Painting Supplies? Options

[lagos]

I'm thinking about picking up a cheap spray gun from Harbor Freight and painting a few small things like fenders, to fix some small dents that I've gotten over the years.
Does anyone here have any experience with doing this? Whats a good place for painting supplies? Is it even possible to get good results from a DIY job? I've done some bondo and spray paint work in the past that can look fairly good once its properly wet sanded and buffed. Now I think I'm ready to move on to a real spray gun.

This post has been edited by lagos: Mar 20, 2013 - 12:08 PM

[Legen-dary]

Surely you have a local auto paint supply shop in the Philly area - I would head over there and talk to the folks selling the paint. They will be able to help you choose a brand and mix it to your color code. I used the PPG OMNI Plus on my car and it worked pretty well. It's a urethane paint and I did a 2-stage base coat and clear coat but I believe it's also available in single stage mix.

The tech data for each paint type can vary but for the PPG stuff I used the base coats reduced 1:1 meaning if you had a quart of paint, you'd add a quart of reducer before shooting it so you'd have 2 quarts of color to spray on the car. For a fender and door you might be able to get away with a quart of (reduced) paint so if it reduces 1:1 you'd only need to get a pint (1/2 quart) of paint and a pint of reducer. For a first time though, I'd just get a quart of paint plus whatever reducer, hardener, etc and then you'll have enough for any mistakes and you might decide to do additional panels too.

The reason I suggested going to the local paint shop is because it helped me a lot in choosing my materials - the guys there were able to recommend a paint plus match it with the stuff that goes with it like reducer, hardener, catalyst, etc. They also have the related stuff like mixing cups, strainers, sandpaper, you get the idea. It was a much better way to learn than ordering it online.