Freshly Painted with Orange Peel

[RobR93]

Im a little confused. Im looking at the buffers/polishers/sanders. You said get a rotary buffer, but the link in your post takes me to a polisher. My plan is to sand the paint (basecoat) out by hand with a block. After I shoot the clearcoat, would a 7 inch polisher be sufficient?

Im looking at going to our local Harbor Freight for this:

- Harbor Freight Tools - Quality Tools at the Lowest Prices

and this:

- Harbor Freight Tools - Quality Tools at the Lowest Prices

[Mike Phillips]

Stick with the first link, that's a traditional rotary buffer, also called a sander/polisher, or even a grinder although most grinders offer much higher RPM's.

You're going to want to get a wool cutting pad and some aggressive compound for your initial cut, then switch to a foam pad with a lighter polish to bring the surface to a high gloss.

If you want it 100% absolutely swirl-free then you want to re-polish using a DA Polisher.


Keep your receipt for the Harbor Freight polisher in case it gives-up on you.


This is actually a pretty good system for most fresh paint sand and buff jobs...

M95 Speed Cut Compound with W-5000 Double Sided 100% Wool Cutting Pad

You can use any wool pad, if you get a hook and loop Velcro wool pad you'll need a Velcro backing plate to go with it. With the dual-sided wool pad you'll need the adapter to attach it to you spindle.

Double-Sided Pad Rotary Adapter


Follow that with,

M205 and a foam polishing pad.

[RobR93]

I keep my receipt on EVERY thing I buy at HF. I'll be contacting you for the other stuff as my buffing time draws near. I havent finished sanding the paint to where it needs to be yet. That'll be a couple more weeks at least (off and on). Thanks for all your help Mike, and I hope others got something out of this too.

[Mike Phillips]

I keep my receipt on EVERY thing I buy at HF. I'll be contacting you for the other stuff as my buffing time draws near. I havent finished sanding the paint to where it needs to be yet. That'll be a couple more weeks at least (off and on). Thanks for all your help Mike, and I hope others got something out of this too.

Looking forward to the results!

[O.C.Detailing]

Someone said it earlier, you need to use a reducer. Mix it 4:1:1. 4 parts paint to 1 part hardener to 1 part reducer to get the paint to "flow" as you spray it. I'm actually working part-time in a body shop now learning how to paint my own car as well.

The consistency of the paint in the mixing cup should be like milk, maybe a bit thinner. From what I've been reading, you're not reducing the mix at all and just using paint and a hardener. I'd read up a bit more on which reducers you need, but you DEFINITELY need to add some to the mix to get the right surface for laying clear. I believe what's happening is the paint is drying so fast as you're shooting it out of the gun that it's sticking to the surface as semi-hard droplets that are stacking up to the extreme orange peel in your pictures. Adding the reducer will thin the paint and make it take a bit longer to dry, therefore keeping it wet as it's coming out of the gun and laying on the surface. I've also learned that using high air pressure with the proper 4:1:1 mix ratio will allow you to ionize the paint into smaller particles and cover much more smoothly. You shouldn't need to sand the base coat at ALL. I've yet to see the gentleman teaching me even TOUCH base before spraying clear on it and almost every panel he sprays comes out with extremely low - NO orange peel on them. I sprayed the bed of a pick up I'm working on the other day, base-coat only, and found that it wasn't too difficult, though the gun was already dialed in and the paint was mixed by the guy teaching me. He did explain everything to me as he went though.

Good learning experience for you though. Keep us updated on your progress and I'll start my own thread when I start working on my own car.

[RobR93]

so I think the problem was the gun setup, not anything with the mix, or temperature. I called a guy who set my gun up over the phone for me and I shot the clear last week.......no runs, no problems. The clear with the gun set correctly, came out vastly different than the paint did.

So here are some pictures after shooting clear.........







I have ordered my pads and cutting/polishing compounds from Autogeek and they should be here at the end of the week (thanks Duane/Dwayne, however you spell it).