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As far as I know, bondo doesn't need to cure over several days. Look at the production body shops, I do not think they wait several days and that bondo changes shape over those days.

Plus I think it's not curing, it's hardening chemically. After a couple of hours that's as hard as it gets and as long as you use a block or a board to sand with, you should get pleasant results and not see any surprises once you start putting paint on it. I have used the cheap bondo and have not had this problem, and a guy who works at a body shop came over to help me fix a dent on a fender, and he had the whole thing done and primed (with one coat of bondo, and one skim coat) in about an hour. I've done other small dents only a couple of hours before painting, like when I found things I hadn't seen before painting. No issues as long as the bondo is mixed right.

For the final pass of bondo once you have the shape right, mix bondo with fiberglass resin, then the bondo hardener. This will fill in scratches and will not have any pinholes. But it takes a bit longer to dry.

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I'm wetsanding in the garage.. what I use is a soft sanding sponge (320 grit, but it doesn't matter since I just wrap the paper around it), a bowl of water, a lint free cloth for cleaning the car (bought a 6 pack at walmart), and a spray bottle.

I start by spraying down the entire surface to be sanded. The water usually stays there in beads. Then I'll dunk the paper and sanding sponge into the water, and start sanding while spraying. I do the whole panel (the whole hood, whole fender etc.) before wiping it down. First wipe it dry with the cloth, then rinse out the cloth a few times and go over it a few times with the cloth still moise, until the residue is gone.

Also, as Charger suggested way back when, it works well to use your hand to hold the sandpaper, especially on tight spaces. Also on tight, contoured spaces I will bunch up the cloth and put the sandpaper around that, so it takes the shape of whatever I'm pushing it down and sanding on.

If anyone out there knows where to get a quality spray bottle, let me know. All of mine eventually start working badly, leaking or the lever thing starts sticking..

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From what you described it sounds similar to my technique except I was using the hose since I still need to pick up a bottle. I'm doing short quick linear motions which seems to work well. I started sanding through on a few spots but am pretty sure that it was because they were high spots from the original prep. I just looked over the piece a few minutes ago and saw it was laying down very nicely. The two original bare metal spots have no orange peel to speak of so I'm VERY happy with the results. I just found a crack in my front bumper's ground effects so I'll need to replace that but I figure I'll paint the current ones then paint new ones once I get them with the same amount of coats. The way Charger described it, the colors will still match which is perfect for me.

Charger, since you've been doing this for a while I figure you may know how this paint will handle snow. I know your beetles and charger are living in a garage but have you ever had ice buildup on this paint? My car lives out in the elements so I'm curious how this will handle ice and snow. I know it's for mowers and tractors but we're applying it slightly different so I figured I'd ask.

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Charger, since you've been doing this for a while I figure you may know how this paint will handle snow. I know your beetles and charger are living in a garage but have you ever had ice buildup on this paint? My car lives out in the elements so I'm curious how this will handle ice and snow. I know it's for mowers and tractors but we're applying it slightly different so I figured I'd ask.

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no issues, my crx drove thru 3 hard canadian winters in North Bay Ontario, where it really, really snows, paint survived great, every spring and fall i would wax it.

when wetsanding i would only do small 3' x 3' areas, and have a spray bottle in one hand and hand sand the car, first spraying the area with the spray bottle, and i'd also have 2 buckets full of water and a shammy in one, the other bucket i rinse the sand paper in. after i'm finished sanding a area, i use the shammy to clean the area before it dries, it's alot eaiser to do it that way, then rinse the paper,and move onto another area. every so often i'd change the water in the buckets, about every 1/2 a car's worth. then when i'm all done, put new water in the bucket, and shammy down the car rinsing the shammy often, and repeat, then whipe down the whole car with spirits, and then clean with a tack cloth (regular auto body tack cloth) and then go to paint. i cannot stress how much the tack cloth helps, it probabally cuts down 90% of the dirt/dust/dog's a$$ hairs!!!. and they only cost about $1 each, plus i got these really nice shammys from the dollar store, you know the ones you allways see a guy at a show with the booth spilling coke on the carpet and showing that the shammy holds like 2 gal of water....same stuff at the dollar store - the orange ones, about 3' x 3'. also if you need a spray bottle follow these steps: 1. go to the wifes cleaning closet, 2. remove any spray bottle, 3. empty contents into a sutibale container (you will need it later), 4. use spray bottle, windex ones work best:), 5. when finished using the bottle, return stored contents back into spray bottle, place back into cleaning closet, and deny any involvement in it's use when confronted by wife/girl friend/mistress/boyfriend(to be politically correct)!!!!

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I felt that some of this threads information would be easer served up on a wiki. for those out of the know a wiki is an editable web page that anyone can edit. The address is: http://carpainting.wetpaint.com/

I'm affraid I haven't added much more than Morwan's pdf and a few headers and links to kinda direct the basic layout. (though I'm sure that will evolve soon enough). I plan on going through the thread page by page and adding information. It's just getting late tonight. Oh and yea I tried to make the site very general to allow for it to expand into other areas of car painting. I noticed some over lap on this thread. ie prep work and rattle caning it. One will have to create a user account to edit the pages but it's quick and if most of us use the same user id's we'll be able to tell who's who.
Later,
Aaron

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I thought a lot of the text looked familiar.

My original guide was pretty inaccurate since I wrote it up with no actual painting experience... But now that I do have some experience, hopefully my contributions will be more useful.

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Trying something new, between coats rattle canned a shot of metallic, let dry, and softly wiped excess powdery substance from surface. Still left lots of sparkle visible thru second coat

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