wet sanding will get rid of the hard line

 

For the painting guys. Picture for reference. Painting the stripe across the tailgate questions.

Here are the steps I see.

1> obviously clean the entire tailgate very well. A dawn wash. Also going to de-badge it before hand and get that cleaned up.
2> Masking tape the line. Wide green 3m tape.
3> Scuff the area to be painted below the mask line. What to use? Scuff pad? 1500 grit sand paper? How do I make sure the scuff gets real close to the mask line?
4>Clean the scuff area again. Can I just damp cloth clean that now or do I need to remove the masking tape and wash it again? Thinking re-masking this would be tough.
5> Tape up/ mask the rest of the tailgate.
6> Paint the stripe BC
7> Clear the stripe CC
8> Remove a blend area of mask above the line and blend in clear coat.

Sound about right?

 

Wow, the sound of crickets after that last post.

 

I'm no expert but since no else has said anything i'll try with my limited knowledge!

3> 1500 is too fine use something like 400-600 (maybe the paint specifies) to get good adhesion. also you should make sure to get all of the clearcoat off and into base color.

4> just blowing off the dust and a tack cloth followed by a appropriate solvent, should be good.

7,8> after doing the basecoat on the lower part i would scuff the whole panel a shoot the clear so its continuous. you probably don't need to scuff the bc you just shot but make sure to scuff the clear on the upper part.

 

Thanks, yeah I did some research after posting that up. I'm with you on the clearcoat blend. 7-8... When you start reading things like "only master painters can blend CC" its best to do the entire panel.

Looks now like I may do this in 2 steps. Get the lower work done. Then the tailgate later. Since I have to tear it down and scuff it up, go ahead and get an SS cap for it and kill it all at one time.

 

sounds good. I know its going to look great, it just takes some effort!

 

are you taking the stripe area down to bare metal like your hood or no?

 

No. Just scuff it up well. I took the hood down to metal because something in the previous paint job had failed and bubbled up. No need to here.

 

start around 350 & step up to finish at i would say 1200 or so & you know what you've gotta do from there you were really just looking for what grit to use correct?

EDIT:: meant to ask you are you masking the rest of the tailgate or are you gonna use butchers paper?

 

Yeah not really sure what grit to scuff up the whole tailgate now, since I will be shooting the whole thing with clear after laying the color on the bottom. I've seen the shows just use a scotch brite pad.

I'll mask, with paper, all but the lower stripe of the tailgate. spray the color, then remove it all and then spray the entire tailgate with clear.