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I have to say that I really love a job like this.
Someone else has had all the hard work of making the car look good. It has
been restored and re-sprayed by someone else - all I have to do is the
flames!
Not that difficult I seem to do a lot of flames
recently, except that this customer has specified something a little
different and several body shops have told her it is impossible! The Car
is a sort of metallic Cadbury's purple, and the lady wants long tentacle
flames, in the same colour - but in flake so that when the sun shines they
show, but most of the time you cannot see them - very clever and very
effective. The difficulty comes in the masking. Flame masking should be
removed ASAP to prevent lifting of the flame - most are done in basecoats
which are thin and dry (not cure like flakes) and so are a little less
susceptible to lifting.
After a few trials I managed to come up with a way of
doing it (no I am not going to tell you how) and the final job went very
well. This is because of the prep and the fact that the customer did not
hurry us. As always a patient customer will receive a better car. |
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Prep is as always the key to a good job. I had
undertaken samples in advance to ensure this new procedure would work,
then the whole front end was wet flatted with 400 grit wet 'n' dry paper
to remove all the gloss. Only when every last bit is gone can we start
masking. The first job is to hard mask the edges, and then to mask out the
pattern. It look symmetrical but with these things we always do them by
eye - art is not symmetrical and neither are flames, so we don't even try
we just make it look good. When it is we are ready to spray the flake -
this was very hard and fast work (it was during the hot summer and the
temp was over 35) so I had no time to stop and take photos, everything
went off very quickly and a delay could have ruined the job. If I had what
you would have seen is that the flakes were sprayed with a very special
gun I built for the job, then the tapes were removed, then the panels were
cleaned of tape residue which can otherwise show through the lacquer
before coating the whole front in clear. |
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This is not the end of the job, although it looks
smooth in the photos at the edge of the flames is a small step. It wasn't
much and the customer probably would not have noticed, but I always would
so we left the car for 10 days for the paint to cure very hard, then
flatted the whole front down again and recoated with 3 coats of clear -
its now completely flat, and the gloss we have achieved makes the rest of
the car look a little dull in comparison (although its actually very
good). |
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| The car looked absolutely
fabulous when complete, and the customer was absolutely over the moon -
exactly what she wanted. I have had trouble capturing the essence of this
car in photos - just can't capture the sparkle when the light catches the
flake - it looks awesome. |
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