Personal Narrative: How To Be An Auto Body Painter

Have you ever fallen in love with a car because it was painted your favorite color or because it had no imperfections? I can tell you I have, especially because it was my favorite make and model. Franklin Auto Body’s Nick Gage gave me the opportunity to help him make a base paint and clear coat, and paint a bumper on a car. This is where I learn the mechanics of how to be an Auto Body Painter. When I woke up this morning I woke up a lot earlier than I had anticipated – probably because I was nervous about the job shadow, I was lucky enough to lay in bed and let myself relax for another hour. When my alarm clock went off I was ready to get up, but was not ready to sit in Boise traffic. Let me tell you Boise traffic is not fun at 8:30 in the

When we got into the office where Nick was, I saw him standing at the computer making something but I did not know what. Steve introduced me to Nick and Don both painters in the shop. I told them both why I was there and I also told them my other careers were. After I explained everything to them Nick took me back to the computer where he was making the clear coat. At this point I was just watching what he was doing and trying to see how he was making the clear coat how he knew how much to make. I asked him how he went through this process and he explained to me that you enter in what you are making and it will tell you the identification number on the can then you look for the gallon of product that you need. Then you grab a small container that connects to the spray gun, and then set it on the scale and pour in the different combinations of paint materials. To make a clear coat you combine three different materials to make sure it stays on. A clear coat is to help your vehicles paint to stay

I did not go into the booth the first time because he did not give me the safety mask that was needed since it was a quick paint. While he was doing this I looked around the shop and looked at the paint booth and saw a lot of switches on the side of it. These switches were for the booth depending on what you wanted to do in the booth, you could have it where it would bake the paint to harden it, or you had to have on when you were painting for it to reduce the fumes that were being produced. I asked Nick about baking the car and he told me that the paint that they use now hardens faster than having to bake it and it also saves a lot more money than using the booth to bake it. As he was telling me this we were walking to the body shop to see what our next project was. We asked another employee if he needed anything painted for the vehicle he was working on and he said he did need a bumper to be started. Nick and I took the opportunity to do the job before someone else did. We went over to where all the new equipment was held and had to find the right bumper for the vehicle. We took down the bumper we thought was the right one, but we later found out I was the wrong one, good thing we did not start doing anything to it. Once we did get the correct bumper we had to sanitize the product with a sanitizer called 909, 909 is an alcohol based solution. We also used a water