Autopaint Training Centre

Full 11 Day Custom & Conventional Paint Training Course

Welcome to our flag ship course. This two-week intensive programme can be tailored to suit either motorbikes or cars. This course is designed for beginners and will teach you everything you need to know about repairs,

conventional painting, custom painting and airbrushing.

Why Choose Us?

Next Available Dates:

3rd Feb 25
7th Apr 25

Course Price; £1640 excl VAT
(£1968 including VAT)

Day 1: Metal Repairs;

We will take you through the assessment process. You will be taught how to price, calculate a realistic timescale and, most of all, to understand that it is not the size of the damage, but how that particular damage affects the rest of the paint prosess there after. You will be given a bike tank or car wing and it will be damaged beyond economical repair. After the initial teaching, this is what you will fix and then, later in the course, apply full custom paintwork too. This is to teach you that all damage is fixable and that not all damage is the same. After you have learnt your basic panel beating, dent pulling, and body filler techniques, you'll see that it's really not rocket science to achieve this type of repair. Please look at our gallery for some examples of what you can work with. Believe it when we say you will fix this in one afternoon!

Day 2: Plastic / Fiberglass Repairs;

Again, we start with the worst-case scenarios for repair work. You'll learn how to repair scuffs, cracks, and holes, as well as how to utilise the hot weld technique to join plastic components back together and how to use the least amount of product possible, if any. The best repair to paint is no repair at all.

Whether it's for bike plastics or vehicle bumpers, plastic repairs are a necessary aspect of the business.

We will do a quick fibreglass repair in the way of a hole in a panel in real time for those that do not have the ability to metal weld. This is to show that rust repairs can still be fixed without fresh metal and can open up opportunities that normally painters might shy away from.

In the afternoon, we will start the priming process and prime the metalwork from the day before. You will not be taught how to paint at this time, but this is your chance to experiment with materials and have some fun. Remember, we need to learn how to solve problems, so I'll be expecting some drips from you in the primer. If you don't manage to put them in, I'll gladly do it for you! Because we need to teach you how to fix these.

Day 3,4,5,6 Airbrushing / Custom Painting & Pinstriping

We believe this is the most intense training package you will find in the time we have. During this time, we'll try to finish as many different custom paint and airbrush methods as we can with one overall paint job.

To produce a comprehensive bespoke project, custom painting and airbrushing needs a variety of unique and distinct skills. Each approach presented has its own benefits and may be used to achieve any paint project you choose to tackle.

Subjects covered:

Freehand and stencil airbrushing techniques
Airbrush selection and maintenance
Pearls, Metallic's and solid colours
Metal flakes
Marbling
Candy colours
Pinstriping
Free hand brush pinstriping
Laying graphics
How to use a spray gun
Paint mixing
Basic preparation
Lacquering
Sanding techniques

Sunday: Free Day;

This day is a courtesy day only. I will open up for you in the morning, set you up, and be on call for the rest of the day. This is for low key training practice only, to fill your time while you are with us. You will not be permitted to undertake any large scale work for yourself, however the time is your own, or alternatively, you could go home if you wish.

Day 7: Conventional Painting;

We're going through the fundamentals of the body shop world today.

We will cover around 90% of our trade in one day, then look ahead and practise everything that will be taught during the duration of the course.

During day we cover:

Types of paint, primer, lacquer, thinners' and all other paint related products.
Compressor and shop set up.
Mixing paint.
Types of spray guns.
Spray gun exercises.

The majority of the afternoon will be spent on the guns, covering as many scenarios as possible, from blend techniques to spot priming. All the time learning that fine trigger control a good painter needs.

Day 8:

We will be going through the patch repair process and larger area panel painting for the rest of the day. So it's back to the guns for some more painting and blending practise before we get into your lacquering (clear coat) introduction to get you ready for the remainder of the course, since you'll be lacquering every day for the rest of your stay with us.

A jam pact day of;

Small area repairs (smart repairs)
Spot priming and masking techniques
Colour matching and paint mixing
Paint and blending techniques
Fixing paint issues
Lacquering

On Day 9 & 10: Custom Painting;

At this stage, you can repair, prep, airbrush, pinstripe, and paint. You will now have a good understanding of how to administrate yourself and are relatively self-contained, so now is the time to shine and for us to take a step back, as you will now carry out a full custom paint job.

Once we have gone through the design process, and you have an idea of what you want to achieve, the remainder of your 2 days are left up to you to come up with a work of art on the piece that you fixed on day one.

You go through the full custom painting process, with all your artwork being lacquered up to three times during this process. On average, around 10-15 coats of lacquer are applied during these 2 days. Do not be fooled by the quality of the work in our student gallery. All of these final projects have been completed during these 2 days. You have experienced real-time painting under your own steam, with us offering guidance wherever needed. It's an exhilarating few days, getting into your own zone and enjoying the steep learning curve.

These days can be very intense with no specific finish time. Its not uncommon to be here in the early hours. Our record is 0350hrs but is controlled entirely by you. How's that for value for money??

These are your two days, so you can steer your own training in a direction that is more relevant to your future work. Therefore, if you want more conventional paint training, you can always simplify your final project and use the rest of the time on something else. It's up to you. However, full car paint training can not be offered at this stage. Please see day 11 for full respray training.

Day 11: Polishing / Car Painting

After we have applied the final lacquer from the night before, it's time to give your artwork a last flattening and machine polish in order to achieve a show standard finish. All students are astonished when they see all of their little flaws vanish and they attain the highest possible final quality finish.

The course finishes with a final debrief and issuing of your certificates.

The course will finish around 1400 hrs.

For Car Painting (please read)

This is not part of the 11 day course but simply an add on for those that want to go further with large area painting.

This extra training day will start immediately after the end of the Full 11 day course, at about 14:00 on the Friday.

This consists of;

Full prep
Full masking
Full repaint
Full Lacquer

Once the full car has been prepared, cleaned and in the booth we will explain and implement the various masking techniques to fully protect the car from over spray.

You will learn the different routes and issues as you complete a full respray and lacquer of the entire car from start to finish. As you're already paint trained at this stage, we don't have to worry too much about gun control and handling so we can concentrate more on moving around the car while controlling the laying of the paint. Finish time could be as late as 2100 hrs

There is an additional charge of £150+vat for this day