The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Paint and Body Shop Sanding

Is there a proper way to sand down my 50 Chevy Pickup? I was going to use a hand sander, but what grade of paper do I use? And how do I primer?

Well, if you're going down to bare metal start iwth 60 grit, them 80 grit, then 120, keep getting finer as you go. Do small areas at a time. As you do a spot prime it or it will rust over night!

I'm assuming by "sanding down" you mean old paint removal. If that is the case, 36 grit on a dual orbital sander will make quick work of that old paint. Use etch primer on the bare metal and then use a 2k high build primer on top of that. The 2K primer will fill in the sand marks left by the coarse grit. Then apply a guide coat on the 2k primer and sand with something like 120 or 220 until the guide coat is gone. I suppose it would be helpful if you give us some kind of idea what your current auto body skills are. If you are starting from scratch, I suggest you visit some autobody websites such as autobodypro.com and autobodystore.com. Those websites have a ton of autobody information.

If you are going to strip it bare I suggest using 3M's stripping wheels rather than sandpaper. They don't scratch the metal, they don't load up, and they last a lot longer than sandpaper. I have stripped a couple of vehicles by hand and it is a pain.