Vintage Cars: Paint, wet sandpaper, orange peel

Question
Don
One more question?
My neighbours son repainted it,but he did a poor job.He must of set the nozzle wrong as there are tiny dimples all over-a textured effect that can only be felt and seen close up.
Its not a big deal as its no show car,but can I fix this?
What if I use a buffer and some type of specialty compound?
Also,rust is re appearing in spots-whats a good way to touch this up?

Answer
This is bad orange peel from incorrec pressure and maybe not the correct thinning of the paint.  I am not a real painter, but understand the basics.  

Now that you have the problem, buffing my make it a little better, and you can really do this by hand to see how it goes.  Meguiars sells a line of glazes and compounds that go from mild to really aggressive.  I like to start with a very mild glaze and see if it helps.  If not, then go more aggressive.  Use a thick sponge, not a thin cloth.  work in small areas in all directions to start with, but end up in straight lines rubbing in the direction sight, usually the long front/rear axis of the car.  

You will have to color or wet sand to get it really smooth if the orange peel is bad, buffing will just polish the tips of the problem.  Problem is...do you have enough paint thickness to do the sanding without getting into the primer?

Is this a one-stage or two-stage (with clearcoat) paint?  Do you know how many coats were applied?  

If in doubt, try wet sanding a spot that isn't real obvious (stay away from the center of the hood or top for now!) and try a little 2000 or 3000 grit wet sandpaper.  use a sanding block, not your hand, and with lots of water sand a small area and check frequently.  See if the orange peel will smooth to your satisfaction.  Stop as soon as you have it smooth.  Then lightly buff by hand with mild compound followed by glaze to bring the shine back.  If you haven't gone through the paint, or clearcoat, you may be OK, but remember, most paint jobs, even real good ones, have thin and thick locations.  The more tight a curve or radius, usually the less the paint.  

For rust, try POR 15.  

http://www.por15.com

This is "paint over rust" and has been used and trusted by the restoration crowd for many years.  clean the lose scale and flakes, paint with POR 15 and then use touch-up paint.  POR 15 itself won't hold up to sun, but you can use it as a topcoat for things like chassis parts.

To make the area look best, you should do a little sanding, to smooth things out, use the POR 15 and then maybe a skim coat of filler with some sanding before painting.

Also know that MOST factory paint has some orange peel.  In fact restoration specialists that want a true factory look will spray paint intending to leave some orange peel so the car doesn't look repainted.

The "SHOW CAR SHINE" that many wax companies talk about is a myth, because no wax will make orange peel paint look like a show car.  Only lots of layers of paint with lots of wet sanding gives the truly flat surface that works like a good mirror so you have that deep, shiny, wet-look paint.  Any orange peel, and the reflections all bounce different directions, and no amount of wax will correct that.

Hope this helps.

Don