This resto constitutes around 80% of my experience thus far in body work and paint. I am an Audiologist by trade (fit hearing aids and perform hearing assessments/rehab etc), so I have no background in this type of work other than what I do in "leisure time".
Like anything I tackle, I do as much reading and research as possible first (probably the scientist in me coming out), ask questions to people who know what they are doing, then practice on something that is not critical if I screw it up (eg. spare fender/door etc).
During the process if something is not going right I go back to the forums/resources on the net, or ask the pros....then go back and try again. Eg. when I started spraying the underside of guards etc I was getting bad tiger stripes (dark stripes in the metallic) - was pi$$ing me off so bad, but I asked around, did some searches, then went back and fiddled with spray fan, pressure, distance from panel and paint flow until I sorted it out.
Likewise for body work - wasted a bit of material through trial and error (a few times I had to sand it right back to primer because one coat of filler didn't cure properly).
No magic formula I guess, just a bit of patience, perseverence and a degree of general intellegence required to analyse why something is not working, then the dedication to resolve the problem. It gets easier and easier the more practice you have - by the end of painting this car I was quite comfortable with spraying a fairly complex metallic dark colour (with pearl). But I can see areas where I could have done better on the body work, so next time I will apply that knowledge - hindsight is wonderful!
Cheers
Alan
