Dipping toe into painting

1500 grit was slow going (not like I was going out or anything), but the risk was low. Finished now. A small piece of sandpaper in exchange for a pro finish. It's wrong colour though, too light. May be a blindfolded blind man won't notice. The insurer could well invalidate me for doing custom painting.

What a major bit of luck. While holding the panel against the car myself and looking, some parts of the panel didn't look like it was matching the car colour. When I got someone else to hold the panel and I stood back to look from multiple positions, it was a perfect match. I only needed one panel to work to recover my costs. I will be quids in if I do more than one.

The longest panel I have is the panel I just painted, at 2m. This greenhouse paint booth will work for me. The price includes VAT, excludes delivery. I don't actually need a 100% clean environment. I just need to stop the debris carried by the wind.

The panel is back on the car. The colour match is pro rated without me trying to. But the image tells a lie. If I put one side of my face on the ground and look up, I could tell the panel is lighter. Also the car has a yellow tone to it because of aged clear coat. So, there is still room for me to play with the primer to reduced the lightness of the new paint. It isn't completely necessary, though, because it is passable as is. If I am going to do another panel, I might as well getting it right.

Black primer ordered. Here's another video of playing with colours. The substrate colour definitely has an impact on the final result.

Tried different primer colours. The base coat covered extremely well and made the primer colour irrelevant. So, for some car paints, the primer colour is not a factor. Although, the only way to find out is through testing. Good job I have the tools to do that now.

Having more experience now, I would not recommend buying paint by colour code or car registration. The chance of these matching well is not likely. The easy test for matching is do a paint chip touch up. If the touching up is easily visible then it isn't a match. I have a halfords touch up pen from years ago, and it matches perfectly. Perfect match from a non-oem source is in fact possible.

My interest next is finding better matching paint. This place is within my driving distance and offers a possible solution: https://metalflake.com/pages/paint-mixing

My skills for painting is sorted, and my equipment for painting is sorted. The only challenge remain is paint matching.