Prepping Alder Before Painting?

[HumanFuseBen]

Hey guys! I've got an alder Warmoth body that i will be painting here soon. Do i need to use anything other than sanding sealer before i start priming it?

thanks!

[RestorationAD]

Hey guys! I've got an alder Warmoth body that i will be painting here soon. Do i need to use anything other than sanding sealer before i start priming it?

thanks!

Alder is pretty tight grain a couple of coats of sanding sealer should be fine.

If it is really porous you might try this.

In the past I have done a slight bit of pore filling on alder or poplar before color coats. The methods I have used is to seal the body with thin CA followed with a coat of medium CA. I make sure I squeegee the medium CA into any remaining pores (with credit card or actual squeegee) so I don't have to much to sand. Sand smooth (400 grit or less). Then a couple coats of shellac. (shellac is for adhesion)

Wear a mask. Don't breathe the dust from the CA please.

[HumanFuseBen]

awesome! thanks man. this one seems to be very tightly grained, no big pores or anything... i reckon the sanding sealer ought to handle it.

[ihocky2]

I see you mentioned using primer. That leads me to believe this is going to be an opaque paint job. What type of paint are you using, rattle can or 2-part auto paint? With either of them you can skip the sanding sealer, but it will help a little with the rattle cans.

2-part primer can just go straight onto the wood. For primer straight to wood I don't sand above 250 grit. The primer has such a high amount of solids it fills the minor scratches in and you'll never see them. 2-part primer is generally sprayed over 80 or 100 grit scratches on cars so it'll have no problem covering 250 grit scratches and the 250 gives it a little more tooth to grab on to than 320 or 400. Once your primer is on then sand with 320 or up to 400 grit to level the primer.

Even for transparent paint jobs I don't use sanding sealer. It's a higher solid clear coat with soap added to make sanding easier and it does not dry as hard. I just use a few coats of the finish to do my sealing work.