I did a few touchups on my body and want to practice wetsanding before my complete paint job.

How exactly do you wetsand and is the purpose to smooth out paint and blend it?

I tried to do it and it came out ugly. I just used some 2000 that i soaked in water and ran a hose slowly over the area. I then used 3m polishing compound and it looked like it was black with dots of white here and there about the size of jelleybeans. Its hard to explain, but it didnt look right. Can anyone give me some pointers?

 

I am not exactly sure about why you are wetsanding your car but if you want to here is how to do it. The 2000 paper is a little rough unless you going to buff it out with heavy compound so I would move up to 3000. Get yourself a bucket and a sponge. Wipe down the area your going to sand and wet the paper also. Try to have a flat hand, by sanding even(you don't want to be pushing harder on one spot than the next) or get a block and sand away. wet down the surface evey couple of minutes and clean off the paper in the water. Your sanding away the clear coat of your car. If you are trying to get out a scratch then your going to have to use lighter and lighter compounds after sanding with the 3000. Buy your self a body/paint book it will show you everything you want to know.

 

Wet sanding is time consuming as all hell, but very rewarding. Heres a nifty tip, use a small amount of car soap mixed in the water your using to wetsand with. A spray bottle can help more help than you can imagine. And never let the body go dry, itll stop you pretty quick. Only dry the area to look at waht youve accomplished. You can tell very easily if you keep even pressure where youve made a nice difference. And what youre after is leveling the surface. Thats what gives you that deep shine that everyones after. But make sure you know what youre doing when it comes time to buff all those billions of scratches out. Its not all that hard to burn through clear.