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A Christmas Story for people having a bad day:
When four of Santa’s elves got sick, the trainee elves did not produce toys as fast as the regular ones, and Santa began to feel the Pre-Christmas pressure.
Then Mrs Claus told Santa her Mother was coming to visit, which stressed Santa even more.
When he went to harness the reindeer, he found that three of them were about to give birth and two others had jumped the fence and were out, Heaven knows where.
Then when he began to load the sleigh, one of the floorboards cracked, the toy bag fell to the ground and all the toys were scattered.
Frustrated, Santa went in the house for a cup of apple cider and a shot of rum. When he went to the cupboard, he discovered the elves had drank all the cider and hidden the liquor. In his frustration, he accidentally dropped the cider jug, and it broke into hundreds of little glass pieces all over the kitchen floor. He went to get the broom and found the mice had eaten all the straw off the end of the broom.
Just then the doorbell rang, and irritated Santa marched to the door, yanked it open, and there stood a little angel with a great big Christmas tree.
The angel said very cheerfully, ‘Merry Christmas, Santa. Isn’t this a lovely day? I have a beautiful tree for you. Where would you like me to stick it?’
And so began the tradition of the little angel on top of the Christmas tree
Wishing Everyone A Merry Christmas And A Happy And Safe New Year.
Now for the fun part! As I explained in Part Seven I am not able to go through with the complete respray of our project VN at the moment due to a re-occuring back injury but I am hoping that by showing you the basics that I was taught on one panel you will be able to ’scale it up’ if you are doing a full respray. Fingers crossed I will be able to hold a spray gun for more than 10 minutes at a time in the near future.
At this stage we should have a nice primered surface ready for the topcoats, the car masked up and the panels wiped down with Wax and Grease Remover or Prepsol.
Time to fire up the compressor and check our pressure setting. When spraying the undercoat I prefer to use anywhere up to about 50psi of air pressure, but when it comes to the topcoat I believe a lower pressure is better as it limits the amount of overspray. There is nothing worse than spraying the roof for example and finding that you have a ugly, rough stripe down the middle where the overspray has mixed with the wet paint. My preference for topcoat is around 30psi, but once again this is only my preference and you should first check the instructions that came with your paint and also experiment a bit first to find the best setting for you. Also be sure to drain any condensation that has built up in the compressor’s tank or in the water trap if you have one.
Next item on the agenda is preparing the paint. Most acrylic paints are thinned at a ratio of one part paint to two and a half parts thinner. I always use Premium Thinners for the top coat instead of the general purpose stuff, it costs a little more but does it make a difference? To be honest I don’t know! I was taught this way and have never tried just using general purpose for thinning the top coat, just a habit I guess.
When I’m ready to paint I usually mix up almost one litre of paint and thinners in an old spray gun pot (using a clean steel ruler for measuring out the two parts), double check the air pressure, half-fill the gun and we’re ready to go.
Just a quick note on air pressure, you will notice that even though you set the pressure at one level, when you pull the trigger on the spray gun the pressure will drop by a few psi. To combat this set your pressure slightly above the pressure that you want to spray at and by the time the paint hits the panel it will be at the desired pressure. This is probably not absolutely necessary, I’m just a bit pedantic when it comes to spraying.
Like when spraying undercoat, the trick is to keep the gun as square to the surface as you can, at the same distance away through the entire stroke and keep an eye on the ‘wet edge’ of the paint to be sure you are getting adequate coverage. A good idea is to have a portable fluro light that you can move around with you as you spray and when set up in the right position it can make following the wet edge a lot easier.
I made the video below to try and show you how following that wet edge of the paint is the best way of ensuring that you don’t go too thick in some areas and that you don’t end up with patchy dry areas of paint ( and to show you my flash new pair of chinese safety boots ). Following this edge is vitally important when doing the second and third coats of colour as it is almost impossible (depending on the colour) to see how the coat is being applied. The video is of the second coat being applied, I was hoping to video all three coats but some dufus, that’ll be me, kept standing in front of the camera.
With any luck your three coats of colour have turned out nice and even and have a bit of a shine to them. If the paint has turned out rough or almost sand paper like you have applied it too ‘dry’ and need to focus on laying down ‘heavier’ coats, likewise if the paint has some runs in it or has ‘built up’ areas you need to go a little lighter. The beauty of Acrylic is that once it is completely dry (an hour or two in the sun) you can then go along and wet sand any areas that you are not happy with.
Although the surface of our front guard turned out pretty good I left it in the sun for a few hours and then wet-sanded it with 1200 paper to give it a nice flat, even look before applying the clear. As you can see from the photo doing this removes just about all of the gloss the paint had but once the clear is applied the gloss will be back better than ever.
Applying the clearcoat is exactly the same process as with the colour coats. Once again I am doing three coats as I expect to remove a bit with the buffing and polishing process.
That’s where we will leave this part of the never-ending story! I will let the paint dry overnight and put the panel out in the sun for a while tomorrow before going through the final step of cutting and polishing. If you have any questions or concerns we have a board setup at the Advice Forum on this subject and so far it’s looking pretty bare so feel free to post your questions there.
Stay Tuned for Part Nine, Cutting and Polishing our new paint job.
Finally! It’s done. My sincere apologies to our readers that have been waiting a LOOOONG time for the continuation of this series. Back in 2005 I suffered a back injury that led to the closing down of our workshop and the start of this site and the old injury has come back to bite me again over the last couple of months, anything more than bed rest has been a struggle. I’ve had to shelve the idea of doing a complete re-spray on the VN for now, but what I will do is continue this series with a panel or two off the car and you can just ’scale it up’ a bit if you are doing a complete respray
In Part Six we looked at the final sanding process of the undercoat using a guidecoat and in this installment we will cover masking up what we don’t want to paint and the final preparation steps needed before applying the colour.
The first thing we now need to do is remove all the ’sludge’ that is left over after wet sanding our panels. Of course if you chose to dry sand the vehicle you can just use air pressure to remove the sanding dust, just be sure to get in and around every little crevice and area where dust is likely to settle. Time spent doing this is very important and don’t skimp on this step or you may find sanding dust ruining your flash new paint job.
Ok, back to the wet sanding sludge. What we need to do is give the car a good thorough wash with clean, fresh water keeping a couple of things in mind - the least amount of time that water is allowed on the primed surfaces the better and we need to make sure that the car is completely dry before proceeding further. Using compressed air to dry down the car is good, as is leaving the car in the sun for a couple of hours - just be sure that the panel surfaces have cooled down before spraying the colour. Either way it is important to ensure that there is no trace of water left anywhere as moisture can seriously ruin a paint job!
Masking up the car is pretty self-explanatory, any areas that you don’t want to paint mask it up! In my opinion it is allways better to remove an item if possible rather than masking it up. As an example, although it takes a bit of time, removing the door handles and locks rather than masking them up is better as you have a nice even paint edge around the handle when it’s refitted rather than a build up of paint against the masked up area. This is of course only my opinion, I just think the finished result is a bit more “professional” looking. Items such as headlights, tail lights etc that don’t necessarily have an edge close to them are fine to just mask up.
Spending a bit of extra dosh on good quality masking tape is also a good idea, there is nothing worse than your masking coming loose mid-way through spraying. Also the cheaper tapes tend to leave a sticky residue on the surface they are stuck to if left on for more than a couple of hours and if you choose to sand between coats it is going to be there for quite a while.
If you have flexible window seals on your vehicle such as the ones in the pictures on my VK there is a great little trick that will give you a really good paint edge and prevent the new paint from lifting. What you do is run a piece of string (I’ve even used whipper snipper cord before) around the outside of the seal which lifts it off the panel surface enough to be able to spray the paint under the seal and also gives you a good edge to apply your masking tape to.
The photos aren’t the best but believe me it does work well! It is a bit time consuming going around all the flexible seals but the end result is worth it.
Once you have all the masking done it is time to wipe down the surfaces with wax and grease remover. Wax and Grease Remover, sometimes called Prepsol, will be available from where you bought your paint and with Acrylic in particular it is important to remove all traces of wax or grease from the primed surface.
The idea is to apply it with one rag and then wipe it off with another clean, dry one. Do half a panel at a time or quarter of a panel at a time with the bonnet, roof and boot. Try not to touch any panels with your hands once cleaned down with Wax and Grease Remover as there is grease in our skin that can have an adverse effect on paint, particularly Acrylic.
I’m going to go and have a rest for a bit and then I’ll fire up the compressor and start putting some top coat on a panel or two. Don’t worry you won’t have to wait weeks for the next installment, all going well it will up later tonight or first thing tomorrow.
