The paint base does not need to be wet. I watched a painter do it and you need to be able to turn and handle the part as you wave the torch. Wet paint would make a mess. I have personally seen smoke jobs over 30 years old, so the clear must be sticking just fine.
Post up some pics if you have them of this paint process, particularly on dash panels. Who else has done this kind of paint work?
I've done some work with smoke, could only find this pic of my bikes' dash. I could see how you could get a wood grain type effect with the smoke, but I was doing this "freestyle"!
Found this effect was easy to do, on vertical panels. Practice on a white base color. Sweep the torch, tilt/roll the handle. Experiment, you'll get it. Wipe away, practice.
My avatar had black spider webs. I watched the painter spray it on and was just amazed. It came out of the paint gun in streams and was just sticky enough to cling to the red Sungleam paint. It took many coats of clear to cover.
Cob-webbing. That may be an effect, using unthinned laquer. The paint slews out of the nozzle, you standback to spray as it builds up quickly. The acetylene smoke when laid right, was trapped by a light clear (laquer) in earlier days. A very thin gossamer layer of smoke, then clear.
I saw Chip Foose do it last week on the Overhaulin' show. That's a first for me. He was doing fake woodgraining and it came out beautiful, he made it look so easy.
Cobwebbing: Used to do this when I worked with the guy who taught me custom painting. You can do it with lacquer, unthinned, and shot at a lower pressure. But I've tried it recently with modern basecoat paint, and it is super difficult to get the technique right enough to look like the old cobwebbing. I think the resins aren't sticky enough to hold the paint together in strings.
We had to do it on this restoration. It doesn't show well in the photos. The sides & the rear corners of the roof were smoked .
So Cal lowriders were doing this back in the post-war ear 1940's. My father-in-law was an old time "LOWLIFE" member and had a photo album dating back to the late 1930's of Santa Ana and Ventura/Oxnard area action. He pointed out his brother using a torch with the mixture all wacky blowing out lots of soot. He explained to me the marbling effect and how they did it. RIP pops.
...........Like you mention, Pete, it's difficult to see the smoke affect, but my oh my that is one beautiful piece of machinery.
Ooh yeah! Dad had a white late 70s chevy short van that had blue with black smoked lower panels and matching night time lookin murals on the upper ones, wide slots, ground affect spoilers and tinted headlight covers Would of had to see how cool it was, wish I had a pic of it even tho I couldnt share it here.
The Jalopy Journal
