Sorry for the late reply Jared. My life has been pretty upside down lately, and not in a good way. Lots of things happening in my personal life, it’s been a difficult time.
This is not one of those “easy to answer” or cut and dried questions. As you’ve already pointed out, there’s two schools of thought when it comes to painting a car. Specifically, restorations. There’s really no right or wrong answer to it, both ways are perfectly acceptable. There are merits to each, and considerations to be taken into account though.
The painter that shot Sean’s Camaro likely wanted to do it completely disassembled, because a) it’s easier to get full coverage everywhere, and b), there’s really little to no masking to be done, and therefore no concerns of mask lines.
However:
He also wasn’t going to be the one tasked with reassembling the car with fresh paint. And as we all know, that’s no easy feat. However (part II), Sean’s Camaro (I’m assuming) was also a solid, non metallic color. (Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong here). Metallic colors can sometimes be challenging to spray even for the most experienced painters. Air pressure, viscosity, distance from the panel, atmospheric conditions, and gun setup all come into play with laying down a proper metallic paint job.
If I were to repaint Olds Cool back to its original solid single color, I would have absolutely no qualms about spraying all the panels off the car, other than having to deal with the stress of reassembly and alignment afterwards. Hell, it would save me a ton of time and money on masking materials, and lord only knows I don’t need any excuses to avoid masking.
But being that Olds Cool’s planned paint scheme includes the high metallic charcoal grey upper half, it’s important to have all the panels on, aligned, and able to be sprayed at the same time.
And distance.
And with all the other factors I listed above.
If I attempted to spray them all off the car and separately, I’d run the risk of the metallics not laying down the same from panel to panel. And it would probably be a pretty noticeable difference.
So that’s my one real justification for shooting the car fully assembled. Early on in this reply, I made the comment “specifically in restorations”. This brings me to another point I’d like to make, and leads me into the answer to your questions regarding avoiding masking lines.
That point being, when your car gets into a minor collision and you bring it into a bodyshop, you don’t honestly believe they fully disassemble the panels to be painted and spray them off the car do you? Of course not, production bodyshops are all about speed and efficiency. In and out, the quicker the better. Especially panels that can’t be removed, like quarter panels and box sides. So, the only option left is to mask the panels on the car, and shoot them where they are.
So along that line of thought, there’s several ways to skin that proverbial cat too. But most of them vary depending on the area to be masked. Personally, I plan on making almost exclusive use of this stuff...
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....it’s a round foam product with a very sticky adhesive on one side. It’s used to obviously prevent paint from going where you don’t want it, but because it’s round it doesn’t leave a hard edge. It leaves a soft edge that can be carefully blended into the underlying paint if desired, but that’s usually not bothered with. I plan on using it inside anything that has a gap: Doors to quarters, trunk lid to quarters, trunk lid to filler panel, hood to fenders, etc etc.
About the only place I can’t really use it is in the door to fender gaps. That’s because there’s absolutely no access to the backside of that gap when the doors are closed. All is not lost here however either, some careful masking on the back inside of the fender gap, followed by back masking the door side while it’s still open, will protect this area once the door is closed. Like I said, various masking techniques will need to be used in different areas.
As for paint coverage on the edges? Two things; 1), I always make sure to back mask the panels when I paint the insides to ensure the edges get coverage, and 2), by using the techniques I outlined above, paint will still end up on the edges without leaving a mask line because of the soft edges. If there is any discernible difference between the inside and outside edges, it’ll be in a place that is all but impossible to see. (Like the backside of a fender edge).
So in closing, there’s really no right or wrong way to do it, but a lot of it depends on what you’re doing, and how, as well as taking into consideration things like metallic layouts.
I hope this adequately answered some of your questions, that was about the best way I could think of to explain it and my justification for doing it the way I am.
Great question by the way, thanks!
D.
