up rather than the paint because by the time you have heated the paint up and transfered to the gun its gone cold again.

Heating the car bodywork sorta likes melts the paint into the existing coats.

 

[Engineer]

Heating the paint is the method used by most of those spraying large commercial vehicles, but as they need quite large amounts of paint, they generally have heated pressure pots. Not needed for cars though, and although you need to get the technique right, it works very well indeed.

 

[Chipper]

Like Steveo3002 says I thinned mine so it was kind of like thickish milk. Each tin was different, like you found, so just did it till it felt right for the gun.

 

[BA3]

Heating the paint sounds good in theory but im afraid that by the time i get spraying, the paint will have cooled down and gone thick again.
Anyway here are some pics of what it looked like

So as you can see the sides are the worst, with very little shine

And here's the roof covered with dry patches

Im pretty sure that i can rectify the problems of the dry/dull patches by building a booth outside from plastic so there's more light and i can see the paint going on the car better, but the thing i seem to not get over from, is the orange peel.

Here's a test i did on an old door, pressure set at 50 psi with the trigger pulled and paint thinned by feel (im not sure if i thin it too much or too little though)

I shot a tack coat and then 2 wet coats (as you can see i got some nice runs there too). What do you guys think i should do? The gun is not a HVLP so too low pressure wont do either.

Right now the car has been wetsanded and i gotta buy some thicker plastic sheeting to build that booth outside

 

[steveo3002]

test panel looks good , be aware the next time you spray might be differant if its warmer or cooler outside

still might be worth trying heating the paint , ok it cools off a bit but you can stand the gun pot and the mixed paint in a bucket of hot water

 

[ajlelectronics]

Would a viscosity cup help you get consistent results?

 

[Engineer]

Think he is using cheap transport paint..............a complete nightmare to spray unless you hotpot it, and even then takes quite a while to tack free, so outside will attract quite a lot of air born crap.

Personally as the job is being done outside, if you use a good face mask, I would say there is no real problem using 2K material, which is a whole lot easier than facing the aggro involved with transport paint!

However unless the transport paint is completely removed, there is no way to use 2K now as pretty much anything will cause the transport paint to react.

 

[langy]

x 2

Think he is using cheap transport paint..............a complete nightmare to spray unless you hotpot it, and even then takes quite a while to tack free, so outside will attract quite a lot of air born crap.

Personally as the job is being done outside, if you use a good face mask, I would say there is no real problem using 2K material, which is a whole lot easier than facing the aggro involved with transport paint!

However unless the transport paint is completely removed, there is no way to use 2K now as pretty much anything will cause the transport paint to react.