Adhesion on the edge when painting the back and later the front of panels

[jtfx6552]

I see lots of panels being painted where one side is painted first then masked off while the other side is painted.

How exactly does one handle the edge of the panel?

First, should the second side be painted while the panel is till in the recoat window? Seems like that would be best if it wan't impossible, I.e. if your in the recoat window, how can you mask it?

If your not in the recoat window then you need to sand, so how do you sand right up to the edge of where you are going to paint without leaving either a weird looking edge or an edge not sanded with potential adhesion issues?

Or am I just over thinking this?

 

[RosharonRooster]

I use a grey pad on edge if I'm painting the top and bottom at separate time

 

[crashtech]

What Rooster said. ^
Also when you paint the bottoms, make sure you get plenty of paint on the edges. That way you won't need to worry about them as much when doing the topsides. Depending on how the masking is done, there could be problems, but if you keep the taping around the corner and out of direct spray, all you should have is a very small bit of dry spray around the perimeter, easily handled by a 3" polisher on very low speed.

 

[MP&C]

A paint stand that holds the part and allows access to all sides will help to eliminate worrying about back taping, edges, etc. I have done the back taping and painting, and it brought about the door stand. Take note of the solid cinder blocks used for ballast so the stand doesn't tip over when one door is removed/installed at a time.

 

[MP&C]

Here is some of the back taping. We painted the back sides of the doors, trunk lid, etc first, and then did the outside next.

When spraying the back sides, the fronts (outside) had all openings on the outer skin were taped off to prevent overspray. The edge was taped about 1/8" in on the front side of the door skin, thinking blocking an 1/8" strip of paint would be easier than blocking out a swath of overspray (it was).

Then, the back side was taped off, again blocking off all holes, and back taped up to the folded door skin flanges. The edges and flanges then got scuffed and sprayed again, along with the outsides. This taping up to the flanges makes the paint edge much less detectable.