Just shot my doors with ppg garnette red. I was disapointed to see all the scratches show up. I used 400 then 600. Will the clear hide them? Also I see a little area where my body work could use a little more sanding to get it perfect. Can I work that area then reshoot that. Or do I just clear it.
Thanks!

Just shot my doors with ppg garnette red. I was disapointed to see all the scratches show up. I used 400 then 600.
1) Will the clear hide them?

2)Also I see a little area where my body work could use a little more sanding to get it perfect. Can I work that area then reshoot that. Or do I just clear it.
Thanks!

1) nope any flaw you see in basecoat will show up thru the clear.

2) sand it out using guide coat, reprime if nessesary
I would fix the b work and sand the rest of the door with 800 wet/dry ( been a while since I have sprayed PPG)
then re shoot doors, if they look good in base then clear them

Well, I removed all of that very expensive paint and started over. I blocked with 400, applied the guide coat then dry sanded with 600. applied guide coat and wet sanded with 600. Seems to be ok but I will check it again in the morning. Any need to go to 800 with a solid color? I'm learning :)

I would wet sand with 600 vs dry with 600, it gives a finer finish wet.... also soak the paper for 10-15 minutes to "soften" the paper....a trick I wet the panel with wax and grease remover and sight down it looking for flaws ect while its wet...

Garnet red great color, If you were to seal it in black sealer you would be able to see every imprefection + the red would cover faster and you would use less of that high dollor base to get it to cover, Plus with any Red it will take a few coats to get it to cover and to even out. I like to use a bright LED flashlight to check for covarage and for blend. Turn off the light after you based it and it has flashed, look it over if you find a spot blend it in to cover. Then clear, lots cheaper to find that spot before it's cleared.

I just finished up sanding the front clip and doors. I just don't know how I could get them any better. I had not considered using a sealer. Should I seal? How do I go about sealing?

Also, if you get a piece of trash in your base how do you fix it? When I painted my doors the other day (before I removed the paint :() I lightly sanded out a piece of trash with 1500, I then sprayed over the spot. I noticed after it flashed it left a overspay around that area. Would the clear cover that?
Thanks for the help!

Grag, bearing in mind that I am by no means an expert at painting... but I too used 400 as my final sanding grit, and was as scared as you when I could "see" the 400 grit lines in the base. They vanished absolutely under the first coat of clear, 2 more coats, wetsand, buff and polish, the paint looks like a sheet of glass.

I used ppg dbc base, in lemans blue.

On your bodywork problem, you'll want to fix that. According to the spec sheets with the dbu/dbc base, you have 24 hours to get the clear on, or start over. Starting over, at minimum, means sanding the entire panel and reshooting enough base to "cover". 1 coat would be enough, assuming you didn't sand thru the red into the primer, which u probably will in that rough spot. It may be "possible" to spot some primer over the bad spot, then spot build some base, then shoot one cover coat over the whole door, but that's really iffy.

I had a similar situation happen, but it was on the rocker, more or less out of site, and I chose not to reprime, just to sand off the imperfections and shoot more base. Not sure you could get away with that on a door.

Sure your base is not to thin? On some colors especially black it always seems to show fine (600) sanding scratches in the base if its not sealed first. I usually under reduce my first few coats. This leaves the base a little thicker.Covers better and will take care of the fine scratches. On my last coats i will reduce as normal. You could just use a black wet on wet sealer like Gene said.Spray on a coat.Let it flash twenty minutes(or whatever the label says) and go with your base. Thats how most production paint shops do it. As far as nibbing the sealer or base,600 or 1000 is what i use depending on if its a first coat or last.But you MUST spray more base over where you sand before its cleared.

the single most important thing I ever learned about body work is that your eye's are of no use whatsoever you feel your body panel's with the palm of your hand anything you can feel will show in the paint , in other word's you can get panel's perfectly straight blindfolded , this is a well known trick but nobody will ever talk about it ?

what i cant feel with my hands i CAN see with my eyes.

thats why i trust my sight more then just feeling the paint.

definately , the eyes can go at a different angle and see the bump or low spot in the body work, the hand sometimes just cant feel that slight curve or high spot....

I always wet sand with 800, before my base coat. I have never seen scratch marks from the sanding. this is usually mettallic though so its best safe than sorry, metallics are annoying.

if your dry sanding then start wet sanding, the water allows it to glide and clean the sand paper, allowing the grit to seem higher.

yup... but im no expert at body work, i still get the usual imperfection, that annoys the hell out of me.

Question, Is it ok to wet sand with 600 on clearcoat? I put on 2 coats going to sand apply my stripes then 2-3 more coats. Then sand and buff.

I would go with 1000.

Grag, again, the pro's know how to make it work, but... When I started wetsanding the clear, I was going to use 1200 then 1500 then 2000. On the first peice, I found it simply impossible to get out the scratches from the 1200...had to rub on it for what seemed like a week. The rest of it got 2000 only, rubbed till it looked perfectly "opaque". This took me a fraction of the time it took using all 3 gritsx, and buffed to a high gloss in seconds.