Question
I have a kitchen full of these to finish. The recessed panel area isn’t the smoothest with marks left from the CNC. Any tips of a quick way to level/fill the machined area. I will be using Valspar post cat primer, followed by a CV topcoat. I was thinking to give it a quick sand, spray a generous coat on the panel area, sand it back really well to level, and then prime the whole door, then topcoat. I’m looking for tips or recommendations for those of you who work with one piece MDF doors frequently.
Forum Responses
(Finishing Forum)
From contributor N:
I had the same issue a few years back. Now I use a flex trim hand sander with 320 grit paper on it. The fingers in the paper drop right down in the panels and buffs everything shut. It saves me a ton of time and material cost on my primer. Hope this helps.
This is going to be true with pretty much any brand of primer - SW, Valspar, MLC, you name it, the thicker it goes on the harder it will be to sand. Start by sanding the bare routed areas first with nothing rougher than 320 grit if they are in as bad shape, or even incorporate a wash coat of vinyl sealer first then scuff with 320-400 before priming. Resist the urge to use rougher sandpaper because this will just tear out more fragments, making more pin holes to fill with the primer.
Then apply the CV primer in a normal 3-4 mil wet thickness. One or two coats applied his way with a scuff sanding between coats are almost always going to provide a better surface to finish than trying to do it all in one thick fire hosed coat. This may seem counter intuitive because you are applying more coats but sanding a thick coat of CV on a poorly prepped surface is not fun and not very productive to either time or quality.
