Painting - No Orange Peel
Painting cars is not as hard as it seems, painting cars well is a whole different story. I've been painting cars for about 6 years now off and on. Maybe about 4 to 5 per year. Having such big gaps of time between paint jobs really prevented me from really getting the hang of painting well. Some things I remember some I forget.
In September of 2005 I started my own body shop, now I get to paint a lot more and I seem to be learning a lot more, faster. I built a make shift paint booth in my shop, made 2 openings for filters. One in, one out from the booth into the shop. It didn't work so good. The over spray stayed in the booth and created streaks in some metallic paint jobs. I finally invested in a nice exhaust fan, now everything gets blasted out of the booth and the shop.
Back to the topic of this post. I have always had problems with having more than descent orange peel effect in the clear coat. Even after buying a nice SATAjet 2000 paint gun, I was still seeing more orange peel than I want. It just creates more wet sanding work afterwards.
A couple of days ago while painting I accidentally turned up the pressure on the gun and while laying down a coat of clear I noticed it that it was laying down differently. It was laying down flat. So I conclude, to get a flatter clear coat in your paint job, turn up the pressure of your gun so it "mists" the clear on instead of spraying it on. I mean it will break down the solids to where they will lay down nice and straight.
I wish I could have found an article like this when I was having problems with my clear. I hope this helps someone.
In September of 2005 I started my own body shop, now I get to paint a lot more and I seem to be learning a lot more, faster. I built a make shift paint booth in my shop, made 2 openings for filters. One in, one out from the booth into the shop. It didn't work so good. The over spray stayed in the booth and created streaks in some metallic paint jobs. I finally invested in a nice exhaust fan, now everything gets blasted out of the booth and the shop.
Back to the topic of this post. I have always had problems with having more than descent orange peel effect in the clear coat. Even after buying a nice SATAjet 2000 paint gun, I was still seeing more orange peel than I want. It just creates more wet sanding work afterwards.
A couple of days ago while painting I accidentally turned up the pressure on the gun and while laying down a coat of clear I noticed it that it was laying down differently. It was laying down flat. So I conclude, to get a flatter clear coat in your paint job, turn up the pressure of your gun so it "mists" the clear on instead of spraying it on. I mean it will break down the solids to where they will lay down nice and straight.
I wish I could have found an article like this when I was having problems with my clear. I hope this helps someone.
