It's the screwups that catalyze the lessons best

Painting is a challenge; doubly so without a proper blast cabinet, spray booth and associated accoutrements. Take yesterday's fork; lotsa strip & prep work done comfortably and well including a relatively (with a capital R) decent blasting arrangement in the carport; garbage can "cabinet"....and a table!! for the pressure pot blaster and incidentals. Everything looking great, final air blow-down and then inspection before shooting primer, but oops – a little shoreline that still had some old paint. Blast it, back to spray the primer and another look....damn, another tiny spot missed. Blast it. Back to spray the primer. You already know what I just forgot to do.

Everybody who paints knows the result, which I noticed when well into primer application. Crap. What to do? I just wiped all the areas that had sand embedded in the primer, shot the bald areas and knew that I'd have some sanding to do this morning. I've never sanded primer or clear before; how it goes on is how it is and historically it's been pleasing, pretty good really, though certainly not contest willing by any stretch. The occasional sag, here/there just adds character though I usually manage to keep them to a minimum. today was a big screw up of a stupid little thing. Spray painting on the beach.

And only now, while the 20ml of primer is going through it's induction period in preparation for spraying did it occur to me that maybe I shoulda just left it all on to dry, sand and all. And then sand it off. Maybe it doesn't matter. I guess I thought that I might not break through the primer during the sanding and avoid another spray. Right.

One thing I can tell you: Giving the work-piece a final blast of air, including all orifices, inside and out isn't something I'm going to forget again. It's going to become sort of a tic, like pushing my glasses to my face every little while even when they don't need it.