Andy Taylor
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[b]Underpaid Painter wrote:[/b]
[quote]What kind of a shop do you work at? And how many hours a day do you work? Thats a lot of cars![/quote]
They’d work me 24hrs a day of they could!, but I normally stick to 8 or 9.I run the paintshop for a large car retailer, and most of what we do is classed as refurb work. They’ll buy in ex-fleet and ex-rental cars by the hundred, and we tidy up any dings, dents and scuffs on them, averaging around 2 panels per car. I have 2 or 3 guys doing all the prep work, depending how busy we are, and by the time the cars are lined up outside the booth they are fully prepped, primed, cleaned, and virtually masked. All I have to do is drive them in, throw some plastic masking sheet over them, and (almost literally) throw on the paint. I have a separate oven at the side to bake them off, so as soon as one’s painted it gets rolled out of the way on a track system, and the next one comes in to get painted while that’s baking.
Bake time for larger jobs like full sides or front ends is 30 minutes, but for single panels or bumpers (we get lots of those!) I’ll use a faster hardener to get that down to 15-20, and I paint fast enough so that there’s always one painted and waiting to go in the oven as soon as it’s empty. It’s very fast and furious work, but since I get paid a bonus for every car my team turns out, speed is essential.
I couldn’t do it without the right products though. A fast drying water base is crucial, as is a clear that can handle single coat application where appropriate (bumpers, low down panels) or has minimal minimal flash times (3 minutes) if I’m two coating for roofs, bonnets (hoods) etc.
Paint for the next job is mixed whilst the base on the current one is drying, and clear is mixed up while the base drop coat is drying so I never have to stop, and I try and organise things (yes, I’m controlling the shop and my team at the same time as all this!!) so that we have a few cars of the same colour in at the same time, so we can sometimes remove parts and paint 2 or 3 jobs together.
As I say, I’m working at breakneck speed all the time, and it gets pretty stressful, but I wouldn’t have it any other way, and going back to a regular collision type shop would probably bore me now B)
[b]ryanbrown999 wrote:[/b]
[quote]My helpers buff my jobs so I don’t do anything! :rofl [/quote]You can’t beat it! I’ve got a guy that just does buffing all day long, a job that would do my head in very quickly.
I only help him out when I feel guilty after being a bit over enthusiastic with the clear, as he hasn’t got a clue how to remove runs! :blink:
In between each job? You must be joking 😛 I’m painting anything up 18-20 jobs a day, so I barely get chance to open and close the doors, never mind clean up, lol.
I do ‘work tidy’ though – absolutely no prep work done in the booth, and all cars are clean, blown off, and pretty much masked up before entering, so there’s very little dust brought in. The walls are lined with static masking sheet that clings on to dust pretty well, and every once in a while it’ll get a sweep, mop, and vacuum out.
Whenever I change the filters (about every 6 weeks), the floor gets a thorough mop with thinners to remove the overspray (tiled floor, easily cleaned), and the sheeting on the walls gets changed.
It doesn’t guarantee me dirt free jobs, but with the speed we are working at it gives a pretty good compromise.
[b]MoCoke wrote:[/b]
[quote]id only trust that thing with flipping my mattress lol, [/quote]
Ha, funnily enough I’ve laid a car over on it’s side onto a mattress before now! :blush:I’d go with the DeBeer any day, especially as it’s around half the price of 6690!
As I say, the NEXA stuff was reasonable, but it would never be my first choice as I found it quite hard work to get it to lay slick enough even to match OE peel. And if you didn’t get it right first time, you were done for, as any more than 1½ coats and it would pop like crazy when baked. And it really loves to flow when you put it on bake. You know the kind of ‘thickening’ you get when you’re right on the limit in a certain area but it hasn’t quite run? (maybe you don’t, maybe it’s just me :silly: ) Well turn your back on 6690 and by the time it’s come out of the oven it will have cascaded down the panel, no matter how long you’ve left it to flash!
I had my reservations when we switched over to the DeBeer 8-214, mainly because I’ve never been impressed by ‘cheap’ clears, but I was very pleasantly surprised. At the time of the changeover I kept a gallon of 6690 hidden in my cupboard for any real quality jobs that came in, but the DeBeer is so good that I’ve never had it out, nor would I want to, as although it may be low cost, it’s certainly not a ‘cheap’ clear, if you know what I mean.
But don’t let me put you off trying it :rofl
[b]ryanbrown999 wrote:[/b]
[quote]They are supposed to be bringing in a Nexa clear for me to try.[/quote]
I don’t suppose you know which one do you? I’ve used 6690 a lot, and found it to be reasonable good, but being such a high solids one it was prone thickening on the edges quite a bit, and you’d have no chance of getting any runs out as they’d just champagne (pop with thousands of tiny bubbles).I also used their express clear for a bit (6659 I think). Used with regular speed hardener and it’s dedicated accelerated reducer, you were looking at 10-15 minutes bake time with no loss of gloss. Ideal for those smaller jobs, but I wouldn’t have done more than 2 panels with it due to it being pretty hard to buff.
[b]zarbat007 wrote:[/b][quote]I paint in auto repair (mechanic) garage during weekends..[/quote]
Me too, that’s how I know. Don’t get me wrong, it can certainly be done, it’s just a bit more of a bind than using solvent base (especially this time of year when it’s so cold!). I use a hot air gun to blow it dry, which gives me both the temps and air movement that WB needs.[b]Joe@FCAB wrote:[/b]
[quote] Cant say I would go back to solvent. Would take some extreme conditions to use solvent again.[/quote]Me too. They’d have to drag me kicking and screaming back to solvent!
Just to add a few things if you don’t mind (since I’ve been using WB for a good few years now)
Yes you need to keep it above freezing (in storage AND transport!), but many mixing schemes come with heated shelving, which is more than enough to keep the cans warm enough. As ding says though, I wouldn’t really want to be storing anything at freezing anyway – a HS clear would be a nightmare to spray if stored at those temps.
And I agree with Jayson on the blending thing too. Whichever WB I’ve used, flicking out at the end of a blend makes things hard work. It takes some getting used to as it seems alien, but just simply stopping when you reach the end is the best way. I’ll make sure my first light coat of base goes well past the blend area, then just throw the wet coats on where needed, making sure I work from the outside in when more than one is needed, then all of the hard work is done on the last drop coat, which generally blends out extremely easily.
Mocoke – I find WB flashes more quickly than solvent base in the right conditons. Sure it doesn’t lend itself well to painting without a spraybooth, but if you have a decent booth airflow, and some blowers/air movers to pass turbulent air over the panels, it’s pretty quick drying. Most solvent seems to have 15 minutes per coat as a recommended flash time, 5-6 will do for WB 😉
I know it’s a bit outdated now, but I’ve used etch over sanded chrome to really good effect. I’ve colour coded quite a few front grilles that way, and even though they’re right out front just waiting to get chipped, I’ve not had one come back due to flaking.
[b]jim c wrote:[/b]
[quote]if something sits in base for a while before clearing can you wipe dry waterborn base down with w&g remover or something like that the way you can solvent base or is it too delicate? is there a special product for this?[/quote]
As ryan says, a solvent based w&g remover is fine. If I need to nib any dirt out of the base I’ll use a foam back 1000 or 2000 grit pad dampened with solvent w&g to lubricate it.Once it’s fully dried it’s pretty much as durable as solvent base, you can sand it, tack it, tape it etc etc, just keep water away from it (just as you wouldn’t wipe ‘regular’ base down with a solvent reducer ;))
Thanks for clearing that up Jim. Makes sense now you remind me that you’re trying to level more than just the peel.
It makes me think of some of the guys that have worked for me, starting to sand their final filler/glaze coat down with p180 or 240. They might get it smooth, but it ain’t gonna be flat!
[b]jim c wrote:[/b]
[quote] i use spi clears and i will do 4 coats, let dry, block it out with 400…[/quote]
Sorry to butt in Jim, but I see this mentioned a lot. Are you talking ‘regular grade’ 400, or the P400 that we mostly get in the UK (which sounds a bit coarse, even for serious levelling)?
Thanks 🙂Christ! That’s really nice, and is better than some of the commercially made booths I’ve worked in!
Very envious…
[b]ryanbrown999 wrote:[/b]
[quote] I think it is the same thing Andy is talking about also.
[/quote]
Yep, that’s exactly what I mean, I just wasn’t very good at describing it! :silly:I hope he doesn’t mind me using this video as an example, but jimmo is using what I call french masking on this repair, to prevent a hard edge on the body lines he’s painting up to. Should make a lot more sense than my description!
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTTlsIHqg0c[/video]
There are several ways of doing it, and each will have his own preferred method.
As you say, firstly I’d paper and tape up the insides. With most jambs you can get away with 6″ paper easily, but you could completely cover everything if you wished. Keep the masking around 1/2″ from the jamb edge, as you’ll sort this with the next stage.
This is where things vary a bit. The easiest option is to use to use a foam edge tape like the one from 3M. This looks basically like a piece of foam rope, with adhesive on one edge. This stuff blocks up the jamb gap to prevent overspray going inside, but one major downfall it has is that paint can stray onto the glue section and leave a hard edge against it.
To cure the above problem 3M have brought out a new advanced verson, which is more like a flat tube, and the glue edge is always kept well away from the jamb edge so there’s no chance of a hard edge. I use this stuff every day as it’s quick and effective.
Another more old school way is what we in the UKcall French Masking, but I think you guys have another name for it. I’ll take a length of 1″ tape, and fold about a quarter inch of it back on itself. This then leaves you with around a half inch of tape that you can stick down, but around a quarter inch ‘flap’ that doesn’t stick (jees this is hard to describe!!) Stick this tape so the your folded edge is right up to the edge of the jamb, and a small amount of paint will feather under it leaving you with no hard edge. If that lot doesn’t make sense, have a search for a new 3M product called transition tape. Basically it does exactly the same job, but they can charge a hell of a lot more for it! :lol1
If I’m doing a high quality job (rather than just my normal high speed production stuff), then I’ll use both of the above methods. Some french tape to stop the hard edge, and some of the foam to bridge the gap and prevent overspray going into the jambs (and just as importantly, stop dust and dirt blowing out!)
Hope that makes sense fella :huh: