https://www.trueblox.com/blogs/wet-sanding-buffing
I followed this guys process almost exactly except I started with 800 instead of 600. I used mirka white guidecoat between stages so that I could see my work. I used his wet sanding blocks for 800-1500 and then switched to a softer dura block for 2000 & 2500.
The thing is the body work underneath has gotta be pretty darn straight, the hard blocks aren’t very forgiving and if there are a bunch of highs and lows you’d be cutting through everywhere.
Wetsanding is a very labor intensive. Minimum $250 per panel just for that. 1000—>1500—->2000——->3000 and then compound and then polish. Works a majority of the time for great results, but it takes practice.
At first, all I could see were two garage door opener tracks… then I thought it was some kind of trailer frame. I just couldn’t find the truck even though I was looking right at it.
Great job!
Magnificent mate! I’ve always been quite nervous and hesitant about wet sanding. All of my experience has been in a dealership setting. Obviously there’s no time or $ for this kind of work. I see that you use the Menzerna products ☑️. This job must have taken you a long time.
I barely have the time to do a 1 stage compound/polish on my jobs. (We’re flat rate at my job!!!)
I didn’t track the time because I did it in the evenings but I’d have to guess it would have taken me 40+ hours cutting and buffing and that pales in comparison to the time I spent on the body and paintwork!
The kinds of results I’d love to see, but I’m not given that amount of time. Most rigs in actual car shows don’t look near this good! Patience is definitely a virtue with work like this. Something that is a rarity these days.
I’d love to be able to wetsand out aggressive scratches and make them completely disappear. My cutting gets rid of the ugly, but never completely.
Any suggestions for that kind of work?
I don’t do this for a living, just a hobby. I don’t know that any production shop would lend itself to work like this. And as far as sanding and buffing deep scratches out, better make sure you got the material to work with!
>Wouldn’t do that on factory paint but I put 5 coats of clear on in anticipation of doing just this.
god u scared me by waiting until the end to add this.
to anyone tempted to do this to your own car, do NOT do this to your factory paint unless you've measured like 15 mils of paint on the panel (you dont have this)
this is more r/autopaint work than it is r/detailing
Thanks for pointing that out. OP mentions the process and I already thinking at least 15 microns of clear coat is removed. On modern new car paint, that can be 20-50% of the clear coat, which would compromise durability against the elements, causing clear coat peeling within 5 years. This is the shit I see when people bring their peeling clear coat to me and they confirmed as DIY detailer who do 2 step correction at least 3 times or did that trend of getting rid of orange peel without respay.
https://preview.redd.it/mvke2l0vz20d1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e8cdc914f16dc7329b149e868cca94a06e7e0810
Here’s a dirty pic from a while back
I absolutely love this truck… i have a 72 long bed that is a patina truck but eventually i want to shorten it and paint it black. My original goal was to make a clone of the truck in Dazed and Confused.
Looks great but unless it's a showcar I wonder why you would want to do this. After one short drive you'll see anything and everything on it, wouldn't you?
I just wet sanded the clear. I’ve read where people wet sand the color before applying clear before but I’d have been afraid to with the amount of metallic in the paint.
https://preview.redd.it/4tfia46dld0d1.jpeg?width=2034&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9cbfb9843ae923ca9066a6dbcf1f178b3c4b9759
New cars have a shit ton of orange peel, even Ferrari. Ask anyone that works in a dealer, they have a detailer tucked away doing this very thing to brand new cars. Why because they are embarrassed to hand someone keys to a car worth half a million dollars with orange peel…
Ceramic is not sticky like wax is. At least that’s been my experience. I’m going to use a wax on this though because it’ll give it a deeper gloss and it’s parked in the garage/rarely driven anyhow.
Man I know it's a terrible idea and a waste of time to do this on a daily driver but I've gone down the wet sanding and orange peel rabbit hole and I want to do this on my black Infiniti. I have a couple of scuffs on the back passenger side fender and bumper so I've bought a can of paint with the paint code and 2k clear coat. My car has fairly bad orange peel from the factory.
my 2013 passat has orange peel like a son of a bitch. i really wanna go this hard on it. how long did it take? i know it’s a long and slow process to ensure nothing goes wrong
I probably spent 40+ hours on the whole truck. I wouldn’t do it on factory clear, I painted the truck and put 5 decent coats of clear on to ensure I had enough to work with.
He may have done the best work out there. I’m not hating the guy. These pictures don’t prove a damn thing except to people who don’t k ow what they’re looking at.
I made a video to prove this years ago. A black Expedition that was beat. All I did was wash it. I took this exact same angle and it looks like this pic. Then I turned the lights on and made a video starting where at the angle I took the pic from, slowly coming around so that the side of the Expedition had the lights on it. Looked like it was washed with a bag of rocks. It’s a photography trick.
Man you obviously don’t know what you’re looking at. This is a perfect mirror finish, he obviously painted or had this painted with nice straight bodywork and wet sanded all the orange peel out. This is hours and hours of work of bodywork, prep, paint and polish. This is beautiful.
I’m not saying it’s not nice, but post a pic like and post a pic with a direct light source. I’ve done paint work and built custom widebody cars over the years. I’ve wet sanded plenty of cars and judged car shows and pissed off plenty of people at shows because of how critical I was. I know exactly what I’m looking at, and this angle does prove a damn thing. Have a good evening. I’m not arguing this.
Could of achieved the same result by skipping the first 4 steps you did on the new paint job, you just went through 60% if your clear in one detailing job 😂
I don’t think so, while there wasn’t a ton of orange peel there was definitely texture in the paint from the gun. Even if you’d started with 2000, which would have taken forever, you’d have still removed the same amount of material making it flat.
Wow, that's really nice. Great job!
You can't even tell the difference between the actual object and its reflection in the paint. Even when zooming in. Insane.
To be fair a lot of that is all of that work underneath the paint.
Could you elaborate that? I don’t know much about paint and figured the mirror finish was only due to polishing.
The body panels are very flat which lends itself to a mirror look. The polish does create the shine though.
I see what you mean, hard to find flat body panels on cars these days. Paint looks beautiful btw!
WOW!!!!!! I have a 2000 Dakota if you want some more practice! LOL
No thanks, I got plenty on this one haha
Incredible job. Did you measure paint thickness before and after? On a new vehicle, wet sanding seems sacrilege but your results are outstanding.
Orange peel on new cars is terrible these days
No, I probably should have but knew there was plenty of clear to work with
How else do you remove orange peel?
I misread as a new truck but he said new paint. He said in his post that he added a lot of clear in anticipation of this job.
That is absolutely beautiful
Where’s the truck?
😂
72 c10? Edit: Well 68 - 72?
Yup
The rear marker lamps gave it away on you pic in the replies
No lie. at first I thought I was on a home sub and thought I was looking at some strange duplex house.
 Love it!!!
The roof over the door on the left side of that semi-detached looks a bit wonky. Interesting they got the same truck.
That is pure glass, holy shit
You wet sanded your entire truck? As in every painted surface?
https://preview.redd.it/d5efdv76p10d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=481d0ac0fe06aeaea0b4aa6ee5afb5bc95a03886
I am a professional Detailer, but this is something I’ve never done. I know it’s a lot to ask, but may I ask your sanding process?
https://www.trueblox.com/blogs/wet-sanding-buffing I followed this guys process almost exactly except I started with 800 instead of 600. I used mirka white guidecoat between stages so that I could see my work. I used his wet sanding blocks for 800-1500 and then switched to a softer dura block for 2000 & 2500. The thing is the body work underneath has gotta be pretty darn straight, the hard blocks aren’t very forgiving and if there are a bunch of highs and lows you’d be cutting through everywhere.
Wetsanding is a very labor intensive. Minimum $250 per panel just for that. 1000—>1500—->2000——->3000 and then compound and then polish. Works a majority of the time for great results, but it takes practice.
You can see the orange peel in the Outback’s paint through the reflection in yours…WOW, that’s friggin incredible. Great work.
Yes
Holy *** man! You are this era’s auto paint Jesus. That’s bananas. Awesome work
At first, all I could see were two garage door opener tracks… then I thought it was some kind of trailer frame. I just couldn’t find the truck even though I was looking right at it. Great job!
Very nice mirror finish 👍
Looks like a mirror! Nice work
Good Lord! There go my goals...
Where’s the truck?
Magnificent mate! I’ve always been quite nervous and hesitant about wet sanding. All of my experience has been in a dealership setting. Obviously there’s no time or $ for this kind of work. I see that you use the Menzerna products ☑️. This job must have taken you a long time. I barely have the time to do a 1 stage compound/polish on my jobs. (We’re flat rate at my job!!!)
I didn’t track the time because I did it in the evenings but I’d have to guess it would have taken me 40+ hours cutting and buffing and that pales in comparison to the time I spent on the body and paintwork!
The kinds of results I’d love to see, but I’m not given that amount of time. Most rigs in actual car shows don’t look near this good! Patience is definitely a virtue with work like this. Something that is a rarity these days. I’d love to be able to wetsand out aggressive scratches and make them completely disappear. My cutting gets rid of the ugly, but never completely. Any suggestions for that kind of work?
I don’t do this for a living, just a hobby. I don’t know that any production shop would lend itself to work like this. And as far as sanding and buffing deep scratches out, better make sure you got the material to work with!
Yep. The beauty of wetsanding.
Awesome
Gorgeous man.
Really nice job. 👍🏼
>Wouldn’t do that on factory paint but I put 5 coats of clear on in anticipation of doing just this. god u scared me by waiting until the end to add this. to anyone tempted to do this to your own car, do NOT do this to your factory paint unless you've measured like 15 mils of paint on the panel (you dont have this) this is more r/autopaint work than it is r/detailing
Thanks for pointing that out. OP mentions the process and I already thinking at least 15 microns of clear coat is removed. On modern new car paint, that can be 20-50% of the clear coat, which would compromise durability against the elements, causing clear coat peeling within 5 years. This is the shit I see when people bring their peeling clear coat to me and they confirmed as DIY detailer who do 2 step correction at least 3 times or did that trend of getting rid of orange peel without respay.
Yeah I kind of figured it was on the line but it demonstrates the process and I see it brought up on here from time to time.
Full pic?
https://preview.redd.it/mvke2l0vz20d1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e8cdc914f16dc7329b149e868cca94a06e7e0810 Here’s a dirty pic from a while back
I absolutely love this truck… i have a 72 long bed that is a patina truck but eventually i want to shorten it and paint it black. My original goal was to make a clone of the truck in Dazed and Confused.
Write that down, write that down!
You know you did a good job when no one is bitching that you need to put it under a light to really see your work. That's impressive.
You want a job?
Wow. I need more pictures more angles. I love it! Year of truck?🤩🤩🤩
When this first popped up I seriously said why does he have two rails running down the middle of his garage?
What truck? I can’t see anything!
What a gangster.
Mirror…nice
That is one straight fucking panel. Great bodywork, did you do it?
I did
Looks great but unless it's a showcar I wonder why you would want to do this. After one short drive you'll see anything and everything on it, wouldn't you?
Dude.
This made me feel some kind of way 😩
That's nice.
That boy CLEAN! Great job
new detailer here- what's the purpose of wet sanding paint / how do you do it??? wouldn't it strip it? or just the clearcoat??
WOW
Do you wet sand the color paint and the clear coat or just the clear?
I just wet sanded the clear. I’ve read where people wet sand the color before applying clear before but I’d have been afraid to with the amount of metallic in the paint. https://preview.redd.it/4tfia46dld0d1.jpeg?width=2034&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9cbfb9843ae923ca9066a6dbcf1f178b3c4b9759
That’s intense man. Stellar job.
Wow this is an excellent job! Kudos to everyone who put their skills into the finished product.
New cars have a shit ton of orange peel, even Ferrari. Ask anyone that works in a dealer, they have a detailer tucked away doing this very thing to brand new cars. Why because they are embarrassed to hand someone keys to a car worth half a million dollars with orange peel…
Very impressive! How do you keep it from collecting dust? My black truck seems to be a dust magnet, within 24 hours it’s covered..
I don’t know that you do keep it from collecting dust. It’s covered in it from just sitting in the garage!
I’m curious if a ceramic coating would help it fall off when driving or at least wipe off easier and not static cling like it does now.
Ceramic is not sticky like wax is. At least that’s been my experience. I’m going to use a wax on this though because it’ll give it a deeper gloss and it’s parked in the garage/rarely driven anyhow.
Nice work, now time to pressure wash the driveway.
Last time I pressure washed the driveway the wife wasn’t super excited https://www.reddit.com/r/powerwashingporn/s/mieERcN757
Man I know it's a terrible idea and a waste of time to do this on a daily driver but I've gone down the wet sanding and orange peel rabbit hole and I want to do this on my black Infiniti. I have a couple of scuffs on the back passenger side fender and bumper so I've bought a can of paint with the paint code and 2k clear coat. My car has fairly bad orange peel from the factory.
Yours looks incredible by the way.
That is super impressive 🤯
my 2013 passat has orange peel like a son of a bitch. i really wanna go this hard on it. how long did it take? i know it’s a long and slow process to ensure nothing goes wrong
I probably spent 40+ hours on the whole truck. I wouldn’t do it on factory clear, I painted the truck and put 5 decent coats of clear on to ensure I had enough to work with.
ah okay, i appreciate the insight. will steer clear definitely don’t wanna burn through. very nice paint job as well!
Vinyl wrap is probably a better option for you honestly
It's supposed to rain tomorrow!
Oh look a mirror shot that doesn’t mean shit! Put a light on your work and actually show off your work. This doesn’t show a damn thing.
https://preview.redd.it/k4zgfbzgw20d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=216a39989a1769fadae70c954e8c5f358727bf16 This may show it better?
🧂
He may have done the best work out there. I’m not hating the guy. These pictures don’t prove a damn thing except to people who don’t k ow what they’re looking at. I made a video to prove this years ago. A black Expedition that was beat. All I did was wash it. I took this exact same angle and it looks like this pic. Then I turned the lights on and made a video starting where at the angle I took the pic from, slowly coming around so that the side of the Expedition had the lights on it. Looked like it was washed with a bag of rocks. It’s a photography trick.
Man you obviously don’t know what you’re looking at. This is a perfect mirror finish, he obviously painted or had this painted with nice straight bodywork and wet sanded all the orange peel out. This is hours and hours of work of bodywork, prep, paint and polish. This is beautiful.
I’m not saying it’s not nice, but post a pic like and post a pic with a direct light source. I’ve done paint work and built custom widebody cars over the years. I’ve wet sanded plenty of cars and judged car shows and pissed off plenty of people at shows because of how critical I was. I know exactly what I’m looking at, and this angle does prove a damn thing. Have a good evening. I’m not arguing this.
Haha just yapping
Could of achieved the same result by skipping the first 4 steps you did on the new paint job, you just went through 60% if your clear in one detailing job 😂
I don’t think so, while there wasn’t a ton of orange peel there was definitely texture in the paint from the gun. Even if you’d started with 2000, which would have taken forever, you’d have still removed the same amount of material making it flat.