Weekend Project

Guess I better kick this off based on it being my suggestion.

Recently purchased a little Ford Festiva as a commute car to save some money, bare in mind this car is pretty beat up and has a ton of miles but runs good and cost me all of $400. To liven it up a bit I decided to give it a flame job. So I spent all of about $15 on some rattle can paint, some sand paper and some masking tape. Here are the results thought you all might get a kick out of it. For a cheap flame job I thought it turned out pretty awesome. It's kind of nice to have something around you can do with as you please and it keeps you more focused on the car you don't want to modify. There are a few other pictures there for you to enjoy as well of some of my other adventures. These are on a Jeep web site that I am a member of.

http://bigredheep.com/modules.php?name=coppermine&file=thumbnails&album=76

8)How is the hunting, any elk? White tail or mule deer?

[quote author=hcsstang link=board=4;threadid=796;start=0#msg4431 date=1076014861]
8)How is the hunting, any elk? White tail or mule deer?
[/quote]

This would be the first year in over 20 that I didn't hunt at all. They closed up several areas that I enjoy hunting and just had a thorn so I didn't buy any tags. Didn't really hear of any trophy's taken this year in my area. However I did get me a new Winchester Model 94, 30-30 for Christmas. I have always wanted one, more as a collector item than anything as I love the looks of the Winchester lever action.

8)The first time that I was in California we visited the Winchester house and that was interesting.

[quote author=hcsstang link=board=4;threadid=796;start=0#msg4441 date=1076071740]
8)The first time that I was in California we visited the Winchester house and that was interesting.
[/quote]

I have heard that is quite a place. Hidden areas and stuff every where.

Trout,

That flame job looks AWESOME! Could you explain the steps and how you taped, marked, and basically did the whole thing sometime? I have a couple old cars I would love to try something like that. Did you clear coat it too?

[quote author=CalGTCSdreamer link=board=4;threadid=796;start=0#msg4454 date=1076182644]
Trout,

That flame job looks AWESOME! Could you explain the steps and how you taped, marked, and basically did the whole thing sometime? I have a couple old cars I would love to try something like that. Did you clear coat it too?
[/quote]

Ok here goes, this will be long so I will do it in steps or several posts,

Step 1- Draw out the flame design. I measured the width of the hood and figured out the center. I then laid out a large piece of paper on the living room floor and designed the flame design for half of the hood and folded it in half and cut it out. Then when you open it you have matching flames for both sides. The fender flames I took another piece of paper and started where the hood met the fender and continued on and just used the one piece of paper for both sides. I wish I had paid more attention to the natural body line of the wheel well here and made the flame job on the fender follow the wheel well in contour.

Step 2- Transferring your design to the car. I took the flame cut out and laid it on the hood of the car and used a few small pieces of masking tape to hold the paper in place while I traced the pattern onto the hood with a lead pencil. The fender I did one side then took the pattern to the other side and reversed it and drew it out.

Step 3- Fine line taping out the hood. The first picture you see is the hood all red with green flames taped out. This is 3M fine line tape that can be purchased at any auto body paint supply store. I used 1/4 inch I think, any smaller makes it hard to get the masking tape on and any bigger won't make the tight corners. This step you just take the fine line tape and follow out the design of the flame that you have drawn on the hood. It is very important that you look it over and make sure the curves are natural looking, you can pull it up and move it if needed. I didn't worry about being exact on my drawing just close and I blended the curves in to look the way I like it. The other thing that really helped was taking the digital pictures. I studied them to see how I liked it. Odd as it may seem by looking at the pictures you pick things up that may be out of balance where you may not see it on the car. In fact if you look at the fine line picture then look at the finished picture you will see that I changed where the flames carry off the hood onto the fender. I moved this point back quite a bit. From the picture I didn't like it being so close to the headlights. Anyway this step is to lay it all out and you must make sure the fine line tape is pressed down firmly especially on the inside of the flame where the paint will be applied.

Step 4- Sanding, at this point I took 400 grit wet and dry sand paper and sanded all of the area to be painted. I dry sanded. If this had been a valuable car and I was using automotive paint and applying it with professional paint sprayers I would probably go to an even finer grit up to 800 grit in stages and would have wet sanded for cleanliness. As for my rattle can application I wasn't worried. I had a box of clean rags handy and wiped the surface clean on a regular basis as I sanded to see where I needed to sand. You can sand right up to the fine line tape but do it careful so you don't have to re-tape.

Step 5- Once you are satisfied with the sanding and the surface is clean you can now start masking the car. The entire car needs covered to prevent hours of removing overspray from the car even when using rattle can paint. I actually used the reverse or negative side of the original paper that I designed the flames on here and laid it down in the flames. I had to trim it back a lot bit it saved some tape next to the flames. The important part is not to let the masking tape cross the fine line tape into the area you are painting. You want the barrier between the paint and the non painted area to be the fine line tape so when you unmask the car you can pull all the masking tape and paper off then peel the fine line tape back as it will peel smooth and leave a nice clean smooth edge. So start taping, get it all taped out around the flame job, cover the wheels and tires and bumpers and everything then put a big tarp over the roof and back of the car and tape the paper and stuff to the tarp so it is sealed in between the two.

Step 6-Paint, make sure the sanded surface is wiped clean, a good thing to use is a tack rag for the final cleaning. If you touch the surface with your hand it can leave oils. The tack rag is a sticky rag you can get at auto body paint supply stores that picks up all dust and oils without leaving anything on the surface. To do the two tone paint I just painted along the edges to make sure I got paint down in the gap between the hood and fender and under the edge of the front of the hood first. Basically try and get paint in the hard to get areas. Go slow with light amounts so as not to get runs, I always get runs in everything I paint but this project came out run free (yahoo) probably because it wasn't a critical thing and I tried really hard by keeping the paint back about 10" and going in slow sweeps. As for blending the two colors I just pictured a line in my mind and alternated white to yellow and back and forth and finished with white so it would drift back over the yellow for a better blend.

Step 7-Unmasking This is a tough call, you can check how dry the paint is getting by feeling the paint on the paper or masking tape, you need to peel off the masking paper and get the fine line tape off before it gets completely dry or it may lift the new flame paint. But you don't want to remove it to soon while it's still really wet or you may get flaws from paper touching the wet paint. Get it while it's tacky but not wet.

Step 8-Finish work, I hand painted some blue tips on the flames to add a dimension. I used professional pin striping paint that I already had. Professional flame jobs will have a fine pinstripe all the way around the entire flames and it adds a ton and looks a lot nicer. I didn't because I'm not good enough at pin striping and would have made a mess out of something that turned out way better than I planed. I also removed the grill and painted it separate at this point.

I didn't clear coat the paint but you could I guess, not sure if you would 1200 grit sand the entire front of the car and re-mask or what you would have do here. Too much more work for my $400 car and $20 flame job.

If I missed anything or you have any questions let me know. I don't claim to be a professional by any means, I did work in a body shop for awhile more as a grunt but I learned a lot. I never did any spraying so that would be my weak spot on body and paint knowledge.

Cory
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One last thing I remembered, paint selection. If you are doing this as a fun project on a little runt car with Rattle Cans as I did, I would buy the best rattle can paint you can. I purchased mine at a farm and ranch supply store and I purchased industrial farm implement paint. In other words I bought John Deere Green paint only I got the gloss yellow and white instead of the green. Seems to be some good paint vs the cheap stuff at the local MART store. It isn't costing a lot so spend the extra few bucks on getting the best rattle can paint you can.

Hook