Painting was an intimidating project. I thought about doing it with a roller, but wanted it to be as good as I could make it, so I ended up spraying it on, and am I ever glad I did. During the project here is a few things I learned;
1. Over prepare the body. Flaws that I didn’t see on the sanded shell are obvious in the new paint.
2. More Primer. Primer can hide small imperfections and did a good job in one coat. Next time I would put more primer on, and make sure the primer will hide tiny flaws in the
fiberglass.
3.
Fiberglass reinforced Bondo would be used for any larger repairs, as when bolting the trailer together tiny cracks have appeared on two of the repairs. The regular Bondo is holding up on the rest of the repairs.
4. Make sure the area is ventilated. I left the door closed once and the green dust settled on top of the white paint. It mostly wiped off, but could have caused an issue. After that I made sure everything not being painted was covered and the door was open to keep the trailer ventilated.
5. Practice. The flaws made with the primer are for the most part the only big flaws in the paint job. It is easy to paint, but with a little practice before starting it would have looked a lot better.
6. The first bit of primer was not thinned enough, once I fixed this things went a lot better.
7. When the air pressure got too low it didn’t paint well. After a while i could see the difference and it made things much easier.
8. Over-spray does not travel far before drying, and then the only risk is it settling as dust. with that I did get a little on a car (it washed off), so I would make sure nothing is too close.
To paint the Boler trailer I used a spray gun I bought for $20 at princess auto and an old compressor. Then paints are shown in the picture.
I tried a couple air powered sanders, before moving and losing access to a compressor. I went to home depot, which had a sale on a dual action 5″ electric sander. They were out of them, so they
sold me the floor model for $20. This was the best sander I used and next time would have started with on of these. It is not for body work, but worked great, and cost much less for the sand paper.