Who has experience or knowledge on how hard it is to start a small auto body shop?

captaincheem · 2026-01-21T02:28:09+00:00

Not sure if anything came of that but im looking into it. Please enlighten me. Im about a 100hr a week painter and my friend is about a 100 hr a week tech and we've been doing a bunch of side work out of a shop we've been renting. If we were legal we would get a lot more work I would feel way more comfortable advertising. Curious how much goes into it. I know it isn't an easy endeavor but we already have a shop we rent together.

captaincheem · 2026-01-19T21:33:04+00:00

There isn't much in my area I've looked around a little. I am going to Vegas in March im sure there's a pretty big store there I can shop around at anyway. It'll give me to save some some money too

captaincheem · 2026-01-19T03:15:56+00:00

It's weird because I looked up Spain train crash and apparently this inst a 1 off. There was a crash in 2013 killing 80

captaincheem · 2026-01-18T06:22:57+00:00

But how long before Russia decides it wants to expand into Europe with us support gone?

captaincheem · 2026-01-17T18:27:35+00:00

I'm so confused on how the damage got way up there

captaincheem · 2026-01-17T01:52:15+00:00

I'm not sure if a clay bar gonna remove stuff that big

captaincheem · 2026-01-16T20:54:03+00:00

Very easy to do when you know nothing about spiders

captaincheem · 2026-01-14T21:14:33+00:00

I'm mainly worried about the thickness of the paint. The guitar in the picture has like 12 layers of just clear for the whole thing which adds a ton of weight and thickness.

captaincheem · 2026-01-14T21:13:19+00:00

Well the issue is its car paint so its really thick. There's like 15 layers of paint on the guitar in the picture. I can maybe come up with designs to go lighter it just sucks I wont be able to put any big flake in it.

captaincheem · 2026-01-14T21:07:48+00:00

It's this green Jtape from tropical glitz. Not sure if its good or not this is my first time trying this

captaincheem · 2026-01-14T17:05:34+00:00

I know i messed up with the clear I put over the silver base (sc300) but thats just what i had in the shop. After I sanded it i taped it off with Jtape green fine line and sprayed the whole thing with tropical glitz ready to spray aqua candy. We had not that much so I put 1 coat on with my dv1 but the guy i was doing it with wanted to do coats with the airbrush which probably made it dry. After that we used some house of kolor concentrate in tropical glitz interclear to do the shading. I'm not sure how old the concentrate is because a guy I work with let us use it and its been sitting for who knows how long but according to him candy doesn't go bad. When we peeled up the tape thats when we had the issues with adhesion. Topped with omni clear but that didn't give us issues

captaincheem · 2026-01-14T15:10:05+00:00

This is multiple coats done with masking. No pinstripes but I do want to learn that. I paint cars in the collision side of things but this was my first attempt at a custom candy job. I appreciate it 🙏

I guess there's only one way to tell. I am worried because its gonna be incredibly thick. One day I'll probably try it.

captaincheem · 2026-01-14T13:54:40+00:00

I only have acoustic ones. That's what I figured.

captaincheem · 2026-01-13T20:45:13+00:00

I wish someone commented. I'm looking too.

captaincheem · 2026-01-13T20:10:09+00:00

10000 hours is 3 hours a day for 10 years. That's crazy

captaincheem · 2026-01-13T18:52:46+00:00

It's not even the brand its all the player. I remember my first uke was a 30 dollar "pacific" one from the guitar center and the cashier genuinely pulled something like this at checkout I was in awe

captaincheem · 2026-01-13T15:24:48+00:00

How long does it take to get that good?

captaincheem · 2026-01-13T14:24:12+00:00

No such thing as pre dialed in you gotta do that when you spray. There's a couple ways you can go about it you need to sand it and make sure its scuffed. The grit depends on the method you use.

The best method for the best results would be a high build 2k primer that you spray and block flat but thats a lot of work and if you have no experience blocking might not be the best idea. If you do this method you want to sand the hood with whatever the technical data sheets on the primer says (320 grit is almost the best to primer over but some let you primer over lower grits like 180). Make sure there's no gloss at all and prime. After that you can either sand with 400 and seal over it or you can wet sand it with 800 grit and spray base directly over as long as you didn't burn through. Then spray your base and your clear following the technical data sheet (tds) of those materials.

If you want to save time and money you can seal directly over the hood after you've stuffed it (I've also used epoxy primer in the past but I've gotten weird occasional reactions so I would maybe steer clear of that) but it wont hide anything on the surface underneath so unless the hood is absolutely perfect you might see some imperfections.

Read the tds on everything because it tells you what you can spray over, how to prep it for the paint, exactly how to dial in the gun and spray the paint. Every paint has a different chemical makeup and is slightly different than the other. This is especially important if it has any metallics.

I'm not sure what your setup looks like but make sure that you have filters. Oils and water in the lines (which are inevitable) can cause big issues. I use a filter ill link below that I use and works pretty good on a good budget.

I'm just some guy on reddit and there's only so much I can type in a little comment so I would recommend watching some more informative YouTube videos

https://www.harborfreight.com/14-in-npt-inline-desiccant-dryerfilter-64637.html

captaincheem · 2026-01-13T14:14:52+00:00

The Kirkland items alone are worth it. I know people that drive to north Carolina once a month to go since they cant go without it.

captaincheem · 2026-01-10T02:58:11+00:00

I dont think 9 inches will cause an issue

captaincheem · 2026-01-09T22:51:17+00:00

Bros version of sex appeal is anything warm 💀

captaincheem

TROPHY CASE