I was talked about traditional paint in another post and it got me thinking, so I went and looked at a lot of the vintage picture that have been posted on this site lately. We seem to be hung up on traditional cars being done to the specs of the era they are from.But some times to me the paint work is over done for a traditional car from the 40`s of 50`s.Now don`t get me wrong there were a good few top notch paint jobs back then but these cars were the high end car much like the million dollar cars you see at show today. Looking through traditional pics I see for ever one top notch paint job there is ten middle of the road paint jobs. I see a lot of satin finishes and a number of flat finishes. Back then everything was painted with lacquer that flatten out after sprayed and needed a lot of rubbing to bring out a shine and more rubbing to keep it up. Most of these car were own by guys in there 20`s, high school kids and your average guy. I think we tend to think that the cars that were seen in magazines in the day were what everybody had. truth be know that 75% of the hot rods back then were what we call beaters or heaven forbid a Rat rod. On top of all this How many had a spray gun and a compressor to run it.I say many were painted with a paint brush and rub out, much the same way the model T was painted Don`t think there were too many Down Draft booths.Many were painted in barns and garages. How many of these car had orange peel paint,dirt in them and a ****ter run. Times have changed and paint and body work have come a long way in the last 50 years. So? Having a model A on a deuce frame powered by a Nailhead and a 57 olds rear end rolling on a set of 16 inch steelies with wide whites and then you top it off by painted it with red candy Base and 6 coats of clear in a down draft booth and then water sand and buff with a hi speed buffer still make it traditional???
My take is doing the best you can with what you have will not never be not traditional, not never no how. Now whether the best you can do with what you have is a spray bomb job or a 5 figure paint job, that's up to each individual. Too much emphasis is being placed on what is and what is not "traditional". Think about it, you are trying to decide if nice paint is traditional. Some people take this whole "traditional" thing way too seriously. If it's going to go that far, why not make sure you use nuts and bolts made before 1962? Oh, and Cokers? They're out too. You gotta use 50 year old tires you found at a swap meet with the sidewalls checkered more than the table in front of the Cracker Barrel. Do that or you're just being f'ing ponderous. ***EDITED TO ADD*** I re-read that and thought it may come off as an attack on fitzee. It's not. It's just that the traditional at all costs thing gets to be a joke sometimes. I mean why would you put someone down for having nice paint because it's not 52 coats of hand rubbed laquer or a ****ty brushed on job with bugs in it.
somehow turd always says the the thing i want to say but can't..it never comes out right when i say it.
A-fuggin-men. I think Brian Setzer wrote it, "He's wearin 1956 underwear." I wasn't there. The cars I admire from that time, mainly kustoms, had beautiful paintjobs that were miles deep on them. I try my hardest to recreate those jobs as best I can. Satin, Gloss, whatever. But do your best. Purposely making a paint job ****ty, or rolling it on because thats the way someone told you they did it when you can just as easily do it right, is stupid. Plain stupid, end of story.
I painted my first 2 Rods in my parent's backyard on gr***. Both with old synthetic enamal ,ya know the slow drying stuff. Neither one was full of dirt and both had gloss. Both were sprayed ,first one with a damm cheap gun,the second with a real gun. If you would have seen the compressor you would have died laughing ,but it got the job done. This was in the early 60's. Early 50's our neighbor painted his old Pontiac with a Hoover va***m no joke!!
in the 60s we had a Kirby vacuum that came with a spray painting attachment. I think my dad used it to paint a fence once. Best to keep the "traditional" jokes to yourself.....
Paint technology has certainly moved up from where it was in the 40's/50's...even 60's and I can kinda see where your coming from. The thing is that the best car builders of the day did the absolute best they could with what they had. Really for an ultimate "Traditional" high spec build, we should be using Nitrocellulose Lacquer in multiple coats with a water sanded and buffed finish, in traditionally available colours...not the easy to access and modern version of BC/CC pearl paint we have now. Then again...a blitz black spray bomb is hardly traditional 50's either! Where do we draw the line? Personal choice. This isn't the 50's...we aren't limited in selection and even a Trad guy can appreciate NOT having to rub out paint twice a year. The hard core who does rub his perfect nitro out every 6 months or so, really has my respect though. It's hard to buck the trend and live with the old stuff...completely ignoring the obvious benefits of modern 2 part technology just to say its the real deal. Kinda like choosing BP's over Radials...
More then one guy painted a car with a vacuum.Like someone said do the best you can with what you got.
Bill, Right on! I feel the same about the hard core guys. I certainly appreciate the work and attention to detail that goes into a high cl*** build that would've been state of the art 50 years ago. Just searching for that one special rare part can take years. I personally just don't have the patience for that, I wanna drive NOW! For instance, I'm doing a '55 Chevy pickup. I'm shooting for a look around '61. I used a repop factory style wiring harness. Is that going to make it any less "traditional"? I'm also using a repop Offy intake manifold. Same question here. I'm also using some repop interior parts and a modern stereo. I could spend the next three years searching for vintage stuff and end up with basically the same thing only with a much higher price tag and a longer build time. Only the know it alls will really know the difference (and I use that term in the nicest way) and I'll be looking better sooner. We all pretty much love the same thing here, but it's still all a compromise. We all do it. Some more than others. The ones that do it the least seem to consider themselves the coolest. That doesn't necessarily make it so.
Terd, I've noticed when I use a new wiring harness and not vintage wires, my lights are too bright. I have gone back to old wires to get that nostalgic glow to the dash lights. I also had some old gas in a CO-OP can I've had forever. I put it in my car, it won't run but thats ok. And Kirby paint jobs ****. Sorry Squirrel.
Of course they do. A good example is the Corvette or Tri-5 Chevy restoration crowd with their numbers-matching, NOS, date-coded, ***embly-line-firewall-crayon-marks fascination. Unless your objective is a Bloomington Gold or Pebble Beach Concours winner, the "fun factor" is probably going to be missing or the build will never be finished due to the obsession with perfection and correctness.
"As soon as tradition has come to be recognized as tradition, it is dead." - Allan Bloom "In America nothing dies easier than tradition." - Russell (Wayne) Baker
I like the way you guys see things... in my opinion, tradition is more about how you go about doing thing, not what you use to do it. if modern bc/cc type of paint job was available in the '50s, im sure thats what they would've used. i remember reading an article in some magazine where bill hines said somethin like "just because thats how we did it back in the day, doesnt mean thats the right way to do it". back then, most guys wanted to use the latest and gratest the could get their hands on. im sure there weren't many rodders then that only used parts from the '20s... but i still give my props to the guys that can pull it off. while i might not have the patients to build a "traditional" car, i love lookin at the ones others create.
I agree that 'traditionally' styled rods should have 'traditional' paint, to look right (to me). Mile-deep 2-stage urethane on a traditional rod? No way. Might as well paint an Ipod onto the Mona Lisa. But, to each his own.
Alot of what makes modern paints modern is ease of use/durability, and not just the way they look. Most of the advances in paint technology- particularly in the past 20 years- have been focused towards the collision repair environment, and not the restoration/custom DIY'ers like us. Anyhow- I painted a hood one time in the 80's from a can of Nitrocellulose laquer that looked like it was 20 years old or more. It was a '50 or '51 Chevy that had just had the hood emblem removed. It was a 50's style custom with that looked like it had been in a time capsule. Light ****ercream yellow. That stuff sprayed like any laquer, died back a bit, but rubbed like ****er. It was so f*ckin easy to flatten out, and shined like shoe polish on rock-hard leather with minimal effort. I have no idea how long the shine lasted, but i do know that laquer was the choice of customizers from way back for those same reasons.
I've always considered hotrods to be a D I Y kind of activity, practised by fellows who are not bucks-up and therefore have to use their own talents and resourcefulness to produce a distinctive ride. It anoyes me when I find that a rod was built by a professional and all the owner did was write the checks. I was a grade school kid in the 50's and one hotrod memory about paint stands out. There seemed to be an endless number of shoebox Ford tail draggers with Appleton spots and black primer "paint" jobs. Turns out that many of the owners were taking high school auto shop and the black primer was in long supply there. Another recollection of paint schemes on customs back then was seeing a car at a car show that had about a pound of real flaked gold in the clear lacquer top coat. You know, to me it just looked dusty.
anyone ever sprayed a car with rustolium gloss black and got it to turn out nice? can you buff it out? or do you spray the flat black first then the gloss coat clear?
I painted a car with a Kirby vac***e, I think my mom still has that thing and all 500 attachments up north. they actually produced some pretty warm dry air. you are talking about the ones that weighed 60 pounds and came with everything from the floor shampooer to the jack hammer?
Every time I see a hotrod with a BC-CC paint job it makes me think it's too nice. It just doesn't fit on a hotrod IMHO. Show car...sure. The show cars always bragged about how many coats of hand rubbed lacquer that it took. It was smooth as gl*** but it had a "luster" to it that can't be duplicated with today's materials and not that dipped in plastic look. Some people want absolute perfection and that's cool for them. To my eye they remind me of the trailered show car wussies that were inside the Armory building covered with angel hair and not the hotrods that the spectators had parked in the lot outside. I refuse to use the "T" word. All it does is start a fight about what is T and what is not T.
I painted my first car with red oxide barn paint & a brush (I was 14 years old & that's all I had). Since then (40 years since then) I have learned to do body work and how to paint. I don't think I will brush another car just because that's the way I did my first one! If that's all you got & all you know by all means go for it but Damnit try to gain the knowledge of doing it better...................
How I was first inspired by cars, was from what I saw in our own driveway, with my brothers and their friends cars. That was real everyday stuff, and when you went to high school, it was what you saw in the parking lot. The car show cars and magazines were fantasy land (like today), sure some of their innovations were inspiring, always interesting, but never enough for me to desire to build a trailer queen. Therefore traditional to me, is a car that is driven, therefore not always perfect paint, rock chips, etc. I painted my first car, in the driveway..oddly enough it didn't look too bad. I still opt for single stage paint. Bottom line-"to each their own".
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that you've been into "traditional" hotrods for about 5 months give or take. Lacquer is a mile deep, which is why the look is so sought after. If someone was able to duplicate a miles worth of depth with BC/CC, they've done an amazing job. BC/CC typically looks very glossy but with a very shallow color depth. The clear itself adds some depth to the overall job, but the color remains very shallow.
Don't knock it till you try it. Dad and I restored alot of 55-57 chevys and had a ball doing it. From the EZ-EYE tinted gl*** to the T-3 headlights. I say to each his own, who am I to say what is cool.
Why the personal ****? No, about 31 years to be exact, wise guy. I had nitro lacquer paint on my 31 Pontiac when I was 18, and it was not as 'deep' as today's BC/CC. Maybe 'deep' isn't the right word. 'Plastic looking' might be a better description of what I'm trying to say.
I've been in the garage cussing old Ford parts for 50+ years and I've come to one important conclusion. Some guys like skinny girls and some like fat ones. We're all car guys and if you did the best you knew how on your ride and are happy with it then I'm happy for you. Do I like your car? Maybe, maybe not, but I'll always respect you for doing the best you can.
One thing you may not be considering is that, like paint, photography and printing technology has progressed a long way since the 50's. Many of the photos and print material from the 60's and earlier don't do a great job of conveying the level of depth to paint jobs, particularly cars in the background of shots. So many of the cars you see as having satin or flat finishes, were probably full gloss ...... it is just the photography and print technology that makes them look flat. The guys I know who were around in "the day" here in oz tell me that they all aimed for the best glossy finish they could achieve, and that primer (particularly patches) was a sign of an unfinished project. I do however agree with the opinions being voiced about how much better hand rubbed laquer looks compared too modern paint. Modern catalysed paint, and fan forced ovens are all about speeding up the process, not about improving quality.......ie, "time is money" A nice, hand rubbed, laquer job captures the look, but was never cheap, and still isn't
I've done this on several cars. I sprayed it with Gloss black then wet sanded each coat. I then sprayed with clear and wet sanded and buffed that. looked great
Blah Blah Blah.... I thought this thread was going to be about something relevant and or useful. By the way, when was the last time you went looking for yester years materials to spray? No one ever came in looking for alkyd enamel, and very few ever asked for laquer on purpose. Color!? How about color? I have wrestled with painting my 39 ford deluxe coupe folkstone grey, black, or ditching the traditional paint altogether and doing a three stage candy maroon red, or golden sage color, but I want it period correct in color, so what if the clear coat is on soo thick that my Downs child will have a hard time taking the paint off climbing in and out because it will be a driver.
I WAS THERE! I SAW IT TOO! The caliber of many show cars was superb. Some of the finishes I recall are what brought me closer to finish work in my youth. I didn't just want it I wanted to do it. I helped my dear ol Dad wet sand things smooth in my early teens. I remember a neighbor blocking his primer on his 54 Chev custom with 500grit and being amazed at how slick it was. This is a lame idea that perfect is new. ********. Look up some factory pics too of Lincolns and Packards, Cadillacs, Chrysler Imperials. Gorgeous and flat, reflective from a great distance. The cars I remember as tacky were the Munster Coach and Dragula, one of the Roth cars I can't recall (I was a kid!), and a few other of-the-wall theme cars. Yes I saw em new and in person. SlowandLow is close about the lacquer thing but it's "deeper" than that. It starts at the metal as in alll they had to work with. It wasn't until bondo got out there that many non-pro cars were built sloopy in backyard venues. Just because they weren't all good doesn't make sloppy half-***ed work traditional. It just works toward another excuse to hurry through a build and go play with it. When your quality is critiqued you just tell em it's real, right? Yeah, real ****ty. Like I said I was there and remember the quality that made me want to do it. This topic is wrong, PERIOD.
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