Why Blend Paint?
Blending automotive paint is the process of transitioning the new base coat being sprayed onto the repair area and old existing paint. This will provide the best match possible because you don’t know where the new paint ends and the old paint begins. It’s like an illusion or fooling the eye to believe it is a perfect match.
I have heard in my YouTube comments that this is a short-cut or a trick. Some people believe blending paint is cheating the customer or getting away with less quality work. This is far from the truth because blending actually takes more time and materials than panel painting. Many times we even have to blend into adjacent panels which takes even more time and materials cost and trust me, the time allowed for blending is not that good. We have to do all the same steps as full panel painting for half the time. Shops would love to panel paint everything.
Paints can be very difficult to match perfect. Even if you are using the exact same batch of paint, gun settings, temperature, and humidity, can all cause a slight color change, which will look like a mismatch, if the entire panel was painted without blending. Even if the metallic lays down different can cause the color to shift darker or lighter.
So blending is a good thing and helps the car appear it’s never been painted.
The Question
I was not asked about what blending was or why we do it. I just thought I would help you understand why we blend automotive paint. The question was about the blending process. Can base coat be applied over the 800 grit scratches when blending? I think that sums up the question, but I will try to better answer this question in this video.
Blending Explained
Are you still confused about blending paint. In this video I better explain the purpose of blending paint.
Blending Demonstration
In the last video I am going to demonstrate how to blend paint using a base clear. This technique can also be used for custom fade jobs as explained in the video.
Thanks for stopping by and I hope you found this useful.
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