How To Custom Paint Your Car - The Basics

Since I don't remember doing an article on how to custom paint your car, I thought that I'd just introduce you the very most basic ideas behind custom auto paint work on your car, for this article we'll look at painting flames on your hot rod.

Keep in mind that a lot of this is just a re-hash of the things that I have talked about in my how to pain your car articles, with that in mind you will have heard some of the things that I'm going to talk about in this article, but please don't just blow them off, they are all essential to the process of custom paint.

Now that we understand that I will cover a lot of things that I have already talked about, let's get down to the brass tacks of the article, here are the things that I have discussed in past articles, we'll talk about prep cleaning, masking, and using a tack cloth to get the surface clean for paint work.

Depending of the painter that is working on the car they can attach this process in a few different ways, here we'll talk about the most common way to paint flames on your hot rod, first I'll talk about cleaning the surface of the paint work before your start to mask for your flames.

This is one of those things that I know I have talked about in the past, this is truly the starting place for any paint work that you'll ever do, assuming that the body work, and priming of the car is done, and for this article we're going to assume that it is ready to paint.

By ready to paint i mean that the entire car has been wet sanded to 600 grit wet paper, and you have achieved a dull shine over the entire car, the very next step is the prep cleaning, for this we use surface paint prep cleaning solvent.

What this will do is it will remove all of the reside left from wet sanding that car, and it will remove any wax, grease, or body oils that may have made it through the wet sanding stage of the process, once you have done this we can tack cloth the car, using clear coat safe tack clothes.

Now we are ready to get down to business, let's talk a little about what I mean by get down to business, the first step is to get your flames laid out with 1/8 vinyl fine line graphic tape, you need to be 100% sure that you know what your flames are supposed to look like, I can't tell you that.

Now that we have that out of the way, you can begin to lay out the flames on t your car, following the idea that you have in your mind, lay that flames out with the fine line 1/8" vinyl tape, after you have got the out line for your flames the next step can begin.

This is another one of those thing that I have talked about in the past, this step will make, or break the outcome of your custom paint work, this step is the masking of the flames, this required you to reverse mask the flames leaving one the area the you want painted showing.

Once you have done this, and only the flames are showing, with the rest of the car masked, you need to tack cloth the flames to remove any dirt, or other contaminants that may have gotten on them, after this is done your ready to start the painting process, do not rush this process, take your time.

First we'll lay the main color of your flames, this is usually a yellow, or an orange color, followed by all the colors of the flame, i usually use an air brush to do the rest of the colors, this will reduce the build up of an edge for your clear coat to cover.

Noe your going to lay out your idea for the flames on the car, after you have finished the work. and it's laid out to your satisfaction, you can wait about 20 minutes and then unmask the car, make sure that the windows, and the chrome, and everything you don't want painted is masked.

After you have checked the masking to make sure that your car is masked properly, you can mix your clear coat, clean the car again with your tack cloth, and your ready to spray the clear coat, I'd suggest using a high build clear, and spraying 4 coats on the car, it will build 1.5 coats for every coat you spay.

Make sure that you always give your paint work flash time, or you will put runs in your paint work, yes you are re-clear coating the entire car, so get ready to do some work, if you follow these simple rules, you car will look great when it's all done.

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