Drywall jobs are a common occurrence in my line of work. I was fixing a cracked seam at a customer’s house and had about a 15 mm deep gap to fill. Generally, I’ve just used the pre-mixed stuff from a bucket, but that dries so slowly and shrinks so much that a job like this would have needed to be spread over at least four days.
Decided to give the quick-setting bag stuff a shot, and wow - what a difference. Not only could I pre-fill the gap in one day, but I also managed to get the tape over it, leaving only the finish coat for tomorrow. This will save me literal months over my career.
I love discovering good new products and tools.
I’ve done body work and painting, and trying to do it the “right way” is a black art of the highest order. My hat is off to people that master this, I definitely have not.
And yes, you will not find good products at the usual suspects. You have to find an actual automotive paint supply and convince them to sell to you. And it is not cheap. If it’s cheap, it’s not good. The materials alone to do a complete car will be almost $1000 between filler,masking, sanding materials, primer, paint, clear and hardener.
And then all this has to be done with a good paint gun, in a dust-free environment, after you burn through a bunch of practice material. I’m not saying a paint job needs to be $10,000 like some of the shops want to charge, but it isn’t peanuts to DIY and you better have some pretty good native talent at it.