Back in the late 1990's I was teaching collision repair in a big high school in Nashville Tennessee. Lots of my students lived in the inner city housing projects. We started getting an epidemic of "fish eye" blemishes in several of the jobs we were doing- - - -both spot repairs and all-over paint jobs. I was using all the routine precautions popular at the time to avoid contamination of the surfaces prior to painting, yet the problems persisted. Wearing Nitrile gloves hadn't yet come into general use at that time. Quite by accident, I discovered the source of the problem. Some of my students of a particular ethnic group were using Vaseline Intensive Care lotion as "ash killer"- - - -slathering the stuff liberally onto their skin to give it a shine instead of the gray appearance caused by dead skin cells sloughing off. Sand some Bondo or primer,- - - -rub a palm over the surface to check for roughness- - - -any guess where the body lotion ends up? I solved the problem by explaining- - - -very delicately to avoid accusations of "racism"- - - -what was happening, and having the kids scrub down with soap and water like a surgeon prepping for the operating room before going into the shop!
Jerry
