Books: REstoration

There are no Mustang specific body work books. Just do an Amazon search for general body work books.

Look for the books by Jon Kosmoski. The titles are Secrets of Kustom Painting and Advanced Kustom Painting. They are great books for doing your car from start to finish. Don't think they don't apply to the average resto job just because they are geared towards the Kustom Painting. My car is white with blue stripes, and it's my first paint job and I for one was amazed at how nice it looks, and how easy it was to do. Lots of hard work, yes. Expensive, yes, but not nearly as much as if I'd paid someone to do it for me. I just followed the steps and before I knew it, it was done. Also check out www.paintucation.com Lots of nice people on there just itching to help do-it-yourselfers. Good luck!

zookeeper said:

... My car is white with blue stripes, and it's my first paint job and I for one was amazed at how nice it looks, and how easy it was to do. Lots of hard work, yes. Expensive, yes, but not nearly as much as if I'd paid someone to do it for me. I just followed the steps and before I knew it, it was done. Also check out www.paintucation.com Lots of nice people on there just itching to help do-it-yourselfers. Good luck!

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And there's nothing quite like the ego boost when someone says: "Nice Paint Job, Who did it?"
I second the paintucation.com site. I purchased the 4 DVD set - a little redundancy from one DVD to the next, but all-in-all well worth the price. The only major thing the DVD set does not cover is 2 tone painting, but Kevin Tetz (painter/body man on the videos) filled in the gaps for me on his forum.

Since you brought it up, that's a good point. I love the reaction I get when someone stops by to see how the car's coming along. Mind you the thing was painted in my garage, it's my first paint job, and people tend to think it's going to look like it. But the car has NO orange peel, only one small sag (approx 1" long) and very minimal dirt. But I was as careful as I could be and followed the steps laid out by Kosmoski. For instance, did you know that something like 75% of the dirt in paint comes from the painters clothes? I bought a few cheapie paper paint suits from my local paint store and it really helped. I also re-masked the car after wet sanding to prevent the dried paint residue from getting in the clear and that helped. I also washed the floor by dousing it with a few buckets of water and sweeping it out, then wetting the floor by the same method right before I started shooting. I used a simple box fan in the window for ventilation and borrowed a supplied air system (very, very important) from work for the clear. Some how it all worked.