All this talk about beginners made me do a little reminiscing about my start. I pulled out a photo album I haven't looked at in many years. Here is me a young punk at 20 years old in 1980 with my first paint job on a car and the garage I did it in. I'm not a genius or anything but I have more determination than most. My cousin went to auto body school and he painted cars for friends and himself. I did ask him to paint my Vette for me but he could not have been less interested in what I was up to, but he did let me stand around while he prepped and painted a car in his garage and I thought I can do this. After a lot of begging, my cousin did let me borrow his Binks model 7 spray gun, he spoke about this gun as if it was sent from heaven. I did read some books on fiberglass repair but nothing on paint. I already bought this theft recovery 69 Corvette and got to work. Sanding, priming minor fiberglass repairs and of course all the mechanical work. I sold a 69 Camaro I had to buy the blower. It came out pretty good but I did spend most of the summer and fall doing spot repairs because of sanding scratches that you could see in the finished paint that I missed. You could do easy touch ups with lacquer paint. I was so dumb that I did the entire paint job without a respirator, a paper mask was good enough for me, and so I was on my hands and knees in the backyard throwing up or dry heaving in a delirious haze between coats. Once you start a paint job you don't stop, at least that was my attitude. Finished the job, closed the garage door and slept 18 hours. All the paint materials cost less than $200 in 1979, how times have changed. Oh yeah, the flames came a later.