Don asked:
"do you or anyone on list know how to apply this, so that it will look
like
factory original? Think a steady hand would be needed??????"
I can think of 5 ways to lay down a stripe that have results from
excellent
to awful.
The worst way is to use masking tape and a brush. The paint always
seems to
bleed under the tape, and the result looks very amateurish.
Masking tape with an airbrush might work out well, if you can somehow
get the
tape parallel.
Tape stripes are very popular, and can look pretty decent. I think that
tape
quality is very important in the end results. They do always look like tape,
and may eventually will peel here and there. They can also fade at different
rates so that portions of the car appear to have different color stripes. I
did my Norton Commando fuel tank with gold stripes and clear coated the
combination to seal the tape. The results look very good unless you look very
carefully.
Those little Bugler machines that you see at swap meets are said to
produce
excellent results in skilled hands. I have seen work that was claimed to have
been done this way, and it was good enough that I would have paid for it.
The best way is the way it was done when these vehicles were new - by
hand!
The Human hand with a good stripping brush was used by the factories and that
method still gives the best results. Stripers tend to be "characters" and the
work is more art than science. One of the best stripers around this area
travels in a van from job to job. It is suspected that he lives in his van as
well as working out of it. He is a jittery nervous sort of fellow and does not
inspire confidence at first meeting. After talking to the restorer to get a
feel for the job, he "disappears" for a while and when he reappears his
jitters are gone and he is ready for work. What he does while he "disappears"
is the subject of much speculation.
An oft told story in the Ford clubs is that Henry Ford, who was a
strict task
master was forced to relax his work requirements in regard to only one
category of worker - stripers. They often did as they saw fit and laid the
stripes where their individual whims dictated rather than where the Ford
manual dictated. Model As for example, have been known to have different
stripes on the left and right sides of the same car. The stripers stood near
the end of the line and worked from the front to the back as the car rolled
by. As long as the stripes met up in the back, few customers ever discovered
the differences!
Stripers can be found in both the restoration and hot rod communities.
Ask
your friends for good steers.
Paul O'Neil,
1951 Chevrolet 3600 Pickup Project, See it at:
The Poor Man's Advanced Design Tech Tips Page
http://home.earthlink.net/~conntest47/
Fullerton, California USA
Hudson29@aol.com
oletrucks is devoted to Chevy and GM trucks built between 1941 and 1959
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