Water-Based Car Paint - Waterborne Paints

Because the paint doesn't dry until the water evaporates, waterborne paint tends to require longer drying times than solvent paints. To speed the process, Ferre recommended we warm the part with an infrared heat lamp for 15 minutes prior to spraying. We couldn't find our heater anywhere, so we skipped this step but did have a fan ready to blow across the panel once we were done spraying. You can see why it would probably be better to spray waterborne paints in a paint booth, especially if you were doing an entire car. Our shop isn't very clean, and we'd be blowing all kinds of junk onto our freshly painted car.

Ferre likens the spray technique to that of acrylic enamels some older painters may have used. "It goes on wet. You always want to keep a wet edge." Unlike urethane enamels, waterborne paints aren't supposed to be allowed flash time between coats. Start your second coat as soon as you're done with your first. Waterborne paints have a very high solids count and cover completely in one coat with a second, lighter coat. You may hear this described as one and a half coats. We're sure that's music to the ears of the EPA-waterborne paint emits far fewer VOCs by volume than solvent paint, plus you use less of it.

Once you're done spraying, turn on your fans and heaters. You can also buy handheld blowers that plug into your shop's air supply. If using a handheld one, hold it at a 45-degree angle to the panel. Always direct airflow across the panel. If you point straight at it, you can cause the paint to run.

As the paint dries, you'll start to see it change from a glossy appearance to a satin or matte finish.

Water-based paint dries differently than solvent paint, too. Instead of getting sticky and tacky, waterborne paint feels slimy and will come off in large blobs if you accidentally touch it. It takes a little longer to dry-about half an hour for our quarter-panel. Once it's dry, you can begin spraying the clearcoat.

Proving that this is really waterborne paint, it cleaned up with nothing but pure water. If you are going to be doing this often, don't just pour the stuff down the drain. There is a recommended disposal procedure. As we mentioned earlier, we cleaned out the gun with rubbing alcohol rather than lacquer thinner.