Would anyone be willing to explain to me what exactly you do when wet-sanding a body piece for painting and clear coating? Is it simply just weting the object and lightly sanding it with sandpaper?( if so, is there a special type of sandpaper or a certain grit # to use) Or is it something completely different? Any help would be greatly appreciated! smile.gif

-Hans

 

First can ask why you are wet sanding something?
When I do something like that, it is only cause I want to make it look like glass. Wet sanding take's out all the defects in the paint job, like orange pill or dry spray for example. If you don't know what that is well I will explain. When you look at the paint from a factory job it will never look smooth like glass, it looks like it as a little texture to it. Now when you look at an orange pill and at the paint job you will see that the texture looks kind of the same. That’s how the name orange pill came about, cause the texture looks sort of like an orange. Dry-spray well the name says it all, it's when the paint feels dry, rough and not smooth. That can only happen when your using the spray gun to fast or if it's to far away from the part or if your air pressure isn't right.
Now if you already knew that then what a waste of time and I will get to your question.
Wet sanding requires a bucket of water and 400 or 500 grit sandpaper. The sandpaper needs to be completely wet, just dip your sandpaper into the bucket; the part you are sanding gets wet with the sandpaper. Also you need a thingy that I forgot what its call, to put the sandpaper on. This thing makes your sanding even, cause if you just do it by hand you could start making waves and sways in the paint. Then after you put the clear on you will see those waves and sways. To know if you’re done your sanding, well it's kind of hard to say cause I don't know why you’re doing this. But always remember never put pressure to your sanding just sand the part with the least amount of pressure. I mean your not trying to take the paint off...right...

Hope that helps and if am forgetting something, I am sure someone will fill in the blanks. Or if am wrong

[ July 21, 2001: Message edited by: BlueSpanishShark ]

 

I didn't even notice that this post was in the Interior/Audio Mods forums. Now either I just answered a different question that he didn't even need to know, or he just posted in the wrong spot.
Oh welll rolleyes.gif

 

Na, hehe, Low&Show mentioned using wet-sanding when painting and clear coating interior parts of your car, so I was just trying to figure out excatly what you had to do. Thanks for the advice!

-Hans

 

No problem
If you ever need info about external appearance of your car I am sure I can help you out.
But as for the interior of cars, I don't deal with that to much, so my info would probably be 60% right.

[ July 22, 2001: Message edited by: BlueSpanishShark ]

 

Actually wet sanding anything helps keep the fine and ultra-fine grit sand paper clean and allows you to "polish" the surface you're sanding.

wink.gif

 

When I painted my interior (dash) I also wet sanded here is the purpose, You wet sand to take out all of the overspray because no matter what you do when you paint say the left side some over spray might travel to the right side it feels like a sandy texture,to smooth out any over sprayed area's like if you hit one spot twice and another two and a half the paint will be aliitle higher so you want to keep the paint level, to give your next coat a little more bite so it bonds to the previous coat better, and when you clear something you want to wet sand it till there is no more gloss same with paint but with the clear coat if you wet sand it to where there is no more gloss when you begin to buff the finished product the shine will come out that much better. Now how to wet sand, Buy the grit of sand paper you want try to start with a 1000 for the paint as you add coats increase the grit to 1200 when you get to the clear do it once with 1200 buff and the get 1500 grit to finish and you should be fine OOOPS missed a whole big part rolleyes.gif wet the area to be wet sanded first (make sure the paint is completly dry) get a bucket and fill it with water and bunch of soap (dawn) put the sand paper in the water soak it and begin to sand and constantly dip it (sandpaper) in and out of the bucket while you are sanding. While you are sanding don't press to hard just go threw the motion and let your hand flow freely. If while your sanding the water turns into the color you are painting stop in that area that means you are starting to lift the paint and thats no good. Make sure to always keep the surface as wet and soapy as you can. Now when you are done spray off the saop, dry and look for any spots you missed the hit those spots again. This is the same when sanding clear but with clear make sure it is not glossy anywhere at all before you buff it it will help the shine come out alot better and give it the mirror like finish. Hope that helps