This is probably the last week of good weather before it gets to freezing during daytime. Miracles of miracles I found the motivation to repaint my insulated steel skinned front doors. A patch of the old paint had flaked off and I sanded it to feather the edges. After painting the flaked off paint edge still showed. Sanded that and repaint. The result was worse, now I have a bigger visible patch.
The question then is will filling the patch with bondo then sanding to feather the edges work?
You might try painting the "patch" area with an automotive sanding primer, then feathering that until you can no longer feel the ridge where the paint ends and the primer begins. Repaint the whole thing and you'll probably be happy. It may take a couple of coats...
You may have waited to long for the weather, Bondo is crap for what you want . Buit you dont say the temps there,
Pa,
Why does your patch look bad? If you can see the paint edges then you did not do a good job of feathering. What grit are you using in the final sanding?
Dave M.
Maybe, but why bother? Consider all the ways a metal house door resembles an automobile door.Then think about the superior finish any autobody shop could put on the door. Then factor in the reasonable prices at most shops and it seems like a no-brainer to remove the door and take it to a place that can make it better than new. HTH
Joe
The first time round the edges were visible but only on close up. I had used a rough sandpaper (I used whatever I had at hand from my model making hobby) to sand back any "flakable" paint edges which fortunately wasn't much. I finished off with a very fine wet paper that clogged easily which is perhaps probably why I didn't feather the edges to satisfaction. The second time round was with a pneumatic hand drill attachment and sanding flapper wheel. The sanding flaps were coarse grit which I think made worse the problem. They are visible gouges after repainting. I have way too many tools and don't use them often enough to remember their performance characteristics without making errors on the first round. Drat.
I'll wait another day for the paint to harden throughly before trying your implied recommendation to use a series of sandpaper grades to do a proper job. I'll also use Kyle's recommendation to use automotive primer - the brown spray bomb stuff. The door paint is the Tremclad dark brown metal paint applied by a spray gun. The temperatures (deg C) for the week are in the high teens during daytime and in the low single digits by early morning.
One more question. The flaked off paint area was down to bare metal and the painted layers are about paper thick. I agree its too thin for bondo to hold. Is there any other way to "fill in" the depression? Its about the size of a legal sized envelope.
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