Everyone says to wet sand clear coat by hand but I tried a DA sander on a junk hood and it came out perfect

Was fixing up a 2005 Ford F-150 last month and had orange peel so bad it looked like a golf ball. Kept hearing you gotta wet sand by hand or you'll burn through. Got impatient, grabbed my $40 Harbor Freight DA with 1500 grit discs, kept it on speed 2 and light pressure. Took maybe 20 minutes for the whole hood. No burn through, leveled it out nice. Hand sanding that thing would have taken me an hour easy. Has anyone else gone against the grain on this and had it work out?

2 comments

2 Comments

brianellis7d ago

I'm curious though, did you do any test spots first or just go straight for it? Cause I've seen guys try this with a DA on a fresh paint job and get that hazy mess that won't buff out right. I bet the key is that you kept it on speed 2 and didn't lean into it like a lot of people do. Was that hood single stage or basecoat/clear? I've always wondered if the type of paint matters more than the method with this stuff.

holly_craig6d ago

Did I do test spots? Nah, I just sent it and prayed the paint gods were on my side... turned out better than my last experiment where I tried polishing a matte finish. It was single stage actually, so maybe that's why I got away with being a cowboy about it.