pearl paint?

[Infiltrate2000]

I am a little confused about pearl paint. I know regular solid color paint, you add a ground coat, primer or whatever. Then you add the basecoat and then the clearcoat.

So say i buy a gallon of orange pearl or something, do i groundcoat(primer and sealer), then the orange pearl, and then the clearcoat?

Sorry i am not a painter or anything, just want to find out the process. I heard the process or using pearl paint cost more than a solid or metallic paint.

 

[IMMORTALSPYDER]

It depends on what kind of pearl. Some are pearlized basecoat, so yes you would do sealer, basecoat, clear. Others are a 3 stage paint. They go sealer, base, pearl coat, clear.

 

[miteclgst]

Yes there are different types of pearl, the first type can be found in just about any base coat/clear coat system, take the Majenta grey pearl found on eclipses, there is a blue pearl in that, but when the pearl is in the base the pearl effect isn't very noticeable. There is a "tricoat" pearl that is suspended in clear. The process to applying this type of pearl is 1st primer/sealer 2nd a base of some sort (because at certain angles you can see directly through the pearl) 3rd pearl suspened in clear 4th final clear coat. I have this kind of a paint job on my car. here is a pic to show the effect.

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The pearl that I used is in powder form, you need to mix the pearl at a #% ratio to ready to spray clear (clearcoat with all hardners and reducers already mixed in it) so say you decide that you want a 3% mix, if you had 100oz of ready to spray clear you would add 3oz pearl powder.
***SOMETHING TO NOTE AND NOTE WELL***
Pearl coats need to be sprayed as candy paint, in that you cannot overlap your strokes too much and you must apply a uniform even coat on every panel, if you do not you will end up with streaks and discolorations. Also to note, when a panel with pearl paint is damaged it cannot be spotted in with a high heat spotting clear. this will lead to a darker area then the rest of the panel. Basically pearl is a high maintenince type of paint, if you screw it up you will be spending a lot of money to fix it. When I did my car I was like "who cares I can fix it if something happens" but in hindsight I wish I did a solid color. I just don't know if the effect is worth the upkeep.