I have a 1941 Buick Sedanette with 60K original miles and original paint. Unfortunately I discovered the difference in a panic stop with drums versus the car in front with disc brakes. I have a repairable small dent in the front fender. The dent is not the problem, it is trying to match the paint when fixed. I live in Los Angeles county which does not allow lacquer paint. Has anyone else in the area had the need for a painter who can fix this? Any help?
If you check in Hemming,you can still buy the lacquer paint..have it shipped to you...If memory serves me,its at Hibernia Auto ad.
It's probably cheaper and easier to buy heroin than lacquer in California. Probably a lesser crime to possess too.
The problem is not getting lacquer it is finding someone to shoot it in the basin. it is not legal to shoot lacquer in that part of the country. I don't doubt that if someone was not afraid to muck around a little bit in EasLA they could find a very capable painter to squirt lacquer.
our tyrannical government here is keeping a close watch on companies shipping contraband items to this side of the enemy lines. I needed some danish oil to finish a woodworking project and even found some at Lowes and OSH but only in pints, I needed a gallon. So I ordered some on Amazon and a day after the sale, the seller contacted me asking me if I could cancel it because they were not allowed to ship it here. they have put the scare in people.
tcp global in san diego sells acrylic lacquer & slow dry thinner & will ship it to any state EXCEPT california. maybe you have a friend or relative in nevada or arizona?
You sure?? I have two gallons of Acrylic Lacquer in my shop, right now, that I got from TCP Global. I'm in L.A. County
yes, i also have a couple gallons that i ordered about 3 years ago. i tried to order some more about 2 months ago, but the guy told me that they can no longer ship it to ca. or sell it over the counter.
Odd. Someone shipped it to THEM in San Diego. I have a friend who lives in Nevada and SoCal. He splits his time here and there, so getting more is no problem, for me
I might be wrong ,...BUT I believe not all the rules apply to restoration shops that apply to collision shops, also I have been told to say its for a boat when going to paint store... That one maybe a urban legend ? Also I lived in the Central Valley for a short time... If its agriculture , like painting a tractor... Pretty much no rules..
There are low VOC lacquers that are allowed to be shot here in LA and OC. The high VOC are not supposed to be sold Or shot here but you can get them in San Diego and also in Nevada. Don't be fooled a lot of paint shops around here are good at hiding the good lacquers that aren't allowed here. They shoot them anyway, they just don't get caught
I think that some times it is harder to deal with main stream companies when buying things that may be considered on the fringe of being legal. I know that here in good ol Misery I can walk into any paint store and buy lacquer and lacquer supplies. I am not a professional painter and the law here is that if you are a professional painter you cannot squirt lacquer. I have several acquaintances that are professional painters and well known they cannot buy lacquer unless they go to a store that doesn't know them and they can't use their tax number. One of those guy approached me about picking up some product for him a while back and then called me and said never mind he found a place on line to buy supplies. I have received NOS lacquer in the mail as recently as a year ago. I guess the p.o. doesn't check that closely although I would prefer to use Fed ex or Ups if I were going to send supplies myself. Actually there is a guy in Sunny Socal that I called a bad name once (probably a laps in judgment on my part) that could get supplies out of good ol misery if he needed them and didn't have a friend coming from out of state in a timely manner.
"Dont do what I tell you,,,,,,,DO WHAT I TELL YOU"!!! W.C Fields. Who knew the place where cool began would be so uncool one day. Arizona, Texas,,,,,,,still free,ish.
I am not sure that cool actually began there of course one would first have to define cool I suppose. I guess that one should decide where to live based on more then this is where I am at. Some of us are tied to a place for a lot of reasons this is something that I understand all too well, but if one is not while we are still a free country one can pretty much locate about wherever one likes.
If the paint is original then you need nitrocellulose lacquer for the touch up and not acrylic lacquer. This isn't just a case of using the correct material for originality, but more a matter of the fact that acrylic lacquer doesn't work well over nitrocellulose. http://www.hiberniaautorestorers.com/nitrocellulose-automotive-laquers.php sells the nitro lacquers and the proper thinner, etc to use with it. According to their website, their lacquers are legal for use in all 50 states which would indicate they've got the VOC within acceptable limits for use in CA. That said, unless you plan to do the paint work yourself, your best bet would be to use a shop that specializes in restoration work. They would have the sources for compliant paints as well as the knowledge necessary to successfully match the finish on your car. When it comes to matching the finish on a 75 yr old paint job, having access to the proper materials is no more than 5% of the challenge. The other 95% is skill and knowledge of how to do it. Unless a painter has restoration experience, the chance of him having experience with nitro lacquer is near zero. Its just been too long since the material was in mainstream use in the average paint and body shop for anyone to still be around who used it regularly since it was phased out by the carmakers in the late 50's.
LOL first car I ever painted was in '68 and I used Nitro cellulose lacquer. You are absolutely correct it is easier to paint one then to match one. A skill I never learned, even old black is hard to match.
Everything I have ever read or been told was that Acrylic will go over Nitro but not the other way around.
If it is a 900 year old paint job you can probably go either way. We used to shoot enamel over old lacquer jobs without a hitch, and if the enamel was old enough they say you can even lacquer over it. Once a paint job is g***ed out it is mostly pigment anyway.
Calif may have a lot of issues, but you can beat the weather, Kind of hard to paint somthing when the shop is (1) under water (2) tornado moved it to a new location (3) snow so high you cant open the big doors
I think that time will come that none of us are shooting lacquer any more. Maybe I'll be dead by then. My biggest issue in Calif is the whole health thing. Well that and the people who think they have some need to tell me about it. Last year when I was visiting my sis we went to Muir Woods for the day. I was standing in the bathroom shaking hands with the devil and this mousy little turd steps into the stall next to me and has the gall to tell me that I smell like a cigarette. So I looked right at him and said, "Does this mean that heavy petting is definitely out?" I mean hell give me a break, he's standing in someone else's piss and I know that because of the stench and he has the gall to remark that I smell like a smoke.
P&B--- the responce from me would be --- Well if I punched you in the nose you would not be able to smell anything for at least a week!
Info about which one can be used over the other is on the page I linked up above. The internet is polluted with bad information on automotive paint. I saw a big rant recently on another forum where the writer was claiming the reason they went away from nitro lacquer to acrylic was because the acrylic is a water based paint and therefore cheaper to make than the solvent based nitro. He went on to explain how nitro was so much more durable and could be sprayed with much greater gloss right out of the gun. All totally false, and proof of nothing other than the fact that the fool had obviously never sprayed any lacquer, but that didn't stop him from being an internet expert. Like ******, my first paint experience was in the 60's using nitro lacquer. Wasn't on cars though. My dad had about 15 different colors in partial cans of nitro left over from when he'd been into painting cars in the late 40's and early 50's. I did $5 spray jobs on ratty bicycles my buddies had, but they had to do the sanding. Did about a dozen overall jobs on cars and trucks with acrylic lacquer in the 70's and 80's on my own stuff and cars belonging to friends. But, also like ******, I always was a total loss when it came to spotting and color matching. ****** says he couldn't even match black. I probably couldn't match clear.
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