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Few questions: With putting a bunch of coats on it, does it help with all the sanding / buffing?

Do you worry about going through the top coat, or worry about the paint as a whole?

-Roadster



The wetsanding, polishing and waxing stages are for the purposes of getting the maximum smooth surface. The smoother the surface... the shinier and glossier the paint job. Or another way to look at it... the better the wetsanding and polishing... the closer the paint job will come to looking like a 'genuine' paint job compared to a 20 footer. So yes... those stages are essential if you want to achieve the best looking end results possible.

With regards to the second question... it might be best to use different terminology. Normally... when someone thinks of the 'top coat'... they may think of the overall last skin of paint that was applied. It is possible that your final wetsanding, polishing and waxing may occur on that one final outer skin of paint... but it also may not... The final outer layer of paint for polishing and waxing 'may' consist of the exposed surfaces of one or two lower layers. Naturally the concept is that if multiple layers are exposed during the final wetsanding and polishing, the key is that it hopefully works out that they all feather together with a consistent and uniform color across each of those layers.

Whereas it might be better to think of the 'top coat' as possibly consisting of the top two or three coats.... and some of the wetsanding may in fact consist of some of each of the lower layers being on the 'top'.

Each of the layers of paint that are being applied are trying to give you two things :

a ) coverage of the chosen color on the whole body that is consistent in appearance uniformly on the whole body...

b ) a sufficient build up of paint skins so that you can wetsand the outer layers to achieve the smoothest possible outer surface WITHOUT causing any color variations by exposing layers that may have a slight variation in the overall color.

In that sense it is always best to add 'one more coat' of paint - just to guarantee that you have a sufficient paint build up to give you lots of room to work with when doing the final wet sand.

The key thing about the wetsanding between ever 2nd layer is that you are trying to achieve the smoothest possible surface for the next layer of paint to be applied to ( or in the case of the final wetsanding, for the final polishing and waxing ) to maximize the end shine and gloss.

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Last edited by Marq; 06/25/07 06:30 AM.