Honda Tank close to finish

So first of all i started work on the honda tank, to start with it was heavily dinted, scratched basically abused, so there was a lot of body work and flattening down to sort before any primer went onto the tank. The gentlemen very kindly filled all this and got the tank to a very very respectable finish in terms of fillering and smoothness, therefore that made my job a lot easier and it was basically ready for primer.

so step 1- PRIMER AND BASECOAT.

a few heavy coats of primer with a 50% overlap ensured their was plenty of paint goinng on, some minor imperfections were sanded out until all i could see was flattened white, and finally i could cover the tank in the gorgeous candy white basecoat.

IGNORE THE PINSTRIPE, THIS WAS SIMPLY JUST TO BRAINSTORM THE LINES AND STRIPES ON THE FINAL PRODUCT.


The one thing that was challenging about spraying the white in my makeshift workshop was just any black hair or dust was visually enlarged by the white basecoat, therefore a heavy coating of white and a final sanding of 2500 was required. Now when painting anything there are 2 ways to ensure a clean finish

1-You can flatten the primer, apply basecoat and laquer staright over the unflattened basecoat. Although this is preferred i couldnt really do this as it would mean no imperfections could be present in the paint e.g. hairs or dust

2- you can apply the basecoat, flatten it back with 2500-3000 grade wet dry paper to remove all imperfections to show a dull, matt finish of the paint, however when lacquer is applied over this dull finish, it instanlty restores it to its final colour and gloss finish. A good tip i used was to simply pour water over the flattened paint and this is a good tatser of what the finished product will look like, so stress not that it isnt shiny without lacquer!!


step 2- APPLYING THE PINSTRIPE AND SPRAYING ON THE PEARLESCENT BLACK

So this is the final product at the minute with all black flattened back and awaiting pinstriping. However as much as i would like to be i cannot stripe freehand so we settled on a gorgeous blue stripe that crisped up the edges and added a bit of life to the tank:

So now all thats left to do is add the lacquer and give the tank a deep deep shine, cannot wait to see it!!!

Honda Motorcycle respray

Recently i posted some pictures of an old Honda motorcycle that needed a respray. Initially after tedious hours of masking and striping we thought wed settled on a silver and black flame job, however looking back now we thought the curves of the flames would not compliment the linear box shape of the tank and side panels. Therefore he came up with the idea of a candy white backdrop with gloss black topcoat panels. Here is a picture of the old idea:

As you can see the flames may look ok on the curved headlight shroud, but the tank was a no go.
Therefore these next pictrues show where the gloss black stripe will sit down the centre of the tank between the pinstripe, along with a black quadrilateral shape block panel sprayed either side of the tank with a section of candy white breaking up the black in between. (there will also be a red pinstripe going between the black and white, tape as im nowere near good enough to freehand :P )

excuse the crude pinstriping ;) a few minor adjustments had to be made. But so far the tank is primered and now just needs a good few coats of candy white, then after flattening that down with 2000 and when the paint has hardened then comes the fun part, masking up all the white and spraying on the gloss black, should have a picture of this up within the week but got a few things on at minute so we shall see. But yeah, its gonna look the dogs bollocks cruisin round in the summer!!!

BSA tank finished

also i started on a BSA bantam tank, thers a few pics below of it with basecoat on and ready for top, after masking off the BSA unique design i masked up the silver that would stay silver and began spraying a beautiful electric blue over it, and this is what it looked like after a good polish.

 PRIMERED

 SILVER BASECOAT

 MASKED

BOOM! JUST HOW IT'D HAVE LOOKED BACK IN 1968 ;)

Honda Flame job

This will be my first total bike spray job. Originally the gentleman gave me a few bike pieces e.g. mudguard, tail piece, fearing, side panels and he wanted them painting gloss black. So heres a picture of the fearing i did for him

This is the bike

this is just the front fearing that houses the headlight, pretty basic job of flattening down and gloss blacking.


However after havin a bit of a chat with the guy, i originally painted a motorbike tank that was silver with black flames that sits down in their workshop and we started to think up an idea of actully painting the whole bike black with silver flames. So i took away the fearing again and resprayed it. Considering i did this in 2 hours in a 5x5 shed with aerosol cans, a hairdryer and hopes and dreams, it lookd pretty fuckin mean!

So hopefully the tank, side panels will follow this design, im really excited about douing this project! not only will it look fuckin awesome but its a good chance to improve my skills which im greatful for. Hopefully should have the go ahead to collect the tank pretty soon then i cam work my magic

Bumper progress

Finally got all the rubbing down, fillerin etc smooth and started to apply the primer. Because it was plastic i had to use a plastic primer to enable the paint to adhere to the surface (thanks for that mark :P ) before the primer could be applied. I dont have any pics of the bumper in the white primer, the picture shows it flattened and smooth ready for topcoat.

Now it was time to add the gorgeous blue metallic topcoat

All of these pictures pretty much show the standard to how the bumper is sprayed to, however i flattened it all back again as i needed more paint but this is just a glimpse of the finished product, bearing in mind laquer and a good tcut and polish will really bring the surface to life

Car Bumper Respray

Recently i got given a car bumper that was the wrong colour and simply needs a rub down, filler ina  few places and respraying the new colour. Im dead impressed however because i actually got this job because the gentleman saw my blog and we had a chat down in my local club. Awesome! So at the minute its sat in my shed quite comfortably pushing my BSA tanks to the back :P at the minute there on hold as i dont have much room to do these at the minute as the photo shows :)

As you can see ive already spent a few hours 'knocking back' the paintwork and correcting it ina  few places. The only concern i have with this is how to paint it and store it so none of the paintwork is actually taking the weight of the bumper and thus will just ruin the coats each time i apply them, however i have sorted a solution but it is weather dependant and at the minute the weather isnt looking too good which isnt making me happy really, however any sunshine, this will be taking priority! So today I woke up, quite excited to be spending a full day outside on the project, so got it all setup and just started flattening it all down.

Not looking too bad :) Now came the time to apply some filler into a few areas that were either scratched or had had filler in peviously but was chipping away in chunks and thus a few coats of primer would not be able to hide. There are a few minor scratches and stone chips, however a lot of them will be filled in with the primer and when flattened again will not be able to seen. 

I waited for the filler to dry and rubbed it down until it flowed with the rest of the shapes and contours around it, however a few areas were proving tricky to get flat so at the minute the bumper is sat in my shed with a few spots of filler waiting to be flattened down. Hopefully, he says lol, maybe another day on this of flattening etc it should be ready for a coat of primer, but like i said, its all weather dependant, this is when i wish i didnt get rid of my last shed which was 2ft wider and wasnt chamfered in one corner, so i could spray the bumper with ease, however ill have to make do. So hopefully my next post you will see a few pictures of the bumper painted white and perfectly smooth, ready for its new topcoat, however that could be a week or so away yet as like i said before its just forecast to rain! damn the lake district. 

F&S

Cracking On With The BSA Tanks

I usually dont go to school on Wednesdays, however i woke up this morning and just had a real big craving to crack on with my BSA tanks so i thought fuck it haha basically now, one of the tanks has been given a basecoat of silver. and the other one has been primered and filled however still needs a bit more rubbing down, fillering and primering before i can put a silver basecoat on that one. However for now, the silver Basecoated tank is taking the limelight :P Im also very happy as i was talking to one of my mates who ive spoken about before, does a lot of mechanical work on all kinds of bikes in his workshop, and hes currently building a drag bike, and hes offered to let me spray up his fairings for him. BANG TIDY. So got a few more projects lined up which im pleased about, help build up my archive, hopefully aswell my mum will let me spray up her camper properly this time, as im offfering to charge her half of what she gets quoted in a spray garage :P. Anyway.....a few pics of the silver BSA tank are below.

So it got its first lick of silver paint, i made sure to put plenty of coats on as im gonna be flattening this down until its absolutely perfect. USing grade 800 to start with and then move on to a 1000-2000. As some of this silver will show through as a topcoat, so no room for error :P

Remember though spraying paint onto your project only really covers around 10-15% of your whole time working on your project if that! The key to a killer paint job is all in the preperation! so like i said, im not rushing this at all, if it takes me 2 days to flatten the paint down to perfection then thats how long ill spend on it. But like i said, i began flattening it down with grade 800 wet dry paper, this was just enought to knock the rough bits back and leave a smoothish surface for me to maticulously rub at with grade 1000 wet dry to make it perfectly smooth. I always leave 24 hours between spraying and rubbing down, the last thing you want is to rub down to early and snag the paint and leave a big rip or crease where the paint is still malleable. BAD TIMES!

Now the paintwork might look scratched and you might be thinking how the hell is that gonna look like a shiny, pefect topcoat. Well when it comes to turning this into a killer topcoat, you have 2 options. 

1-A good tcut and polish will give the paintwork a good shine once done however scratches  will still be visible. You can reduce the visibility of the scratches by using a very very fine wet dry grade to flatten the paint, however its not perfect.

2-The better way again is to flatten with a very low grade. Next once you have all your pinstripe, shapes, different colours all where you want them, you seal it all with a good layer of laquer. The laquer acts basically as a protective barrier and also restores dull surfaces once flattened to an unbelievable shine! BAsically all the laquer does is fill these tiny tiny scratches and basically when you flatten down the top layer, you cant see the scratches. This is the method i will be using, however im way way off that process.

As a piece of self criticism, illa dmit i payed hardly if any attention to parts of my previous tanks. e.g. the attacthements where the tank bolts to the frame, the underside of the tanks and even around the filler cap. I left them really as i was concentrating so much on just getting the bigger areas looking good. However this time this is what im improving on. The underside of my tank, the attatchments and the filler cap ive taken time with to make sure this is a fully completed paint job!

Beautiful ;) haha

So my next step with this now is to flatten it down until im happy with it, go out and purchase a burgundy red spray paint or a dark blue (not decided yet :P) mask it all up with the BSA patterns and apply the final gold pinstripe where the silver and the colour of my choice meet. Give it a heavy coat of laquer and flatten until you cant feel the bump of the pinstripe tape and your hand just flows over it unhindered. But for now, im pelased with my progress :)

F&S