Technical Mercury valve cover lettering

This is an old coke cooler I bought at the Portland swap meet many years ago.

I saved it from some rat rodder that was going to make a battery box out of it. I had to dissemble it to pound out the dents, drilled some holes to spray in insolation, did some body work and painted it with Centari. I lettered the raised Coke logo by hand with white one shot and a decent brush. That was 20 years ago and it looks pretty good still. Just takes a steady hand and some thinkin juice.

 

Needs a bigger picture......

 

what comes to mind is the same procedure for restoring an old license plate. paint the whole thing with several coats of the color for the lettering, then a lighter coat over that. use rubbing compound on the letters.

 

I like the paint the letters first, then paint the valve cover, then wet sand the color off the raised letters best. I would add to use a long sanding block to do the sanding part.

a sign painter could just paint them with the right brush, I tried that with a license plate once and the results were not satisfactory. I used to get all A's in art cl*** back in school too.

if I did another license plate I'd tape them, and cut the letters out with an exacto knife and paint.

 

Yeah? Well...I had to look it up. Guess I am definitely not an artist..

 

Some printing establishments have flat bed printers which can print directly onto objects up to about 4" high. I'm not sure how the ink stands up to heat, though.

Likewise, there are companies which can print custom dry rub-on transfers. Again, I don't know about heat resistance.

 

I can't believe the "rat rod" movement has clung on this long. Frickin' Disco only lasted 10 years.