Folks Of Interest Wet sanding with gasoline Tommy the Greek

Just had a reunion with an old friend from school, '50s-60s. He worked for Tommy the Greek Hrone in Oakland Ca. the middle '50s when we were in Junior High, mostly sanding cars. A**** many old stories (Tommy chasing everybody around the shop on his Triumph, mixing paint colors from old leftover cans stacked to the ceiling) bantered back and forth Steve mentioned wet sanding cars with gasoline. Remember all gas was leaded back then. I had never heard of that before and was wondering what the purpose of it would be. We were throwing stories back and forth so often I didn't think to ask him.

If anyone has any other stories about The Greek they are welcome on this thread. Think I might add a couple myself later.

Gary

 

Only for realistic flames though.....

 

ive been paint'n for forty years, never heard of wet sanding with gas....

any more details?



skull

 

We used to wet sand with WHITE GAS. ( fuel for Coleman Lanterns etc.)You could buy it in a gas station in the 50's.

 

I had "Tommy" do alot of motorcycles for me. I would take them tank, fenders and helmet to him for painting/stripping. He would tell me to just leave them and he would get to them when he had time. He didn't want to do that kind of work. They were to much trouble. But, you know what when I came back they were done and the price was hardly nothing. He was quite a person. There will never be another stripper like him. He lived my mother in San Lorenz. I would see him drive by in his white Cadillac El Dorado. He also had a self painted picture of himself on his Triumph when he was on Foothill Blvd and 55th ave in Oakland. I could go on and on.

 

I had heard that was how it was done at the Ford Factories in the early 1900s.

 

We used white gas in the 60's to take the wax off the paint before we lettered, pinstriped cars and trucks. An old timmer, Jonny Luster tought me.

 

Please do go on and on.

I lacquer painted and flamed a peanut tank in the early '60s. I had an artistic friend lay out long pointed flames with an opening in the top for teardrops. Took it to Tommy for striping. After chastising us for not knowing how to draw flames he took out his paint and got his brush wet with the first color, turned it backwards and dabbed five perfectly placed teardrops. Then after cleaning his brush he filled it with white and started striping around the flames. When he got through with that the teardrops were dry enough to stripe around. Think he charged me $20 maybe $15. Wish I had that tank back.

 

Seems like there's something in one of the Ed Roth DIY books (remember those?) about wiping the cars down with gas as a wax / grease remover, but he didn't specify regular pump gas, white gas or what.

In another one he says wash the car down with Comet. Who knows, that's Roth for you.

 

My dad told me when he was young he had a job in Minneapolis at a body shop and they wet sanded with gasoline.........that probably would have been in the mid 40's.

 

I had read that it was common practice in Barris' shop. Not sure if it was true.

 

Sounds like a fire waiting to happen.

 

I was thinking about the fumes... could you imagine?! I got a buzz just thinking about it.

 

Per my gramps
He used gas to wet sand if he was working on something that had exposed metal so that it would not flash rust.

 

We used white gas to wet sand in the 50's it didn't run off as quick as water and seemed to give you a smoother finish. Never had any fire occure even though we smoked while sanding. When we were young we did'nt know any better.

 

I have a painting handbook somewhere that has an antique picture of a guy sanding a T that reads "Cars were brush painted back then and wet sanded with gasoline after they dried".
Can you imagine the deaths that resulted from that kind of exposure?

 

I knew of one guy sanding with gas back in the fifties, but even as a kid, I wasn't that stupid. It was actually done, but the fumes and chance of fire was way too great for most people. This is when everybody smoked.
Supposedly it clogged the sandpaper less, and because primer was porous, it didn't provide a source for rust as water did, and removed wax. The gas evaporated, and water would remain in cracks.
This is what I was told.

 

A friend of mine was a sign painter and striped cars from way back and he used leaded gas mixed in his paint to make the paint flow better. He told me that when lead was removed from gasoline, it was never the same again.

 

There was a local guy that use to do Lacquer jobs out of his garage (near Venoy & Palmer rd. in Wayne Mi.), he would use kerosene to wet sand, he told me it kept the paper clean and consistent, and it kept the particles of primer sanded off from getting pushed into the pores of the primer still on the car,...

I don't know if this is true, but the old guy came up with some really pretty paint jobs,..There was another guy down the street that had his 59 T-Bird painted Black by this painter (Then striped by Paul Hatton, a local pin stripe legend) ,..... best straight lacquer job I had ever seen in my life,.... you could see yourself from across the street (with all the colors in the reflection) in the paint, like you were looking in a mirror, and I ain't kidding.

He didn't keep it in a garage,... but he did wash and wax it a lot, two years later the paint started to check up,.... I always thought it might have been the kerosene.

But again,... I don't know

 

My pop told me a few brief stories of his war days in the Phillipines.
The base commander liked the planes to look nice,so the fellas washed them down with gasoline.Doesn't sound like a safe practice for a vehicle fearing fire?
Dad said there was no rationing where he was as "they'd fling buckets of gas around like mopwater."
Later,when some of the planes were to return to another base,someone issued an order to have the nose art painted over.The flyers were proud of their planes and accomplishments and covered the area with heavy grease to preserve the artwork.
Cool rebellion!

I've heard of fellas using kerosene to preserve old paint on autos and motorsickles?

 

I personally have never heard of anyone wet sanding a vehicle using gasoline as a flushing medium but it sounds horribly dangerous and not only from the flammability issue.
When I was very young,my next door neighbor and I decided to paint his 50 Mercury(the first car I ever striped)as he didn't like the faded black paint.We chose bright red enamel and attempted to paint it with a vacuum cleaner spray gun.Needless to say the results were less than perfect(a LOT less!).
We wound up washing the paint off with gasoline(destroying his father's brand new asphalt driveway in the process)and the net result was **** got a case of blood poisoning due to the gas drying out his skin and allowing the solvents to get into his bloodstream through the cracks.The only good thing about it was he was in the hospital so his old man couldn't beat the s**t out of him for wrecking his driveway.
As an aside where I grew up(New England)so called,"white gas" was actually unleaded 100 octane fuel sold by AMOCO(American Oil Co.).The stove fuel we had was actually high grade kerosene or mineral spirits.Just my twopence.

 

As these things come floating back into my memory, I remember the guy in Detroit that sanded with gas was named Shorty and he was north of Bill Hines shop on Dix.
I bet ol Bill Hines could answer this question for sure.
Harms way mentioned Paul Hatton the striper, and I used to hang out at Pete's custom collision on Fenkel, and that is where Hatton operated out of. That's where the little Deuce Coupe started it's journey.
Back to the topic, the only one of these guys that I knew that sanded with gas is that Shorty guy.

 

I did it fer tha Hamb!
I found the picture.
You owe me now!
I'm doing something just as difficult. I'm painting that chopped top truck of mine with Rustoleum and sanding it between coats. Getting finer and finer.

 

Another story about Tommy.I had a 1952 "K" model Harley/Davidson in 1963. I took it to Tommy to paint and stripe. He painted it lime and black. He done my tank, rear fender and helmet. He striped on 30 tear drops and pin striped the rest of the project. Cost $35.00. I then entered in in The Oakland Roadster Show. Received 2ND place in the motorcycle cl***. The winner that year was a person named Don Bell. He had a body shop on Claire St. in Hayward. Tommy later moved to about 41st ave. and E14TH in Oakland.

 

Could wet sanding with gas over laquer paint jobs been used to soften the top layer of an otherwise really hard paint and make it easier to sand and polish out? Just a thought.

 

That Shorty guy went on to have a pretty famous Nephew ,..
I think he went by,... Teddy X,.. Or Y or............. something

 

Please believe I'm not advocating the use of gas for any thing other than what it is intended. In fact I wonder why there were not more fires and health issues back then. It's a wonder any of us lived this long. I think Tommy was in his 80s when he died.

That being said there was mention in Steve's story of the Greek having a large smudge pot filled with used motor oil with flames blasting out the top that was used to heat the shop.

 

Gas sanded many times back in the early 50's. The biggest problem we had was when we forgot to take the rubber 'squeege' out of the gas bucket. The next day it would be blown up 3 or 4 times as big and would be like a limp noodle.

 

We used kerosene or white gas on emery cloth to satin finish aluminum when I worked in the machine shop 40 plus years ago. It carried the particles away better than water.

 

This is starting make sense. As you might know or not that Tommy's shop wasn't just a custom shop but an all around shop where he did custom jobs as well as body work and cheap paint jobs. As Steve's story goes on they were staying late as they often did to get a job out. Tommy had Steve do a quick sand job on an old P.U. while he found some leftover paint and mixed a presentable color and he was able to and did paint it that evening. So I'm sure he didn't want any water left in the crevices. Steve said Tommy did get a big run in the top but he had Steve watch it as he ran it down into the drip rail. A real pro.