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My body shop teacher told me I was sanding in circles and it took me 3 weeks to break the habit.
He just watched me for 30 seconds on a 2005 Civic hood and said "you're making fish eyes" because my circular pattern was leaving tiny ridges, so now I only go back and forth in one direction and the primer lays down way flatter, has anyone else had a supervisor call out a tiny thing that totally changed your finish work?
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jessica_dixon3d ago
Oh man, "you're making fish eyes" - that one hits close to home. My old paint guy caught me doing the same thing on a door panel and said I was "chasing the reflection" instead of letting the material do its job. I spent weeks unlearning that circular motion because I thought I was being thorough but really I was just making a mess. Once I switched to straight passes the orange peel dropped way down and my clear coats started laying out like glass. It's wild how one little thing can totally flip your whole process when you finally see what they mean.
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jamie7123d agoMost Upvoted
Yeah, the circular motion thing is a trap I see a lot of beginners fall into. @jessica_dixon you nailed it, once you break that habit and just do one straight pass after another, everything changes. I always tell people to hold the gun at a consistent distance and overlap each pass by about half, that alone cuts down on a ton of the mess. It took me a month of practice to stop wanting to go back to circles, but now I don't even think about it.
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