Back on it

 We  worked on the ’52 Ford truck last Friday and today. We have the doors and hood all ready for paint now. Today we blocked out the top side of the hood and prepped the bottom side for paint as well. Tomorrow we will do the same to the doors and hopefully get a little RED sprayed on them as well. Our plan is to get the doors and hood trimmed out so we can paint the top sides of them on Wednesday.

A healing touch

This ’32 Ford is back in the shop for a little touch-up. This is the same truck that you saw being painted on this very web site back in August and October of 2011.

It is a fact that assembling a vehicle, installing the interior … even just driving it … causes bumps and scrapes in the paint. No matter how careful you are, there seems to be no way to completely prevent them.

The owner of the truck is finally finished building the truck and having the interior installed, and sure enough, there were a few scuff marks and a couple of chips in the paint that need a little touching up. I know I just said driving it is going to mark it up, and that is true, but you want to start out as near perfect as possible.

The first seven pictures show me wet sanding and buffing the running boards where people have stepped on the paint getting in and out of the truck. The scuff marks were only in the clear coat so I was able to sand then buff them out.

Wet sanding is using very fine sandpaper, 2000 grit in this case, to carefully remove a thin layer of the clear coat. This brings the surrounding area down to the level of the scratch, in effect removing the scratch from the clear. This is done wet so the sandpaper is lubricated by the water causing only the tiniest amount of clear coat to be removed. It also washes away the sanding dust so you can see when the scratch has been removed.

After the scratch is sanded out the paint will obviously be dull from the sanding. That is where using the high-speed buffer comes in. Using a polishing compound the buffer removes the sanding marks and restores the luster to the paint. The polishing compound work in the same way the sandpaper does, removing the clear and smoothing the paint, but it works at a much finer scale than the sandpaper does.

After the running boards are polished, I hosed them down with water to remove the compound then dried the paint to make sure the scratches were removed.

Next, I mixed up some paint and proceeded to touch up the bumps that had not scratched, but actually chipped the paint. You can see me touching up the various places in pictures 8 and 9. There were other places besides these two, but the technique is the same.

Using the touch up brush in the container, paint is carefully applied to the damaged areas. The trick to doing a quality touch up is to not apply too much paint at once. Scrape the paint off the brush until the brush is nearly dry and apply the paint in several layers to build up the paint thickness until it matches the surrounding paint.

The last four pictures, numbers 10-13, show the finished truck. The only part of this build I was involved in was the painting. There is a lot of custom fabrication from the Murphy Rod & Custom shop in the truck, so I can only partially take credit for the way it looks … but  my goodness it looks good.

Glad to have had a hand in

Here is the last picture of the ’32 Ford, completed and sitting outside the Murphy Rod & Custom shop. This has been a long term, on again, off again, project for Kelly, but now it is finished and it looks fantastic.

This truck has a lot of custom touches that you might not notice unless you are really up on your ’32 Ford trucks. Not because the modifications are hidden but rather because Kelly and Josh are that good and they blend so seamlessly into the truck you might never notice, assuming that it was originally built that way. I tend to gravitate to the 1960’s muscle cars, and Volkswagens oddly enough, but with this truck I can certainly see the appeal of the 1930’s cars and trucks.

This truck is certainly something I’m proud to have a hand in on the build, even if it was just paint. Read more about it’s construction on the Murphy Rod & Custom website.

Now I know how the customer feels

It’s funny how a different prospective can bring clarity to a subject you had given no thought to before.

I have built many a car in my shop, and I have always enjoyed it when the customer is so excited to see their car. I understood it from a intellectual prospective, but I never really got that emotional jolt that the customer gets.  When you see a car go together, bit by bit, you never see the car, only the collection of parts that make up the car.

Monday I stopped by to see Kelly at Murphy Rod & Custom and I saw the ’32 Ford assembled for the first time. Just … wow. Even though I painted the thing, seeing it together for the first time like that … Now I understand what the customer is feeling.

No wonder the customers are giddy … it’s quite the rush.

Got to love all those curves

Modern cars are superior to old cars, like this 1932 Ford, in every measurable way. But … there is something that makes these old cars special, and that’s curves. Lots of curves.

The first two pictures show the right and left front fenders. When was the last time you saw a fender like that on a modern car?

The next two photos show the two sides of the hood. This truck was built when they still had side opening hoods so there is a door on each side that is opened to allow access to the engine. Fantastic!

And check out the radiator grill. I really like the way it looks with the filler neck sticking up on the top like that. Notice the hole in the bottom of the grill? That is where the crank start lever goes. Battery goes dead? No problem! Just pull out the ol’ crank and give it a spin.

The last picture is of one of the rear fenders. More curves to complement the curves of the front fenders.

This is the last of the paintwork for this old girl. Most of the truck is already gone to my fabricator for reassembly, and these parts will soon follow. Even though I am not doing the reassembly on this truck, I am going to try to get some pictures of the truck after it is reassembled. That is when all the these individual curves really complement each other and when the truck becomes something really special.

And all because of the curves.

Inside job

Here are some additional bits and pieces of the ’32 Ford in for paint, bits and pieces that go inside the cab of the truck.

The first three pictures show the various parts in primer, the second three in color, and the last three with the clear.

The primer coat is used to seal the metal and to provide adhesion for the paint layers that follows. All vehicles painted at the JMC AutoworX shop will receive at least three coats of primer … an etching primer that binds to the metal, an epoxy primer to seal the metal and to protect against rust and a urethane sealer to seal the primers and provide a base for the color layers to follow.

The color layer is just that, the color. The color can be mixed in an infinite number of hues, but all two-stage paints, the only type of paint used at JMC AutoworX, goes on flat and lifeless. It is the next step, the clear coat, that provides the gloss of the paint finish.

The final layer is the clear coat. The clear coat not only protects the color layer underneath from damage, it is also the layer that provides the gloss that one expects in an automotive finish. The difference the clear coat makes is striking and can be clearly seen by comparing the second set of photos to the last.

The difference is clear, isn’t it?

Bedding down the Old Timer

After getting the frame painted on this ’32 Ford, we are moving on to the bed. The first couple of pictures show the bed in primer. The floor of the bed, along with the wheel wells are covered for protection.

The bed floor is covered to protect the paint from flying debris. The floor of the bed is going to be wood, and since the rails that support the wood floor are not going to be painted, nor are they particularly clean, the rails were covered to prevent any debris from being blown into the paint or clear by the paint gun.

The wheel wells are covered to protect the protective bed-liner material already sprayed on the bed in those areas. Leaving the bed-liner material black will cause it to “disappear” once the truck is assembled.

The third and fourth shots show me spraying on the urethane sealer, which binds to and seals the primers, providing a good base for the color.

In the next four pictures, shot five through eight, you can seem me spraying on the first of several coats of this beautiful blue.

The last four shots show the bed after the application of the clear coat. The clear coat not only provide protection to the color layer beneath, but it also provides the shine.

And shine it does.

Return of the Old Timer

After a delay of just over a month, we were finally able to get back to this old timer to move the project along. When we last saw this ’32 Ford, back in late August, we were painting the cab. Now we are finally painting the frame.

The frame wasn’t in dire need of work, just a touch up really. We sanded the frame down to rough up the existing paint, to give the primer something to get its teeth into, then shot over that with a semi-gloss black, just to clean the look up.

It’s not fancy or glamorous work, but these little details when taken together make a difference.

Painting the Old Timer

Friday we painted the cab of the 1932 Ford truck a beautiful, vibrant, blue. Next week we will paint the front fenders and the bed, then the truck will be ready to go back to the owner for assembly.

The first three photos show Jordan and I masking the truck to prevent the paint from getting on things that we don’t want the paint on. It’s a tedious job, but time spent here saves a lot of time cleaning up later.

In the third photo I am wetting down the plastic that I use to cover large areas so it will stick to, and seal around, the truck so the paint can’t worm its way through a tiny little gap.

The fourth and fifth photos show us cleaning the truck to remove all dust and oil so the paint will have good adhesion. The first step is to remove as much dust as possible with compressed air. Then the entire truck is wiped down with a strong degreaser that removes any oil that has been left on the truck from touching it.

We spray the degreaser on a section of the truck then wipe it down with a lint free rag, as shown in the fifth photo. I normally will wipe the entire truck two or three times to make absolutely sure that I didn’t miss any places. When the truck is thoroughly cleaned we close up the paint booth then move to the fun part … mixing the paint.

Paint is mixed by weight. I have a computer that tells me the proportion for each of the pigments that go into making a color. In the sixth photo you can see me measuring pigment out of a can into a larger can sitting on a scale. The can on the scale will, after all the ingredients are added, contain the paint that is sprayed on the truck. Today this truck will require two of those silver cans, or two quarts, for coverage.

The next two photos show me spraying the paint I just mixed on the truck. It will take several coats of color for uniform coverage. The color layer will shine only while the paint is wet, then will try to a dull flat finish. It is the clear coat that is applied next that provides the protection and shine.

The last three photos show the result after the clear has been applied. This truck is not receiving our High Performance Finish so this part of the truck, once dry, is complete. Even without the wet sand and buff, this old truck looks a lot better now than it did with it arrived in the shop.

In case you are wondering … the buckets in the last two photos are my low-tech solution for reaching the top of the truck. It’s not fancy, but sometimes it is difficult to improve on the tried and true methods.

Old Timer

Yesterday we started blocking this 1932 Ford pickup. It was delivered to the shop with the body work complete and primed so all we are going to do is block it smooth then paint it. It will then be returned to the owner for reassembly.

Blocking is the smoothing of the primer to remove imperfection so when the paint goes on it is as smooth and flat as possible, producing the best shine from the paint. The nice thing about blocking this truck is all the slab sides … which make the blocking process very fast and easy. The problem is all the little details, like the belt molding as seen in the second photograph, which has to be sanded by hand.

No way to shortcut stuff like that though, so you just grit your teeth and do it. The sore fingers will feel better in a couple of days.