- What's up everybody?
It's Wednesday, which means it's time
for another episode of Lab Coat Garage.
In today's episode, we're going over
the topic of what is orange peel.
So, here we have Joey.
- What's up, guys?
- He's one of our product specialists
and he's an ex automotive painter,
so he's going to explain what it is
and how to remove it.
(upbeat music)
- What's up, guys?
So a little bit of background story about myself
is I started off in the body shop industry.
I started off sweeping floors,
started signing bumpers, started prepping,
masking, stuff like that.
Eventually I made myself up to that point
where I would learn how to paint,
and then I moved up to detailing,
polishing, wet sanding, stuff like that.
So, I kind of know a little bit of everything
in the body shop industry and how it goes.
So, today we want to go ahead
and pretty much talk about what is orange peel,
how it is, how do you get it, and how do you get rid of it.
What causes orange peel?
Orange peel can come from a variety of things.
It could be improper spray technique,
the settings on the fan of the gun
may have been misplaced, or maybe it was too wide,
or maybe they were just spraying too much product.
What it could also be is maybe
when they were spraying their second coat,
they didn't allow enough time for the first coat to settle
and now it's going to get a lot of solvent pop
which is causing the clear coat to dry unevenly.
So, that's why you end up getting
that wavy look on your paint.
Another reason for orange peel would be low pressure.
So, maybe when the painter was spraying it,
the pressure on the gun was too low
and it was causing it to kind of shoot
the paint or the clear coat in a dry manner,
which kind of creates craters in the paint,
which also is a reason for the orange peel.
What could have also been is that
the painter actually probably sprayed too much paint
on there and it caused a very, very thick layer,
which kind of creates an uneven layer
where it just leaves it all blobby and stuff like that.
It doesn't necessarily dry to the touch on the paint
and it just ends up staying there wet,
and then when you spray the clear coat on there,
it just doesn't dry and it has a lot of solvent pop
and just messes up the finish entirely.
Another reason that it could be
is that the spray nozzle that they used
to spray the paint with for the clear coat
is too thin, or too small, and it actually causes it
to not cover as much coverage and when they're spraying it,
when they overlap their painting it,
it doesn't very necessarily flow
with the whole pattern of the panel
and it ends up kind of creating
this weird kind of striping effect.
All right, guys, so you guys heard me
talk about it, and now for all my visual learners out there,
we're going to go ahead and break down the paint diagram,
just so you guys can see what I'm talking about.
So, right here what we have is our paint diagram.
You can see it's leveled in different coats of the paint.
At the very bottom, you'll have your substrate,
which can be many things.
It can be metal, it could be plastic, fiberglass.
It can be a variety of things.
Secondly would be your primer,
which would act as a layer for your paint,
which would come afterwards
which would be your base coat.
Your base coat's going to be the color of the paint.
It could be the pearlescence
that you have on there, as well,
whichever it is that it is.
After the base coat, then that's when
you have your clear coat.
The clear coat, it's pretty much the thickest layer.
We just went ahead and broke this down
for you guys so you guys can see what it looks like,
but the clear coat's always going to be the thickest layer
because it's the hardest on the actual surface.
So, a lot of people, one of the misconceptions
that you can pretty much polish down
your orange peel with a machine,
which in some cases it works, and some it doesn't
just because considering the fact that
maybe if it was an after market paint job
that was done to the car, the clear coat,
the orange peel may be a lot harder
than what it is when you get a factory clear coat.
So, how do you remove it?
So, there's two most common ways that we can do it.
One would be the whole wet sanding method,
which considers getting some sand paper,
sanding down the surface, kind of like so right here.
You'll sand it down pretty much to a layer
where it's just all even and uniform,
which always you to just go ahead and polish it out
so that you can have a bright wet look
instead of having that orange peel effect.
If the orange peel is not that bad,
then you can simply just go ahead
and get your polisher, get a rubbing compound
and a cutting pad and you can simply polish it right out.
So, once you're done polishing out all your orange peel,
now you can move on to your favorite
step of the detailing process where it comes to
glazing, sealing, and waxing your paints
so that you protect your paint
after all the work that you've done
and put into it so that it doesn't just go to waste.
So, now you guys know what orange peel is,
what causes it, and how to get rid of it.
If you liked this video, make sure to give it a thumbs up
and make sure you comment down below
what you guys would like to see next week
on the Lab Coat Garage.