Need Help with Purchase in West Virginia

Hi all - I know its been a bit - but life has been busy. I have completed as much sanding as I can and am now left with spots that I believe need some sort of slight fill before priming and painting. Don't need much and want to get it at Lowes etc. Suggestions?
 
I have used Bondo glazing and spot putty for this purpose, to good effect. This is not the two-part auto body filler Bondo, which is not suitable. Epoxy can be used also -- it is more expensive, and not so easily sanded, but can fill deeper spots faster. I have used the 5-minute variety for this purpose to fill small gouges, though I would not use it for actually gluing things together on a canoe.

The spot putty is available in small tubes for about $7-$10, and sometimes in larger 1 pound tubes for very little more -- check auto parts stores, K-Mart, or Amazon. Get the large tube if you can find it -- Amazon generally has it. It dries fairly fast, and sands quite easily.

Bondo spot primer.jpg
 
The primer sounds ok. The other paints also sound ok. It's usually hard to tell about paints from the manufacturer's descriptions, which say that they all cover superbly, they all wear for eternity, none of them fade, etc. etc. etc. Sometimes the people in a good paint store are knowledgeable about their various products and can be helpful, but sometimes are not.

For a paint job that I expect to last for a long time (a house, for example) I will generally go top dollar, in the hope that you get something for the top price. Similarly, for a canoe paint job that I want to last for several years.

However, for a job that is to only last a couple of seasons (if that's your plan), I would save a bit of money and go for a mid-price paint -- first, the paint job does not have to last forever, and second, at the end of the season, if the paint needs touching up or even a new coat, it is a quick and easy job. I would not go with the cheapest -- there are differences in the paints, and the cheap stuff ain't cheap for no reason.

Because I did not know how much paint I would need, and because the price of a gallon was not not all that much more than a quart, I bought a gallon. A quart would have been quite sufficient, and I still have a good deal left. But I have never worried about having enough for touching up or putting on another coat -- something I did more often than was necessary because I was fooling around with the decorative trim. The Benjamin Moore deck and floor paint that I bought was cheaper than their top house paints, and more expensive than their lower grades of house paint, and the guy in the paint store suggested it when I told him what I was doing, saying it would stand up to abrasion better than some other paints. Since I have a penchant for finding unseen rocks and logs, I figured better abrasion resistance might be worth while.

Buying paint is worse than buying a pig in a poke -- with the pig, you know what you've got when you open the bag. With paint, you won't know until long after you have opened the can.
 
Well I did the priming phase yesterday using Sherwin Williams latex primer. Question. Should I do 2 coats of primer? should I be sanding very lightly at this stage?
 
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