Hi. As soon as I shelled out all that money for compressor, guns, air fed mask, chemicals, 2K paints and all those consumables and not to mention a couple of “How to Spray Your Car” DVDs, it was obvious I would eventually end up on this thread on this forum – so hello!

My story starts with my metallic red Peugeot 206 which I bought with a few scratches on the driver’s door and the hood which I wanted to fix myself. The door jobs were fine, but the hood has never come out perfect, I guess because the panel faces up and catches any crud in the air.

A number of points bring me to rolling the paint. Many of them will be familiar to you.

In Cornwall, UK we are surrounded on three sides by sea. There is hardly ever a dry day. This means any electric compressor has to be in the workplace with the paint vapours and a car with a tank load of fuel – not good if the compressor sparks when it kicks in.

No mobile compressor is big enough to cope with a spray gun without running all the time and this leads to warm vapour loaded air going through the gun, leading to cratering in the finish.

Every time the compressor kicks in, the roar of the machine and the smell of 2K clearcoat makes the neighbour two doors down jump up to try to see what’s going on, and quite rightly so as the 2K paints are bad news and I wouldn’t want a neighbour spraying that stuff in my air space.

When it rains I can’t have my electric air fed mask (Hobbyair) outside the work area, so this means if it is raining I can’t work and it rains most days (see above).

The spray jobs I have done I have always had to sand out orange peel anyway so all these factors have led me to consider rolling/brushing as a real alternative and one that may give me better results than spraying in my garage.

My compressor was collected this morning as I sold it on eBay for 60% of the price I paid and it is two years and four jobs old so I’m OK with that. My guns went the same way a few weeks ago. At present I am keeping my air fed Hobbyair as I don’t know where my rolling will take me.

My projects will be slightly different to many on here as they won’t be complete repaints. My work would be to repair scratches or whatever needs doing, blend the basecoat and then clear the entire panel. I cannot use Rustoleum or the like as I am painting to match the existing other panels, not painting a complete. Sure I could paint the hood in a different colour (black?), but not a side wing or door as this would be odd.

The experimenting I am doing on scrap panels is to lay a blending coat of 1K base coat (in the UK we don’t seem to have 2K basecoats not even in professional booths) and then I aim to roll or brush enough 2K clearcoat layers to be able to wetsand out any brush marks or defects to a high gloss. So far small patches have given good results. My local supplier is able to prepare exact basecoat to match my own car in a rattle can with a high end nozzle which gives as good a spray as a spraygun in my opinion and blends well. Expensive this way but I am only doing spot blends.

Then I will be brushing or rolling out 2K clear. Someone said I would not be able to roll or brush the clear over a new base as it would move the paint underneath, but this seems to depend on how good the basecoat paint is; cheaper paints run under the clear whereas the refinishing one I use stays sharp so long as you don not press on the first coat of clear.

Sorry this is a long story, but it tells you how I came to be here.

I would welcome any feedback from anyone who has tried rolling or brushing 2K urethane paints and what results you got, good or bad. I figure my spray jobs were so high in orange peel, brushing can’t be worse and may turn out better.

I will be using my Hobby air mask when hand painting the 2K paints even though I am not spraying them. That’s how dangerous I consider them to be. UK regulations do say that it is safe to roll or brush 2K without a mask so long as there is a continuous through draft of fresh air to the user. I’m not sure about this – surely if you can smell the paint you are also breathing isos which do not smell.

Any comments welcome.