Hey, it’s Tony. Thank you for watching the video and checking out the blog. Today’s title is all about Can You Get a Professional Paint Job Out Of Your Garage.
Let’s get on to the topic of painting in general. How many of you are painting in a spray booth? A lot of you have fear that they need a spray booth, bake the paint and be in a totally dust-free environment to get awesome paint jobs. How many of you have heard of that before and believed it to be true?
You can actually put home-made plastic up, have some ventilation and put filters if you want to, to get amazing paint jobs.
Back in the ‘70s and probably early ‘60s too, people do a lot of DIY paint jobs. We are truly DIY people like the Canadians and Australians. I travel to Japan a lot because my wife is Japanese. But in Japan, they don’t do any DIY paint jobs.
They have a certain mentality that if something is wrong with their car, they have to take it to the shop and have it fixed. They don’t do DIY auto body in their own garage.
You don’t need to have crazy set up to have amazing paint jobs. There is no need to spray in paint booths. If a bug lands on your enamel paint job, just sand it out, repaint the area and maybe buff it out.
Even with base coat clear coat, it is so much easier to fix nowadays. If you make a mistake with the base coat, you just need to sand it out and wait 30 minutes. Then, dust it and you’re good.
As for clear coat, as long as you have enough clear on it, sand it out after it cures and dries then buff it out. Not too bad.
I paint in my own shop right here. Check out the video as I show you my shop. We make professional show shine finishes right here.
I did the Mazda Miata here. In the next couple of months, I’ll be doing a complete paint job on this BMW in here too.
If you’re painting in your own garage, make sure you sweep out your shop. This is the main thing. Hose down your floors. Wet it before you start painting. It keeps the dust down and out.
Cover up your tool boxes and walls if you don’t want to overspray especially if you’re doing a single-stage paint job.
Single-stage paint is acrylic enamel. It’s just one color and dries shiny. You just need to put two to three coats of that paint and you’re done.
This type of paint is thick and gets everywhere. For example, if you go on with black shoes and you’re painting a white car, you’ll walk out with white shoes. That’s how much overspray it does. Plus, it’s really sticky. It’s ridiculous. I don’t do a lot of single-stage paint jobs nowadays.
On the other hand, base coat clear coat doesn’t give as much overspray. It’s very minimal. As long as you have good ventilation, it just goes out without any problems.
Question: What do I recommend, 1K or 2K?
It depends on what kind of job you’re doing. If you’re doing a quick one where you just want to get it in and out plus, you’re on a budget, I’d recommend single-stage.
If you’re doing more of a custom job and want to play around with the paint a little bit more, I recommend base coat clear coat.
In your clear coat time, you can put flake or pearls. I don’t know if you can see it, but on my Miata, I put some micro sequence flake in it. You can just do more with base coat clear coat.
I also used base coat clear coat on my bike with the blend job and the flames here. Also did the pin stripe and clear coat it over everything. I can actually sand this down with 1500-grit and clear it again to get a better gloss.
You have a lot more play room with base coat clear coat. It’s more of a professional style of paint. It will last longer and more durable.
Question: Can you correct imperfections like nibs and peel on single-stage?
Absolutely. You just have to sand it out with 1500-grit, get out the nibbles then buff it out as you would base coat clear coat. You’re going to get the paint transfer on the wool pad because it’s a single stage. That’s normal, but you’ll be able to buff it out with the foam pad as well to get the brilliant shine back.
I heard you have to be more careful with metallic single-stage paint because you could cloud out the metallic as you are buffing. That’s what I heard, but I’ve never experienced that problem.
I’ve buffed out metallic single-stage, color sanded it and buffed it out with no issues at all. But, it’s just something you have to watch out for.
Question: Is automotive paint repair a good enough career to provide for your family and make a career for yourself?
Yes it can be, but you have to be smart. You have to be the one getting all of the business. Plus, you need to have workers. You don’t want to be the one doing everything day-to-day. That’s my opinion.
Of course when you’re starting out. You’ll do everything on your own, but eventually you need to hire people like a body guy. You can hire a masker, but hopefully your body guy can do everything, which is hard to find.
The bigger shops in the body business have people who are specialized in one type of work. We have the prep guys, painters, body guys and finishers.
I’m a painter. They used to hire me to paint. The car was prepped inside the spray booth and I would just go in and paint. I was 17 years old at that time and got paid $150 per paint job, doing 2 to 3 paint jobs a day and would spend 2 to 3 ½ hours per car.
It’s Tony from LearnAutoBodyAndPaint. I hope you liked today’s video. If you want to know more about DIY auto body work, check out the LearnAutoBodyAndPaint VIP Program and have all the information you need to do your car project.
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Cheers!
Tony
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