Shoot, or get off the pot.

Happy Sunday everyone!  The best part about Sunday is that you get to sleep in late, go to bed early, and best of all go back to work Monday!!!

I kid! I am being totally sarcastic here.

This has been one of those whirlwind weeks of car activity, although it wasn’t supposed to be.  My plan was to do as little as possible, as I was scheduled to leave out of town for a week and a half for work.

I felt it would be really stupid to hurry up and finish things, only to have to wait until I got back any way.  I did finish removing the rest of the heavy-duty anti-rust and cleaned off all of the panels.

REVIEW: Next I applied the Dupli-color Rust Fix primer.  My initial thoughts on this product were that it was pretty cool.  It came out of the can really wet, so you had to adjust distance, but it went on smooth and clear.  As it dried it turned only the areas that had traces of rust blue/black.  The rest remained matte clear.

With the primer drying to a matte clear sheen, it was very easy top find any spots that might have been missed.  Went over those spots to insure coverage was complete.

REVIEW: Dupli-Color 2-in-1 Filler/Sandable Primer.  After the Rust Fix fully dried I went over the lower have of the car with Dupli-Color 2-in-1 Filler/Sandable Primer.  I thought for spray can primer that it shot very nice, came out very wet and laid down really well. Coverage was very even.

The primer dried to an eggshell finish, and felt extremely durable.  I couldn’t scratch it with my fingernail after it fully dried.

Overall I was very happy with how both products went on the car and would use them again.  Are there better products out there? Yes, I am sure there is.  But in my opinion of time/money/availability these worked out well.

This is where I was going to stop.  Buuuutttttt…

As luck would have it, my trip was cancelled and the weather in Chicago was cooperating so I figured what was the harm in doing a little work here and there throughout the next week.

Paint Effects

After removing all of the scaling and surface rust on the car and prime her, what do I do?  Add paint effects to replicate RUST!!!!

I sprayed the effects over the primer to get the feel for how it would turn out, but also with the thought that once the final paint coat is applied and cured, that I was start sanding it to expose the effects underneath.

I’m debating if I will do that, or if I will apply the spray paint over the single stage and mimic the look I am going for without breaking the paint.

Using the primered door as my canvas here is what I did.

Step One: Spray flat black paint it the areas and shape you want and let it dry.

Step Two: Follow-up with a coat of flat “rust brown” over the black paint. Again, allow to dry before going to the next step.

Step Three: Orange Paint.  This step is different as you don’t want to fully cover the previous coats with orange.  You are going for spotty, uneven look to mimic natural rust.

Step Four: Last step is another coat of black.

Once all of the coats are dry the idea is to scuff and sand using various grits and pressure to reveal the colors underneath in a way that makes the effect appear to be real rust.

I also sprayed red oxide primer around the door handles and various spots around the window frames.

This is meant to mimic areas where the white paint has worn away due to constant use.

Friday Night

Paint.  I have the supplies.  I have the equipment.  I know have the time.  What am I waiting for???  It’s time to shoot paint, or get off the pot.

I never painted a “real” car before. I never used an HVLP gun before.  But at the end of the day the car is supposed to look like shit so I decided I was going to just jump in with both feet and hope I didn’t jump into the shallow side of the pool!

The Restoration Shop single stage enamel was super easy to mix.  8 parts paint, 1 part hardener, reducer optional.

Friday night, the weather did cooperate nicely, but I still used reducer to help flash the paint.  I ended up going with 8:1:1 ratios.  I sprayed the white paint first.

As I mentioned a few posts back, I did not go with an air compressor setup for paint.  I went with a small turbine unit that various re-sellers label as their own.  I bought the Rockler turbine, since I got a smoking deal of Amazon for it.  These usually go for $150, but ended up paying under a hundred for it.

I thought the unit sprayed okay.  It was easy to adjust airflow and patterns and it consistently kept up with my demands.  Did it atomize the paint as well as a large compressor and high-end paint gun? No it didn’t.  But I thought that it laid down well enough for a Bluesmobile.

Two Restoration Shop gallon paint kits (white and black) that came with hardener and paint screens, sticks set me back $150 and the spray gun was another $100, so for under $300 dollars all in, this is an exceptional paint job!  Last time I got a paint job for under $300 Earl Scheib was still alive! Hey that rhymes!

Earl Scheib was still alive! Okay.  Not funny anymore.

After painting the white, I turned the heaters on and let the paint cure for a couple of hours before returning to remove the masking tape.  Its best to remove the tape when the paint is dry to the touch, but still extremely soft.

Saturday Morning

I woke up at 5:00AM hell bent on finishing the car.  I had a lot of masking to do to protect the white paint.  The black paint I chose was the Restoration Shop “Chassis Black Gloss”.

I wanted a nice deep black with enough gloss, but not that mile deep look.  I think the Chassis Black was the right choice.  I did notice a few areas in the white paint where I had a couple of runs.  While they will be easy to remove and hidden with paint effects, I didn’t want any runs in the black paint.

I used slightly less reducer than the night before.

Again, while I thought that it layed down really well, the black seemed a little thicker than the white.  It could be that I used less reducer, or it could be the paint itself.

What I did notice was that the paint have a very noticeable peel to it, so maybe I had the air pressure to low?  Not sure.

I exchanged my empty propane tanks for full ones and fired up the torpedo heater to help with the curing.  The garage was a toasty 90 degrees all night long!

It helped, as the paint is curing the orange peel is diminishing.  Its not going to go away totally, but that is fine because after I put the door panels back on and the exterior trim it will be time to “age” the paint.