Orange Peel: Good or Bad?
 

I stumbled across this article and skimmed through it at work and found it interesting. The initial quote below drew me in... I'll have to read the whole thing tonight.

“Shops trick [car] owners into thinking that orange peel is a factory imperfection. The real reason shops knock orange peel is that they need to sand and buff to remove flaws in the paint. Sanding and buffing takes away orange peel and gives shops one last chance to get out little imperfections; such as dirt, a run, a fisheye, or to touch up a chip they made while assembling the car.”

http://www.mustangandfords.com/how-t...ad-or-correct/

Liking "orange peel" in a paint job, must be a Mustang thing ........:popcorn:


humfrz

Orange peel is "bad" in that it is not a perfect finish. And to get a perfect finish takes time, which = $.

It is not "bad" to the average person who never gets close enough to their paint to see and wouldn't care even if it was pointed out to them.

It is "bad" to enthusiasts who notice even 1mm scratch or show cars and the like.

If you drive your car in the real world regularly and not garaged show car it is my opinion orange peel is irrelevant.

I had always thought of orange peel as being the enemy before reading this, but now I can see the other side of it. Uniform orange peel on factory paint means it has never been corrected. But maybe I'm just willing to accept this notion because my 2016 has pretty uniform orange peel and I needed to diminish my cognitive dissonance... My car looks perfect 99% of the time, but when parked next to something with a pattern I can see it at certain angles in certain shadows. Once I get that first scratch, this will all go out the window when I end up correcting the whole panel...

Whenever I spray something and get an orange peel effect, I cuss myself because that means I have that much more work to do before I am finished.

I wouldn't feel that way if I were you. It is going to happen when you spray, although it can be minimized to a certain extent. But one thing for sure, it does look like a million dollars when it is cut and buffed to perfection. Here's one of the best that I have ever worked on. The paint job alone was 12K.

http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/h...fordshow18.jpg

http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/h...fordshow19.jpg

http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/h...fordshow20.jpg

http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/h...fordshow21.jpg

http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/h...fordshow23.jpg

http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/h...fordshow22.jpg

http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/h...fordshow24.jpg

http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/h...fordshow25.jpg

That's exactly why we have orange peel. 12k is like half the price of an average car

Yea, you ain't gonna put that kind of paint job on a Volkswagen Jetta, that's for sure. But I can appreciate how much work goes into getting paint that flat. You don't have to pay that much. The cost is going to depend on how many coats of clear coat you want. The more clear coat, the more work it takes but the shine gets deeper with every coat.

Damn nice! I can throw the paint, but I have little patience for the correction process. That is my biggest downfall. I do it, but man I hate it with a passion.

Here is my personal bike I just finished chopping on. It was a stock 2001 Sportster. I ended up shooting HoK Orange pearl, and HoK Galaxy Gray FX and topped it all with a epoxy matte clear. Didn't have any peel in it, but it was just a motorcycle. This one I took my time with though, which probably helped. I immediately covered it with matte paint protection film (After allowing for cure time).. ha ha!


BEFORE
http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b9...CE72FC65D3.jpg


AFTER
http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b9...515_122040.jpg

I'm with you man. It takes me FOREVER to do an entire car.