Paint job pt. 6

Top coat and wet sand

In my last post, I related the problems I had in the top coat due to my prep work. As I said before, everything was fixable; I just had to do some more work to get it there.

The paint is Nason Ful-Thane single stage urethane gloss black. It was mixed to a 4:1:1 ratio with a reducer and activator, and I sprayed it at our shop in Gardena using our DeVillbis Starting Line paint gun with a 1.5 fluid tip and the air pressure set at about 27 psi.  It goes on a lot thicker than the primer did, and I used almost 1½ gallons to put two coats on the car.


As I said before it came out with more orange peel than I would have liked, but that is likely due to my technique than any fault with the paint. Fortunately, none of the mistakes I made while painting (the aforementioned orange peel, a few runs and drips, and one spot where I dropped the air hose in to the fresh paint!) were fatal- all are fixable with wet sanding.

To wet sand a car, you start with 1000 grit and work your way down to 2000 grit. Using wet-or-dry sand paper, you must keep the paint surface wet to ensure even sanding and to keep the paper from clogging.  You don’t need to buy a lot of paper to do this, I only used 1 sheet of each grit to do the job.

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Here are the sanding supplies you’ll need to make the job easy. Sand paper in 1000, 1500, and 2000 grit, a soft sanding block, and some means to keep the paint wet- I used a spray bottle filled with water and a couple of drop sof car wash soap to make it a little more slippery.

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It’s recommended that you soak the paper for several minutes before you start sanding. I’m not quite sure why- I’d guess it makes the paper backing more flexible to prevent it from forming a sharp edge as you fold it around the sanding block.

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Here’s the token guy sanding his car picture. You can’t see it in my blurry hand, but the paper is folded around the sanding block and I’m applying light pressure with the palm of my hand. Even with a sanding block, pressing with your fingertips can leave behind funny grooves and an uneven sanding pattern. As you sand, you’ll see the high spots knocked down leaving behind shiny low spots. Sand with the progressively finer grits until the paint feels smooth and has a uniformly dull-satin appearance. You don’t need to use a spray bottle, but keep the paint wet- you can use a hose or a wet sponge or rag.

I’ll show the buffing process in my next post.