Just had a paint job fail on me in a hilariously dumb way

I was working on a 2010 Ford F-150 in my shop near Columbus last Tuesday. Mixed up some pearl clear coat and didn't shake the base enough (rookie mistake, I know). It came out looking like a bad case of orange peel crossed with a streaky mess. Had to sand it all back down and start over, which ate up about 4 hours of my day. Anyone else ever have a paint job go sideways because you skipped a simple step?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_kelly7d ago

Tell me about it! I did the same thing on a silver metallic a few years back, skipped the reducer step just to save time and ended up with a finish that looked like a glitter bomb went off wrong. Literally had tiger stripes from where the metallic settled and I had to wet sand the whole thing twice before I got it right. It's always the simple stuff that gets you, isn't it? I swear I check my mixing stick like three times now before I even spray a test card.

tessa_roberts17d ago

My first couple years painting I actually thought reducer was optional on metallics. I had this dark blue metallic Toyota pickup I was spraying and figured I'd save a few bucks by laying it down thick. Big mistake. It came out looking like I'd sprinkled sand over the whole thing, metallic particles sitting on top of the clear like a bad science project. That truck taught me the hard way that $15 in reducer is way cheaper than a gallon of paint and six hours of sanding.