How to Apply Primer when Painting a Car

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Doug. I work with twenty great guys in St. Louis at Doug Jenkins Custom Hot Rods and we're going to do some work for you today on Expert Village. OK, Andy's going to try a little test pattern on the paper there, make sure his gun is adjusted right. And we're going to do a wet on wet approach to the primer and the base coat. There's two options when you're doing the primer on body repairs like this. You can see that there's some body filler, some paint, some bare steels, some old body filler, some old primer, some new primer, quite a number of things there that we're covering. So, the primer locks all that down. It covers everything up and gives it the same texture. The primer fills a little bit. It protects the metal a little bit. You know you the you can understand the body filler will absorb more of the paint if you were to go just right on paint. The body filler absorbs at a different rate than the steel or the old paint or the old primer. So, we put the primer on there to lock all that stuff down. Andy gave the first coat of primer about ten minutes to flash off. You don't want the primter to dry completely. You don't want to come back a day later. If you let the primer sit for more than six or eight hours you have to sand it in order for the next coat to stick. So, he's come right back here after about ten minutes. Enough to where it's not shiny any more. He's putting about as much primer on there as will stick without running. You want the coats to be full wet coats so that you get as much material on there with as little time as possible. "