OK, there's been a change of plan on the '54 Chevy, The Grape Whine. After I'd started color sanding the trunk, I realized that despite the shine the color looked sort of dead, compared to the metalflake on the top and sides. I decided I needed to liven it up and bought two ounces of violet purple concentrate. My painter Shawn agrees with me. The car's been sanded down and I'm taking it to my buddy Ben's shop in the morning. What I want to know is, what kind of ratio of pearl should I put in the clear? Just a bit, more than a bit? I dunno. If all goes well, the car will finally be painted by Sunday afternoon. Any help you can give me will be much appreciated.
I think you won't need a lot to just give it a purple "kick" in the sun. Measure how much you put in the first cup (start with just enough to see it in the clear) then put the same in each cup. If you don't go nuts (like I've done before ), it shouldn't muddy up the flake. The trick is to get just enough for the pearl to do it's thing without changing the base color. Good Luck!
My .02......yeah, I think it will take away from the flash of the flake. Are you gonna mix the pearl with the violet or in the clear after the violet , or what? You CAN mess up dude. What are ya lookin for? mid-tenn mike
Just 2 ounces? If I were you, I would metallic basecoat the whole car with a like purple, and then spray the pearl with clear, or you can make up a pearl basecoat to shoot over the car. If you keep the pearl lite over the flake it will look nifty-just spray it even. Blotchy pearl looks bad over anything. your friends may lie, but photos won't. Wasn't this machine candy red or is that another one? This tank has heavy hok alabaster pearl over silver flake. So much pearl you can barely see the flake thru it.
One of these days I'll learn to READ more carefully before I shoot my yap off If you have 2 oz of violet powder, you have enough pearl to cover about 3 cars(!) I remember the ratio "back in the day"(I HATE that fuckin term ).....was one tablespoon per cup of clear RTS(ready to spray). The newer pearls are a bit more intense, so you should get good results! Just remember you can keep adding mixed clear and sneak up on what you want, but too much too soon and yer screwed Still don't think I'd hit the flake though.... Your car looks tits, btw
Rob said he used about 4oz per Gallon of clear. The first coat of pearl needs to go on fairly dry or the pearl will run. You will only need to use about 2-3 coats of pearlized clear fairly dry to medium wet. Then you will need to put just plain clear on top for the final coat after the other is tacked up pretty good. maybe practice on a test panel first
Most bottles have the mixing formula on the bottle If not paint a test panel same color as your car mix it light and spray lighter the better to thick it will mud out and turn white what colors are you using? Kopper
HOUSE OF KOLOR Lavender pearl suggests dark base 3/4 to a teasespoon or pearl to quart of ready to spray clear Kopper
As I recall when McDonald's was kind enough to supply those great little,"coke spoons" with their coffee,two of those filled(level)with pearl concentrate(this was the original pearl paste as supplied by the Mearl Corporation)mixed into a quart of reduced clear were just about right.Gave nice coverage without ribboning or going translucent over the base.But that was 35 years ago(is that considered,"back in the day"?).
I have no business replying to a custom paint post...but the paint store guy said to use a teaspoon of the powder for each cup of clear. I bought a kitchen measure set and did as he said. One coat with the gold pearl and the rest straight clear. You only see the pearl in the high lights. I was tickled shitless with my first attempt.
Spend the time and do several test panels. Try different amounts of pearl/ clear and air pressure. Try using just a few DROPS in a cup of clear. Spray this on your base at about 50% more air pressure. Clean your gun then spray the remaining coats of clear untuched. This method done correctly should give a flop effect to your base color. The more pearl you add the more your color will change. Test panels will save you redoing or driving a car you don't really like.
as already said its better to mix it a little light and have to spray a bit more than mix it heavey and "mud" it up which is actually easy to do. happened to me the first time i sprayed pearls. i see it fucked up alot on the importers cars. they try to make pearl give to close thick of an effect like flake and ruin it. with that said the teaspoon to a cup of ready to spray clear is roughly what i say. maybe for someone not familiar do a "light" teaspoon. if you want to hit it over the flake my suggestion would be this. first i dont remember how you did it but this should give you the general idea. mask the area that is flaked off. mix your clear with the pearl but mix it light half or 2/3 teaspoon maybe. spray the area that you are wanting "more" pearl effect on. unmask and spray whole car. this way you get a heavier pearl effect on the non flaked area. get what i'm saying? another fun thing to do is dust a little more pearl on the body lines for added effect in those areas. fin tops around headlights. hood peaks and what not all really seem to jump when you do so. i've been playing with it some and usually go around the car and "highlight" those areas first and then spray the whole deal. you can go much crazier and follow all the body lines with straight shots and then lightly dust the whole car. theres a million and one ways to do it. it's all just in what you want the end product to be. looks like with all the responses so far you so be armed with great info go for it. it's just paint if you fuck it up they sell more...ken....
my advice too when i flaked my 63 i sprayed a test panel of metal to decide what technique i wanted to use to lightly flake the body test first then paint
Cool, thanks for all the advice. BTW, the car's a very dark purple with purple flake on the top and under the '56 Buick trim on the sides. I also cut into the purple flake here and there, as you know once the pigment comes off colored flake it's silver underneath. It sort of came out evenly so it looks like there's a bit of silver flake in the mix. I'm also finding a red and green flake here and there, I guess when they mixed these batches up some errant bits of different colors got in the mix. The weather's so bad today, it's raining like heck, it might not be possible to get the car done. It sucks being at the mercy of Mother Nature. Here's some pics.
While we are on the subject...I'm painting the fenders on my Peterbilt "Viper Red"....I was thinkin' of a little Pearl in the clear..how's this going to look over a non-metallic paint? What color pearl will look good? the rest of the truck is black...Thanks.
I saw a really interesting paint job on one of those,"air-cooled rear engined Wolfsburg vehicles" that was quite striking. The base color was a Bright Red(Resale Red maybe?)and they had layed out flames on the fenders and hood and sprayed a very light blue pearl on.What made it unique was the flames were the base color and the,"negative space" was pearl.A very unusual and effective trick. Wish I had a picture of it but the pearl was so faint,you had to get it in just the right light to see it.Don't know who did the work but it was an Arizona car and done right.
Its pretty amazing what the different tints will do. Rob painted a camaro 1973 corvette yellow with a blue cast pearl. That car was still winning paint awards 10 years later!! Beautiful. Our 69 Lincoln was painted a dark green (think factory color) he put a maroon cast pearl over that, the effect was awsome!!
No one's mentioned it yet......I have found that putting the same color pearl over a base really doesn't show up much. Just gives it a 'satiny' pearl finish, not a pearlescent flip-flop effect. I'd use blue or red pearl to give it a nice color flip. You'll see, if you do some test panels.
chopolds, I hear you, I might have some pieces of painted masking paper left that I can test on. I wish I wouldn't have thrown the big pieces away, but that's what happens when there's no real planning behind what happens. Everything I've ever done's been sort of accidental. The pearl's not real expensive, so it can be changed if I don't like it. The color swatch I looked at was done over black, it looked really good. The original plan was to use green pearl, there's just something about green and purple that I've loved ever since I saw the Robert Williams' designed merc, Rudy's Green Flame, I think that's what it was called.
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