Article on Color Sanding of Single Stage Solid Color Urethane Enamel Paint resulted from one of the Region Members at the September 2018 Cruise discussing their disappointment after 1 hour of wet sanding with 1200 grit sandpaper on a freshly painted surface.

Using some simple guidelines can speed up the process but generally the expectation needs to be that each square foot of surface could require as much as 1/2 hour. A hood painted out in the driveway with a single stage solid color Urethane Enamel paint sprayed with normal dirt contamination might take as much as a 2 day work effort to eliminate all orange peel, flatten out any “bugs”, and achieve a surface ready for buffing…… all without breaking thru the color in any location.

Consider the following guidelines after loading up with plenty of buckets of water:

• Insure all body preparation is as flat as the desired finish color flatness
• Insure uniform layers of paint color to avoid sanding thru the color
• Wet color sand in a uniformly lighted area without direct sunlight exposure
• Use a palm size sanding block on flat areas to insure minimal bridging
• Use 600 coarse grit to eliminate most if not all orange peel
• Closely examine for orange peel frequently and move on when not present
• Use 1200 grit to remove missed minor orange peel & some sanding scratches
• Start the serious sanding scratch removal with 1500 grit
• Move to 2000 grit to improve sanding scratch removal effort

Polish off with 2500 grit. Surface should be uniformly dull with no shiny tiny “stars”.

Buffing should be done in large areas such as an entire hood to insure your color sanding efforts are giving the required mirror finish results with uniform color.

The tedious effort can be rewarding given the initial crude painting conditions.

Vector File for Color Sanding:

ColorSanding (.doc)

Grits can be purchased in several sizes & cut to fit your palm size flat sanding block: