no im not trying to start up a thread about the last post. just wondering how all are getting rid of the orange peel?? are you wet sanding and going from there?

 

There are two different types of paint on your truck (pending it was built around 1990 or later). One is a color coat. The other is a clear coat.

Both are forms of paint.

The problem with that is that either of the two layers may contain the OP. You see, if the color coat is the culprit (which, most of the time it is as I understand it), you're going to first have to sand through the clear and then into the color. This, obviously, makes no sense since your clearcoat must be sacrificed.

Now, if it's in the clear, some may be able to wetsand much of the 'sagging clear' (ie: OP) and get it out. This can be done but it may also cause problems of its own in that the clear thickness build will be greatly reduced and thus, less protection for the colorcoat.

It's kind of a damned if you do... damned if you do scenario.

 

i really did not want to speak of orange peel again but here it goes....

orange peel is unavoidable by all current methods of vehicles being painted today, maybe one day it will be gone. it is caused by the way the vehicle is painted. orange peel is in every coat that is applied to the vehicle primer, base, and clear. it is caused by paint being in arosol dropplet form coming out of a tip in a liquid then being atomized to small dropplets by force towards the painted surface. all factory cars have orange peel....no ifs ands or buts about it. i have had the pleasure of working on some very high end vehicles including ferraris, bentleys, and saleen s7. all....yes every single one of them had diffrent degrees of orange peel. i have not touched a bugatti but have heard that they are hand finished and oragne peel is removed before vehicle delivery.

most factory paint is high volume with consideration of look, cost, and speed considered for the best results for least outlay of money. you can have a $10 harbor freight siphon style gun, or a $2000 digital hvlp sata gun they will all produce orange peel. the sata, the king of spray guns, of couse will be alot less it will still be there. the less there is the less work is needed to cut the top coat of clear down to being flat.

so now that being said...all paint, factory and custom has orange peel. it has to be hand finished to bring it to flat. this is done by sanding with very fine sandpaper. this could be done with dry or wet paper. with the sand paper you are taking off the top layer of clear being careful not to take too much off and "bust through" to the base coat. most factory paint, not all, the final clear coat is thick enough for protection of the base/color coat, but they dont give you extra to sand down smooth. yes factory clears can be color sanded, but this is very risky...once the surface is brought to flat with atleast 2000 girt paper i like to finish with 2500-4000 on reds or blacks non metallics. you would then take out the scratches with several stages of pads/and compounds with a rotary buffer only, da polishers need not apply here, to take out the scratches that you put in. very time consuming but very rewarding....25 to 40 hours per car depening on how big the car is...

so that is the only way i know of or even heard of how to take orange peel out of a vehicle paint. execpt for older single stage acrylic paints you could skip the sand and high speed polisher could flatten it out, i have never done it but old timers tell me thats how they did it in the 60's and 70's.

 

rockpick

if the base coat is heavy orange peel and it is a straight color...no flakes or heavy drips...enough clear can be added to fill it and then sand it down and the actual top refective surface will be flat and look mirror like..

some painters will sand heavier imperfections out of the color coat prior to laying clear without applying color back over the sand...some will even sand some of the heavy orange peel in the base coat then go straight to clear...the clear will wet the color coat and you cant see the sanding scratches once the clear has filled them in...then sand the final coat

on flake cars the flake is suspended in the color...if you sand the color coats too hard before the clear you can sand the color off the flakes...for example if you have a blue metal flake and see the flakes in the paint they will have diffrent color looking flakes...for most paint the flakes are the same color but look different due to the flake being higher or lower deepth level of the surface...if you sand down too hard you can sand all of the color off the flake and will see the blue flakes with little silver flakes that got all the blue sanded off of them....

to wrap it up...no matter how hard the peel is in the base or clear...if enough clear is there...it can be sanded flat.

 

So... you're saying that the OP will always occur in the clear? The PPG guy that I use frequently as a resource didn't necessarily agree with that paradigm.

He did say that it was likely that the OP would be in the clear but, that it wasn't always the case?

I'm learning here...

 

every type of gun hvlp or old siphon style will produce orange peel period. better guns will produce alot less, but it will still be there. for a test ask your painter to paint a test panel, then take 3000 grit on a block, run it over the surface 3 or 4 times dont block it completly flat just yet...you will see the freckles of orange peel....

the freckles are the dull spot that will look circular and it will be surrounded by the shinny valleys. the dull spots are created by the sand paper making the clear dull by scratching the taller peaks of the orange peel and the valleys are the low spots that have not been hit by the paper yet. you know to stop sanding when the spots are gone and the entire section is dull...when using a wet paper you need to squeege the section dry to see how you work is coming along.

 

painters can cheat and make it less by diffrent mixes of cytlizers/hardners/thinners...the thinner the better the paint flows and settles flatter but run the risk of runs...round pannels like that of a 53-56 ford f100 and pannel edges always lay better than flat than the hood of an 07 escalade

 

Yeah... that all makes sense but, can the color coat peel under the right conditions.

I mean, we're talking this as a Ford paint line:

1. Base
2. Bake
3. Color
4. Bake
5. Clear
6. Bake

If you were to go from 3 to 5 and have some OP then you'd basically encapsulate the OP -- regardless to the fact of if the clear has OP. Correct?

In that instance, there's no way to correct it other than with a full sand and respray or a full strip and respray... correct?

 

yes every single coat...primer, base, clear...all of them will have orange peel...each one building the one prior just a bit more...the first primer coat will look like egg shell...then each one will be a bit more. some shops not better or worse sand between each coat to minimize this...making the final colorsand super fast and easy. some cars i have started with 800 that had a heavier peel effect to get a good start then worked down to 3000 or so.

to have orange peel in color is not bad...you eye will only see the peel in the top surface, that being the clear.

 

Like said before, you can nearly eliminate Orange Peel, but you have to paint properly and intensively. When spraying a clear, there is a VERY thin line between running the paint and eliminating orange peel. You need your air adjustment just right and you need to lay the clear right before it runs to ensure a thick slick coat. When you lay it on too light you get mad orange peel. The proper thing to do would be prime, spray a guide coat and block everything flat, base, clear, block again, buff. I wouldn't block our trucks, there is probably not enough clear to sand down.

 

I just find it interesting that the orange peel issue seems to have gotten worse with modern vehicles, not better.

The factory paint on my "cheapo-daily-driver" '97 Ranger (Portofino Blue Clearcoat Metallic) is leaps and bounds better in appearance than the factory paint on my '05 F-150 (Medium Wedgewood Blue Clearcoat Metallic). I would have guessed that 10 years of technological improvements in the paint application process would have resulted in a better finish appearance, not worse!

But of course, the fact that we're even here in this part of the site makes us somewhat of an anomoly. Let's face it -- most of the guys on this site (and to a larger extent the rest of the real world) will never even put a coat of wax on their vehicle, much less worry about some orange peel in the factory paint.

The reality is that Chip Foose is building his cars to a different set of expectations than Ford Motor Company -- and his customers have the willingness and means to pay for this higher quality. The vast majority of Ford's customers only care that the car starts and the radio sounds good as their driving down the interstate eating their Big Mac.......