The ABSOLUTE BASICS for PAINTING a CAR

            Anyone can paint a car.  The body work and dent repairs and swinging of hammers all require a little more expertise and patience, but painting is fun...and easy.

            Here are the most basic things you need to know:

            Before doing anything else, wash the car with soap and water.  This removes road salts and bird droppings and other water soluble things that you don't see.  It's pleasant to eat from a clean plate at dinner, but critically important to have a clean surface to paint.

            Use a wax/grease remover with PAPER TOWELS (which are not a fire hazard when you throw them in the trash...cloth is a fire hazard...use paper towels!!!!)

            Now it's okay to sand something if you need to make it dull. NOTICE THAT SANDING is step#3 after you removed the wax and grease.  This prevents driving wax and grease into the surface you're about to paint, because you cleaned it off before you started rubbing with sandpaper.

            Ground the frame of the vehicle.  Find the chassis frame under the car or truck and attach any size wire from that frame to any grounded metal pipe, conduit, emt, the ground screw in the center of a plug...this gets rid of the static electricity in the vehicle that can't get past those pesky rubber tires underneath.  The static makes the dust and dirt jump up off the floor and onto the paint job.  Dust is really lazy.  It'd rather stay on the floor, so get rid of the static and you'll both be happy.  Dust on floor good.  Dust on car bad.  Dude...ground the car!

            Make certain it is bone dry where you're painting.  Helpful old souls will tell you to wet the floor down to keep the dust down...say "Thank you for that idea," and then...whatever you do...DO NOT WET THE FLOOR IN THE PAINTING AREA.  All urethane is moisture-cure material.  Any humidity, fog, steam, cloud, water vapor, evaporation coming from the floor will pass through the spray mist from your spray gun.  At the end of the spray gun, as you pull the trigger, the temperature of the paint drops.  It gets cold in there.  This cures some of the urethane before it hits the car.

            "Gee, I got a lot of dirt in my finish...duh."  No...actually you PUT A LOT OF DIRT in your finish.  DRY.  DRY.  DRY.  PAINT IN A DRY PLACE.

            Any gloss urethane finish, paint or clearcoat, is very sticky.  It takes about 4 minutes for a run to happen.  Runs happen.

            After you think you're finished with your painting project, set the gun down for 10 more minutes.  You're going to throw the material with hardener in it away anyway.  Go back then and check for runs.

            If you find one or more runs, take a ring of any kind of tape...bandaid...duct tape...scotstape...masking tape...

            Pull the run off with the ring of tape on either leg of this:

   x

            Then instead of keeping the spray gun perfectly parallel to the surface you have been spraying, follow the "x" pattern and quickly, with your wrist, spray a flicker coat over the blank spot you made with the tape.  Follow the "x."  Go right and down and then left and up...or go left and down and then right and up...follow the "x" pattern.

            This blends the spot where the tape mark would have been.  If you take care of these things while the coating is wet, you're sitting in your lawn chair the next day admiring your work.  If you don't take care of it while it's wet, you're wondering how to patch a mirror on top of a shiny surface the next day.  I prefer the lawn chair.

            By the way note:

            If you're painting with pearls, EACH COAT GETS DARKER.  Pearls do not reflect light the way regular pigments do.  Pearls bend light...it's called refraction.  SCUBA divers know that if they go down past about 30 feet under water, they can shine their flashlight straight up at the boat over them...and the people in the boat can't see the light...it bends and never reaches the surface.  If you're trying to match a pearl finish on a vehicle, you need to be able to see the old finish.  As soon as the coating is dark enough, stop painting.  If you put too much on, you gotta wipe it off and start all over again.  Aw shucks!