E30 Zone

Hi,

I've done a little repair using a spray can. Colour is plain black with no laquer on top. The finished is poor and 'rough' to touch. Whats the best way to smooth it down?

I tried 1500 wet and dry (which will take ages to get down to a nice flat finish - must be lots of tiny 'lumps' of paint) and then just t-cut to see how it went.

Is it best to wet and dry with say 1000 then 1500 then use a decent cutting compound (ideas?), then polish?

Cheers

It's best to spray several light coats of paint on a dry day, to avoid the 'orange peel' effect. Distance is critical aswell. Not too near, not too far.

Afterwards you can sand back with successively lighter grades of wet and dry, as you mention. Not sure exactly what those grades are but someone else will probably advise.

allstar_07 wrote:Hi,

Is it best to wet and dry with say 1000 then 1500 then use a decent cutting compound (ideas?), then polish?

Yep.

Any ideas for the cutting stuff?

did you smoothen the primer down? i missed this step once and had a rough effect.

yeah rubbed it down with 800. its just like the paint comes out in big specks rather than a nice fine mist! I knew halfords rattle cans wern't great but theres no way this would work without rubbing down after! or maybe i'm just not getting enough paint on there...trouble is it then runs.

Sounds to me like the spray nozzle was a touch blocked, and the paint wasn't coming out smoothly.
Best thing would be to rub it down with fine wet and dry, then a T-cut and polish.
It's never going to look great as it's been done with a rattle can, so the finish will absolutely never be like that of a spray gun, to get good results you just can't rely on a rattle can.

I didn't even know you could polish up matt black with no clear...

Surely a spray can job with no lacquer will always look a bit rough? (noob?)

I think you're meant to sand it down to 1500 before the laquer anyway?

Any thoughts on the best cutting compound? farcala?

Go to halfords and get some rubbing compound.

It's similar to T-cut but is a bit harsher. If you use it on the entire area you've sprayed it'll help with the blending in. If you're not happy with the finish after a bit of rubbing in then you may as well take a couple of layers off with 1000 grit wet n dry as you'll be at it for a good long time.

Next step is t-cut then a polish then a couple of coats of wax.



This entire arch was repaired and resprayed using rattles and it's come out pretty good imo. Took a fair few mistakes and try agains to get it right tho.