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!!!