making body filler look wet ?
 

I s there any way to make my filler look wet temporarily so I can see my progress. Is on a long long quarter panel with lots of curves. I have a section I,m not sure of, not sure if my high spots should be low spots and high spots be low spots.

Re: making body filler look wet ?
 

I wouldn't really spray anything other than guide coat on it.

I have seen people spray panels down with wax and grease remover but filler is pretty porous so I would avoid anything other than paint on it.

Re: making body filler look wet ?
 

Wax and grease remover is fine, have done it many times. Make sure to blow it completely dry with a blow gun before applying more filler or priming.

Re: making body filler look wet ?
 

I prefer to spray primer on it. Let it dry a little bit and put a guide coat on it and then that will show you where your low spots are. You can then scratch those up with a 36 grit so that the filler will have a bite and applyy filler only on the low spots.
Just how I do it. Not saying it's right, I just don't want anything other than primer between my filler & paint.

Re: making body filler look wet ?
 

Use guide coat as said, that's the intent of this product. when you sand, you'll find your high and low spots.

Re: making body filler look wet ?
 

I just wanted to see it shiny like a finished product. It.s 9 feet long with no real straight edges from the factory but some errors on my part trying to pull dents from places I could,t get a dolly on or in. Will a full coat of guide coat give me shine for a short window of time ?

Re: making body filler look wet ?
 

Guide coat will not shine. It's just a sanding aide, which you should use when blocking primer. In the collision industry, time is money, so we have done the wax and grease remover trick on filler with success every time. We actually do the final wipe before primer with wax and grease. On every car. Never had a primer delamination. More people would probably be more comfortable doing it over primer, but then you'll have to risk re-filling areas over the primer and then spot priming those areas and blending them in. Or better yet, re-priming the entire panel. That takes a lot of time. As long as you're priming over 150 grit scratches or similar, you'll be fine. Like I said earlier, make sure it is completely dried out before spraying it with primer. Blow gun works great.

Re: making body filler look wet ?
 

O.P. should probably listen to the good advice given here. I've read his posts before and would trust him if he said it will work, I believe it will work.
Most of us (Myself Especially/Included) are NOT production guys in the industry. I do it my way because Time is my time and a little material only.

Re: making body filler look wet ?
 

OK, done deal.I new there was some way. Thanks as usual, always great advice on the paint section especially for someone who does this every so often, as in years.

Re: making body filler look wet ?
 

I have also put Wax n Grease wipe over cured filler. No problems in terms of reaction, but it only looks "wet" for a few moments.

Re: making body filler look wet ?
 

Your problem is that you wiped it on. Put it in a hand-pump sprayer or an old paint gun and spray it on exactly like you were painting the panel. It'll look just like clearcoat for about 3 minutes. This is what we do when prepping panels for blends. You can see where you cut through clearcoat on an edge or other little problems that you'll need to flick a ltitle base over. Without looking at it that way, you'd never know that there was a cut through until you clear the panel. At that point you're screwed.

Re: making body filler look wet ?
 

Love me some wax and grease remover!!!

Re: making body filler look wet ?
 

wow, I,m going to be scared to put it on now LOL

Re: making body filler look wet ?
 

I've sprayed and wiped on W&G remover over filler more many years and never a problem and this is in a collision setting.

I do this not because I have no idea whether the panel is straight or not but because it cleans the oils from my hands and does a deep cleanse of sanding dust that compressed air can't get.

Re: making body filler look wet ?
 

I agree. I usually spray it down with W&G, wipe it down, then blow it off unail it's dry between every coat of anything I put on it. Between coats of filler and everything.

Re: making body filler look wet ?
 

Hugger, you should write a book.

Re: making body filler look wet ?
 

I shouldn't need to. Brian Martin (MARTINSR) basically already has, just nobody on here digs into past stuff before they post questions. Even guys with some real skills can learn from him.

Re: making body filler look wet ?
 

Thanks so much Hugger! But honestly, we ALL can learn from one another! As long as we are open we are going to learn. I can't believe the things I have learned from someone not even in the business or a real hack that I never had respect for. They walk up to you doing something and throw out an idea and WHAM you can't believe how brilliant it is!

Nope, we all have something to offer.

Brian

Re: making body filler look wet ?
 

On the subject at hand, I have a very hard time believing that I could see more than I could feel. With scratches going in all different directions the wax and grease remover is not going to be uniformly shiny to help you.

The VERY REAL possibility of the wax and grease remover being sucked up by the bondo is another huge issue with me.

Can it be done, sure, pro's do it. But what wax and grease remover, they aren't all the same some have very slow flash times. How fresh is the bondo? Is it fully cured? How wet would you have to apply the wax and grease remover, opening a giant, ugly door of failure.

Feeling it and looking at how the guide coat comes off (I very seldom use it) feeling it is the number one way to find stuff.

One old trick of mine is something I have a hard time getting apprentices to understand, if you are of state of mind that you hope you won't find anything.....you won't. And you will paint it and it will look like crap. But WANT to find something, hope to find something that you will have to fix, hope that you will have to re-do the whole thing, with that hope you WILL find the flaws, fix them and end up with a much better job.

Brian

Re: making body filler look wet ?
 

Both of you are a wealth of information and I'm sure are as appreciated by everyone else on here as much as you are by me. I posted a question on here a while back about information on an electric emergency brake actuator and had a guy give me a bunch of crap for expecting someone else to do my thinking for me. That's not the case at all and really defines what this board is about. Buy a crappy brake actuator and you're out 5 to 6 hundred bucks. Same goes with body work and painting only multiply the loss by 4 or 5 times that depending on the finish you are trying to achieve. Bottom line is most if not all of us on here look to guys like you that are voluntarily forthcoming with information that will save us loads of time and money as well as allow us to do something ourselves that we would otherwise have to hire someone else to do. So many thanks to the 2 of you and the other guys that lead us paint dummies in the right direction.

Re: making body filler look wet ?
 

I am blown away at what I have been able to do with the help of guys on forums like this. Stuff I never could have imagined. Changing the hard drive in my computer, how about repairing my TV replacing some resisters (as I remember that's what they were. LOL) it was a few years ago on Superbowl Sunday, I went to a store in town (now out of business) and bought these two resisters for like 80 cents each in the morning, replaced them in my TV and had it working to watch the game! I could have never done it without someone showing me how to on a forum. How about doing the convertible top on my 65 Buick Gran Sport, I wouldn't have dreamed I would be able to do it. But with the guidance of Dan on hotrodders.com I could have NEVER done it.

Nope, I love sharing what I can and seeing some guy in his garage do something he never thought he could, it's so damn cool! If it makes them feel like I did/do in my examples RIGHT ON!

Brian:metal:

Re: making body filler look wet ?
 

I wrote a "Basics" for the subject of feeling filler. :D

http://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/s...d.php?t=746723

Brian