Hot Rod Restoration: Prepping for Paint Job

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Joel Jones. I own Jonesy's Inc, a company that specializes in auto restoration and customization. Occasionally, when you get your vehicle back from the paint shop, or if you do your own paint, you're going to have flaws in it. You're going to have dust particles that are stuck in the clear coat. Occasionally, there will be bugs, if you try to paint it in your garage, or in your driveway, and the worst of all, is a run. It's almost inevitable that you're going to have a run in your paint, that you need to take care of, and I'm going to show you how to do that, today. The tools that you're going to need, are a sanding stone, a hard foam block, a soft block, a squeegee, soap and water, a wash mitt, and then various grades of sandpaper, ranging from eight hundred to two thousand grit. I have a perfect example of a very, very typical run, a run that's going to be extraordinarily easy for me to fix. The runs that are the most difficult, are runs that are on edges and sharp pieces, but fortunately, this run is right here, in the very middle of the panel, and it makes for a perfect example, to show you guys the tips and techniques, on how to get rid of that run, so the first step is to grab your wash mitt, and to clean the area that you're going to be working with. You want to make sure that the panel is absolutely clean, so that you're not grinding dirt into either your sandpaper, or into your painted surface. Then, you want to take your block, and you want to make sure that your sanding block or sanding stone, has a nice, flat surface on it, and you want to very, very lightly, run it right over the top of the run itself, because all you're trying to accomplish here,is you're trying to get that run ground down to the same level, as the rest of the paint. This can be done with razor blades, a lot of other different tools. I prefer this block, because I feel like I have the most control, over how much I'm actually, I'm actually taking off. Don't be afraid of scratching the paint. I mean, you're going to really grind on this a lot, and you'll see clear coat coming off of it, and you'll actually start to smell some of the clear coat, and what that is, is that's the actual clear coat crust, that it has coming off of the paint, and then starting to out gas, so if you start to smell some things, you're doing just fine. It's not a problem. That's just the natural progression of the paint, and what you'll be able to feel, is you'll be able to actually feel the run, start to get down to the same level, and you just want to take very, very light pressure. Just continue sanding, all over top of that run, until it's about 99% gone, and to check your progress, you wipe it off, to get the grit off of it. Then you grab your squeegee, and you squeegee down, and then you wait, and then the run will show up, and you'll see whether it's still too high, or too low. I'm constantly getting fresh water ,and I'm working from the top down, so that the water will move down. The run is as gone as I can get it with that block. You can still see there's a little bit right there, and right there, and now I'm going to switch over to actual sandpaper, and the foam, the hard foam block. Now, if this was a really, really stubborn run, you'd want to go with a eight hundred, but I'm going to start with a thousand, and sand this panel with a thousand, right around where the run is, and then I'm going to sand it with fifteen hundred, and then finish it with two thousand. Again, light pressure. You want the sandpaper to do the work, not your hand. You also want to be very careful with this edge, right here. You don't want to sand against that edge, because you'll just grind through. You'll create a pressure point right there, and you'll grind through your clear coat, and that's the last thing that you want to do. You can always sand more, but putting more clear coat back on, is not a good thing, so again, you want to sand with very light pressure, all across this panel, especially where the run is, and around the run, and what you'll feel, is you'll feel the panel get smoother, and smoother, and smoother, and that's as the orange peel gets knocked down, the panel gets flatter and flatter, and flatter, so I'm just going to go ahead and sand this entire panel, with a thousand grit, to knock off the orange peel, around where the run was, so that when we continue on and polish, we've got a panel that looks like glass, with no orange peel in it, whatsoever, and this is when you'll really start to smell the clear coat starting to out gas, is when you start to work through the whole entire surface. One thing that I should mention, and you can see it now, is the cause of orange peel, and why it is there in the first place. When the clear coat comes out of the gun, it comes out of the gun in a kind of a fog, in certain droplets, and it hits on to the panel, and then it slowly kind of oozes out, and forms a film, across the whole entire panel. Well, you use a clear coat and it hardens before it has time to completely wet out on the surface of the panel, and therefore, you get these little highs and lows, and creates an uneven surface on the panel, and that appears like an orange peel ,and you can really see it right in here, where we've got our run, used to be. Now, there's nothing but haze, and then you can see the highs and lows, and what's happened, is that the thousand grit has knocked off those highs, and what you're going to do, is you're going to continue color sanding, and wet sanding with fifteen hundred and two thousand, until the surface is completely hazy and smooth, and you don't have any orange peel left. We've color sanded this out with two thousand grit, starting with fifteen hundred, and then working our way up, and now all of the orange peel is gone. You can see it's a nice, smooth, hazy surface, and we're ready to start the polishing."