TL;DR: Can I go 400grit filler>epoxy sealer>dark metallic base coat?

Background and Goals: I have some years experience spraying in a non automotive industry, and I've done some minor body work. This is a DIY project I'm doing in my garage for my own satisfaction and edification. Further, it's a truck that I'm going to daily, so I want to keep the budget and therefore number of products to a minimum. A 10 foot finish will make me perfectly happy. And lastly, I'm probably spraying the worst base color to try and skip body work steps with: Ford's Deep Wedgewood Metallic (LL)

I just replaced rockers/cab corners/a lower door skin. While I'm at it, I decided to fix a few dings/dents/minor hail damage on the hood. Projects always snowball-- you know? I'm working filler over epoxy, except on the bigger fill areas I cut through to bare metal and on the hood with minor hail damage I hit the paint with 40 grit.

So now I have a few pinholes to fill in the body work, and then the plan was to mix my epoxy as a sealer coat. After that, if my filler work is decent and I sand it to 400, can I just go straight into base, or do I absolutely need high build/surfacer primer?

You really need a couple coats of epoxy full strength, or maybe a little reduced
and wait 24 hrs before base.
It'll seal it much better and have less shrinkage after 24 hrs.
You can even sand it a little then, if you find any imperfections after spraying it.

That deep wedgewood blue is a beautiful color. Take a look at it
under a magnifying glass and you'll see red and green pearl mixed
in. It has a slight color shift in the sunlight.

Good advice from JC; although epoxy is hard to sand, might be worth
it to guide coat and blocksand at least around the repaired areas.
Prep work is 90% of a good paint job.

you would be surprised what a coat of primer will do for a bondo repair. you'll see by guide coating and blocking just how flat it really is.
Jay D.

Thanks for the input guys. I have a lot of hours behind a gun filled with clear, but very little experience in the start to finish auto body process-- so a lot of the difficulty is just barreling ahead unsure if I'm doing the right thing to setup myself up for success. These explanations and tips help with that a lot.

as for Deep Wedgewood-- I'm mixed on it. It's growing on me, it's a really cool, rich color in a vacuum, but it's kind of a bit much for a truck for my tastes. Nonetheless, it's kinda funky, kinda quirky, and a full paint job + color change just isn't happening on this one, so it's what I've got.

Hopefully I'll have it cleared by the end of the weekend-- I'll post up some pics when I get there.

In this business cutting corners never works.

To put an extra coat of primer on instead of the epoxy, or even just wet on wet it will add another hour's work. Then block, guide coat, block to P600 might add another 3-4 hours.

Will you really be happy with a "10' finish" when every time you walk past it you think "I could have done that much better I've I'd just had a little more patience"?

NFT5 wrote:In this business cutting corners never works.

To put an extra coat of primer on instead of the epoxy, or even just wet on wet it will add another hour's work. Then block, guide coat, block to P600 might add another 3-4 hours.

Will you really be happy with a "10' finish" when every time you walk past it you think "I could have done that much better I've I'd just had a little more patience"?

Jay D.

NFT5 wrote:In this business cutting corners never works.

To put an extra coat of primer on instead of the epoxy, or even just wet on wet it will add another hour's work. Then block, guide coat, block to P600 might add another 3-4 hours.

Will you really be happy with a "10' finish" when every time you walk past it you think "I could have done that much better I've I'd just had a little more patience"?

Yeah, good point-- I still am ok with less than perfection, because I'm using this project to learn a ton, and it's going to be a daily/work truck. But if I'm learning, why rush and take unnecessary shortcuts? I got some 2k HB and I'm glad I did. I sanded a couple of nibs in the the epoxy after it was a week old and it still clogged the paper super quick. The HB blocked like a dream.

Got a bunch of orange peel on my clear-- tried to cut and buff it, but I got a ttttton of pig tails and couldn't get rid of the haze. Not sure what's going on with that, but I decided to go ahead and wetsand to 800, then use some practice panels to dial in the gun, and see if I can't get the clear to lay out with a satisfactory texture from the gun.

Again, thanks for the push-- it's my truck, there's no real real rush and I've been enjoying the process.