The first/only car I painted by hand was in c1972. It was a (fibreglass-bodied) Fairthorpe Electron Minor, which I had inadvertently run into the back of a bus in Uxbridge (note to self: fix the brakes). After repairing the fibreglass and carefully flatting/prepping the surface, I used royal blue coach paint. After just 2 coats applied by roller outdoors, it looked pretty darned good. To get the finish I wanted, I used the grades of wet-and-dry as suggested by Bitsobrits, and then 2000 grade. In the 50 years since, as well as working on my cars I have hand-painted many R/C model aircraft, and used the same finishing technique (and won awards). Things to remember:
-- just to endorse Jack & Jill 602, wait until the paint is hard-dry, otherwise you WILL make a mess of it;
-- having painted the car by hand, finish it by hand: rotary polishers/MOPs are tempting but it is sooooo easy to go through to the underlying surface, and you can waste a lot of time going away and having a good cry;
-- polish simply makes the finish shiny; you do need to use a very very fine abrasive of some sort to remove those annoying "nibs" and achieve a uniformly smooth surface to polish;
-- beware "swirl marks" which are typically the result of using sub-optimal polishing cloths; always use good quality micro-fibre cloths.
Keep at it and I'm sure you will achieve a showroom-grade finish. Good luck !
