Car Masking, Bare Metal Paint Job, Single and 2-Stage Painting || Auto body Q&A

A proper work should bring out the gloss on your bare metal paint job and any other custom painting. Read this auto body Q&A post for some tips and advice. Don’t forget to sign-up for to Learn Auto Body and Paint FREE COURSE for the step-by-step autobody work/process of “The G.O.O.D. Van Project”. Please also LIKE and SUBSCRIBE to my YT channel for new videos coming out soon.

QUESTION: Had issues with tape lines pulling paint up, any advice?

Yes. And as I always state in my videos in VIP or some of my YouTube videos, you want to unmask your paint job about an hour and a half to two and a half hours after you paint it. You don’t want to wait until it’s fully cured and dried when unmasking. So that’s probably your issue is that you are waiting till it’s fully cured to unmask your car.

You want to do it while the paint is still wet, but not tacky. It has to be set up to the touch where you could kind of graze your fingers on it and it does not stick. That’s why I show you to touch the tape to see how it’s setting up. So you want to unmask your car about an hour and a half to two and a half hours after you paint while it’s still wet. That’s the trick.

QUESTION: Should I do just primer or use a sealer and then paint on bare metal? 80 Chevy truck

I would do a 2k filler primer. Use like a DTM which is a direct-to-metal primer over your metal spots. So use a DTM 2k filler primer, I’m using a product called EGC European genuine coatings. That’s a good foundation to just paint directly over after you sand it with 400.

QUESTION:  What’s the cure for paint cracking -bare metal?

Sand it all down, get it down like use 80 grit. Get it down to metal and then put a nice 2k filler primer on and fill it up. You could even use Epoxy if you want if you’re not using a direct-to-metal (DTM).

QUESTION:  ​When doing a two-stage paint and four different colors, how long before you wait between hanging colors?

You wait until the paint is pretty much set up. So normally base coat will set up and be dry in like 30-40 minutes. If you’re going to be masking, I would wait an hour so you could spray one color for about 40-45 minutes depending on the heat. If you’re painting in like 80 to 90 degrees weather, then you’ll be dry in 30 minutes. And then as soon as your base coat is dry for 45 minutes, give or take is when you can start masking it. And when you’re masking, I would use fine line tape to do your graphics, and then I would use a less adhesive masking tape. I wouldn’t use like really good masking tape.

A good masking tape is the blue painters’ tape that you can get at like your Home Center Home Depot or Lowe’s because it doesn’t adhere. This brand is a Scotch Brite, it’s not as tacky as the regular three-quarter-inch masking tape that I use for basic masking. Because if you put something that has really good adhesion on it, sometimes you could feel your paint especially if you didn’t sand great it would peel off. 

QUESTION:  When using single-stage how many coats can be sprayed?

Two to three coats. Normally if you lay your two coats on like a wet too heavy, two-coats are fine. So like, you know the good van project that we did, basically I did two coats.


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