Learning to paint

Things were again looking bright, but could anything else go wrong?

Yes, and again stupidity was the prime cause.

I had not worried about the underside of the tank - I primed it and just dusted it with the green so it wouldn't look odd. Now my overall finish was complete, I thought I'd give it another dusting. Inverting it on the workmate, I used 3 sections of pipe insulation as a nice soft base, and sprayed the underside.

A few hours later I'm watching something to do with submarines :D when.... crap, I've left the tank sitting on the foam.

Sure enough, on turning it over the foam was stuck. Peeling it off, I now have a tiger pattern again, just the other way round for variety. Aaaagh!

White spirit didn't help, and I was unconvinced that abrasive papers were making any difference. It was really hard to see whether a tiny layer of foam had bonded to the tank or whether the foam had imprinted its pattern into the paint.

A bit disillusioned, I tried to just paint over it and thankfully, it worked and the marks gradually disappeared.
 
Next up, my next genius idea!

I'd decided on a colour scheme that was green with a gold stripe.

I had bought the special goes-round-bends masking tape at Kempton, but then - here's the clever bit - I thought that if I used a brush to add the gold, I could end up with that fabulous look of a hand painted pinstripe, like they still do on Bonnies and Enfields. Very period, very approrpate for this old tank.

So I bought a touch-up kit complete with built-in brush, masked the tank and set to.
 

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Next mistake -

Wow, the brush painting was an absolute disaster. It was extremely hard to get an even finish, the paint was lumpy and uneneven in colour. No amount of brushing improved this.

A second coat just compounded the issues of the first.

Removing the masking tape, the true horrors became apparent. Horrible, lumpy, inconsistent and despite pressing the masking tape down very thoroughly, the paint had leeched under it.

Cock-up.
 

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I like slow. Keep it up.
Zillions of layers of flattened clear coat will cover up many errors Paul


Makes you appreciate the genius of CT though dunnit

:beerjug:
 
10/10 for persistence and honesty. But don’t give up the day job, 3 days to almost get to the clear coat stage just shows the skill of the experts to get it right first time.
 
10/10 for persistence and honesty. But don’t give up the day job, 3 days to almost get to the clear coat stage just shows the skill of the experts to get it right first time.

It helps if you've got the right equipment, materials and working environment though.
 
Two questions:

Did you spray paint this outside?

What type of brush did you use for the stripling?

I did some of the earlier coats outside - in a very sheltered place - purely for the sake of my own health. Lighter coats, I did in the shed.

Brush - I used the one that came with the touch-up paint. In retrospect I suspect that had I a) used a really good quality brush and b) thinned the paint. I might have achieved the result I wanted.
 
10/10 for persistence and honesty. But don’t give up the day job, 3 days to almost get to the clear coat stage just shows the skill of the experts to get it right first time.

Couldn't agree more. This has been OK for me because I have no time constraints, but imaging doing it to a deadline.
 
OK so decision time, I have these pinstripes that are frankly awful. OPtions:
1) Strip everything off and start again. No thanks.
2) Mask them up and spray gold over the paint, to get clear lines but it would always be lumpy... but do I care if it's just a test mule?
3) Flat them down properly, taking off as much paint as I unfortunately have to, to get the tank flat then fill in the green that I've destroyed then do the stripes again but with a spray.

After a while it seemed that, as I was reasonably invested in the tank (a period fuel cap and rubber knee grips had arrived, with acrylic tank badges on their way from India), 3 was the obvious option, so I went for that.

One cruel fact that I realised when I started to take the paint down, was that the gold was harder paint than the green, so whilst I had to go at it quite hard to flatten the gold, the green inevitably took damage. After a long time working on it without any real change, I came right down to 400 grit which, used very carefully, did the trick.
 

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So I could now mask over the gold again, make good the green, then mask outside the gold stripe, protect the rest of the tank and spray gold in between the new masking lines.

And that's where we're up to now. I got two coats of gold sprayed on, but it's still not fully covered so I had to leave the masking on. I hate leaving masking on any longer than necessary* as it can lead to its own world of issues, but it'll have to stay on until tomorrow when I can get another coat on and hopefully get the masking off without paint damage. Onwards and upwards...

* My experience is limited to skirting boards...
 

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I suspect that a pro would have laid the gold down first, then put the tape on, then sprayed the green? Either that or hand brushed the stripes expertly?

Thanks for documenting Paul

:thumb2
 
Key to getting a good finish is the prep work , last tank I sorted to get professionaly sprayed was an 1150 adventure rank with typical dents at both sides on the front lower edges.

Flatted the areas back, removed most of the dents from the inside via the fuel pump orifice ,skimmed them with filler then hit the areas with etch primer, high build primer and then a guide coat which revealed any imperfections then further high build primer and another guide coat before it as ready to paint.

Painter was happy with the prep work but it still took 4 or 5 hours work to get it to that stage, if I was doing it now I would use lead loading rather than filler but good quality paintwork us something I would never complain about paying for.

I know an ex Skoda factory worker who restored a mini 1275 gt a few years ago and he reckoned that the paint prep work to get it ready for top coat took longer than the many hours of welding and panel beating beforehand.

What I will say is that other than for touch ups to get anything near a good finish really needs a compressor and a half decent gun plus a dust free environment but the only way to learn is to practice
 
Your problem is without the right equipment you will never be pleased with the outcome and lose heart, bit like trying to learn how to play a guitar with only 3 strings you might get a tune out of it but it will sound crap to anyone else.

Use 450 wet or dry paper for any under coat flatting use 1200 on lacquer or non metallic topcoat before polishing with something like G2 cutting compound finishing with t cut.

You cannot flat a metallic or any other finish other than a base colour before lacquering it will show, if you need to flat out runs, inclusions or other imperfections you will need to repaint it again. When flatting out imperfections use a wooden block otherwise you will leave an indentation where you have concentrated in that one area.

Where you've got striping it's where you have applied the paint too thickly, the dark bits are too wet allowing the metal flake to sink and lay flat as opposed to the flake standing up on edge reflecting the light differently. When it's applied it sometimes helps to get a coat down and then lightly spray in different directions to eliminate the lining effect, the secret is to know when to stop before you get wet/darker patches appearing.

Put the gold on first as thinly as possible on a well flatted base, mask off when cured then apply the green as soon as possible after, you don't want to leave the tape on longer than necessary it might mark the gold. You can buy low tack tapes designed especially for sticking on fresh paintwork. Blow on the colour and before it's fully cured remove the tape over the line this will allow the paint to shrink back giving a sharper edge.

After cured wipe over with a tac cloth to remove any dust, dandelion fairies or fag ends and apply several coats of lacquer, stand back and admire your work. You can now work to your heart's content achieving the mirror like finish you're after. Only flat using a block 1200 should be enough plenty of water and a rub soap on the paper to to stop clogging. Keep away from any sharp edges they will look after their selves get too close and you could easily go through.
 
Brian, Neil, Geoff, thanks for your great comments.

The value of this thread will not be my Keystone Cops account, but the recording of your wisdom, so others can access it in the future. :thumb
 
OK the grand reveal. I applied another coat early this morning, and have just removed the masking. As stated above I'd rather have removed it when the paint was still a bit wet, but that wasn't possible.

Overall, I'm very pleased. I used 3 types of masking tape:
* Normal household masking tape - I used a wide tape to cover large areas that I couldn't easily cover with paper. It peeled off really well.
* 'crepe' type 20mm tape - this is the type that is supposed to go around bends easily, and it has the appearance of crepe. The crepe nature allows bleeding of paint across its outer surface, but it peeled off pretty well with little residue.
* Thin (4mm?) flexible lining tape - this left quite a bit of glue residue, but I thing I can probably remove that with water and a detergent. But more importantly, it masked brilliantly, leaving an extremely sharp line. So... I need to get rid of the glue residue but in terms of the stripe I don't think it could be a lot better.
 

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