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I worked on painting the test door yesterday and kept notes on how it went. First I roughed up the painted surface by sanding with a 60 grit to start with and then a 220 to smooth it out. In the future I wouldnt skip between paper ranges that extreme but that’s all I had left for my orbital..gotta buy some more ranges. In sanding there were some scratched spots I went to aggressive on and primer showed through along with some metal. I used the compressed air tool to blow off the worst of it, then applied degreaser and cleaned it up and let it dry for an hour.

For consistency I thought to keep my paint gun noted as to where the fluid and air flow dials/knobs were set. My paint gun is a Devilbiss Finishline that came with 4 tips, 1.3, 1.5 1.8, and a 2.2. There weren’t any markings on the knob faces to know how many rotations I would have made, so I tightened them both down completely and scribed a line at the base of each dial/knob at 6 oclock. For the fluid knob I turned it out 3 full rotations as a start. Ive read where some painters usually keep it fully backed out to have max flow and adjust the air mainly. I thought I would start there and do a paint test to make sure its that cigar shaped pattern on the cardboard panel. For the air flow I rotated 1.5 turns for a start. I used the 1.3 tip as the tech sheet for the paint noted either a 1.3 to a 1.6 to be used.

Then I mixed the paint. I wasn’t sure just how many coats it would take so I started with the 1:1 mix as indicated by 2 oz of Base to 2 oz of reducer. This metallic paint is the PPG shopline Saddle color I previously had them mix even though I will need to find a different match since it turns out that this color is not offered in the high end line. I figured for this test of whether or not I can paint a metallic separately and have the paint match up it would be fine. I mixed up the paint and poured it through the filter into the gun canister and sprayed a test onto the cardboard with around 25 psi displaying on the gauge. Between the thinned paint and the fact that its color onto brown cardboard doesn’t pop it was kinda hard to tell if I was getting that cigar or not. Considering I only had 4 oz of paint to test with I started spraying. I went at a consistent speed 8 inches or so from the surface and dropped down each row/sweep about 4 inches to get what I think is the right overlap. The first coat was barely noticeable. I waited 8 min to spray again as the tech sheet said 5 to 10min between coats. I ran out of paint after 2 row sweeping passes on the 3rd coat. So I mixed up another 4oz.

At 3 coats it looked like this.