TO SEAL OR NOT TO SEAL

JC Daniel

Promoted Users
I am going to be painting my recent job this Thursday and I was wandering if every job should be sealed? I have several places in primer and need to know if I only seal the repaired areas or the whole vehicle?
 
If your epoxy has "cured" for the seven day window, it's not all that receptive to adhesion of the basecoat/ next applied coat. So consider the sealer (thinned epoxy mix) also as a tie coat for the base going on if the first dose of epoxy is past the window.
 
My answer is......it depends. If you are blending a repair sometimes it's better to not seal. If you have no sand throughs to metal or filler it is quicker and easier to blend if you don't seal. If you have sand throughs you should seal. Treat your sealer like it's your first coat of base (on a blend panel). Just enough for coverage, meaning medium coat max. And make sure you fade in and fade off your sealer otherwise you could have an issue with the outline of the sealer coat showing especially a few days later when everything starts to really cure. No hard starts and stops.
If you are doing an overall, sealing is always what you should do.
 
Chris makes a good point. If you are blending within a panel, sealer can cause problems. For example, you are painting a door with a primer spot right in the middle. You spray sealer over the primer spot. The problem is the sealer overspray spreads out much farther than where you stop, causing small spots to extend sometimes to the ends of the panel. This decreases your room to blend, and can cause a redo if not caught and cleared over.
 
I really appreciate all the great information and time you guys give to help us out, I am doing an all over and will seal the whole job but I only have grey epoxy so I hope that is sufficient to spray victory red over?
 
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