You need to practice with some junk parks like you have with that door. You can go and get another door from a body shop for free. We throw out parts like this every day, LOTS of them. Every once in a while someone comes by because they want some metal or a test panel like you need and we are more than happy to give them to them so you could check with a local body shop to get a door off a Corolla or something.
This can REALLY make a big difference, paint the whole door. Then the next day mask the door down the middle and paint half of it. See if you can do it with the exact same gun distance and speed and pressure and all that, it's really not that hard. Do be sure you have the same color, a little different pressure can make a big difference in how metallic lays down. It's not that hard, but I can't believe the guys who can't pull it off!
I remember a head painter once who just couldn't grasp it, the car would be different colors and he would make comments like "the spray out card looked good though."
One day he sprayed the fender on a truck and the color was off by a mile. He showed me how the spray out card matched beautiful. I looked at him right in the eye and said "That is the evidence, that is the finger print, the DNA, that is the evidence that you sprayed the spray out card different than the fender!" He STILL didn't get it.
This is a test spray I am referring too, he would spray his spray out card to match the color WAY wetter than the car, I would see him, I would watch him BOMB the paint on the spray out card MUCH wetter than you could possibly spray the car. I would go and look through the window of the booth as he sprayed the car and of course he was spraying it normally not bombing it on like the spray out card, NO WONDER they were different colors! This isn't rocket science....but alas he couldn't get it.
Then I see guys like you who have put the time and thought into it and spray a car in pieces over months and it looks like it was painted at once.
Consistency that's all it takes!
Brian
