“Paint Correction”

It's been a week since I painted the roof and 8 days since I did the rest of the body. The clear is definitely firming up and “shrinking” as I've read it will do. While I still have plenty of orange peel to “correct”, there are places where I can definitely see it has diminished.

So, the next step on the vehicle is “paint correction” as they say in all of the videos, and for me that starts with addressing the runs in the clear coat. Here are a couple of the worst, and they are pretty bad.

The majority of what I've found approaches this task by taking a razor and scraping the surface of the run, shaving it down until it is just about flush with the surface of the surrounding clear coat. This is a tedious, and harrowing process, but after cleaning up several, it hasn't been too bad. I did discover that one of the runs was in the base, not the clear, so I have a small touch-up that I will need to make to the paint, but it's small and in a relatively inconspicuous spot.

After I have completed shaving the runs down, I will be trying out some of my new paint buffing equipment including denim pads. These are supposed to allow you to smooth out the orange peel without having to sand. One of the things I purchased was a paint thickness gauge that I will be checking to make sure I have plenty of room to clean things up. As always, the goal is to improve, not make this into a show car. We will find out just how well these work in the hands of a novice. Hopefully I will get a chance to start this next week, and more to see at that point.

Finally!

 It took a weekend of mild weather, and using every minute of the short Fall hours of sunlight to do it, but the wagon has been returned to its factory colors of Trafalgar Aqua Metallic and Wimbledon White. Such a long road to get here, but it looks great in spite of my first time painting efforts.

There is orange peel, and there are some runs, but much of that can be greatly diminished without having to respray anything. More details to come in the coming days, but for now, a few pictures.