well it has been awhile (2 1/2 years) since my original graphics 101 thread i did so i figure its time for a new one. i recently had a good job come through the shop that would make it pretty easy for me to do a step by step. the project is an old fiberglass t-bucket body. probably from the 70's or so. the customer bought the car off ebay, stripped it all down, made some body mods, did all the glass and bodywork. he then epoxied it and blocked a few times and then i got it. lucky me he said it was good to go...NOT. actually he did a pretty good job. i just had to fill a bunch of pinholes, throw a few coats of 2k primer on it and give it a final blocking. in the next day or 2 i will get the pics all sorted out and continue with the thread.....stay tuned!!

Thanks Jim, I really appreciate your step by step threads.

thanks!! ok here we go. this is a pic of the main body. in additon to this there is a rear trunk lid that we did a mural on and the radiator surround. i wont bother putting pics of those different pieces in here just to keep everything easy to follow. anyway, this pic shows the body after we put the final primer on it then blocked it out.



we rolled the body into the booth, i shot a coat of spi sealer on it and based it out in a bright silver.



i designed the main graphics on the computer then had the vinyle cutter cut the masking for them. i first put some prototyping paper in hte cutter and replaced the knife with a pen. this draws out the design which i loosly cut out with an exacto. this makes it easy for me to put the design right up on the car so i can see exactly where it will lay out. i can then make any changes needed befoore i actually cut it out in the vinyl. this is an important sep because going from 2 dimensions to 3 changes this a bit. when the masing goes around curves for instance it might shoot it in a direction i dont want it to go. i need to compensate for this and the shape of the part.




here we pulled the body out of the booth and i applied the masking for the design. for those of you who dont have a vinyl cutter, the steps are really about the same except you would have to hand lay out all the graphics with fineline tape and follow some of the procedures for that which i put in the 101 thread.

ok, in this design the graphics that we masked off in yellow will actually seperate or be the divider for a couple colors. we masked off from the dividing line down. we just taped the paper directly to the vinyl.

now the airbrushing begins. we mixed up a reddish brown black color for this part and i let ed go in a do a bunch of effects, murals, skulls. pretty much whatever he wanted. the customer just let us do whatever we wanted with this project. the airbrushing was done all in the color you see. we then too some white and went in a highlighted alot fo the stuff in the foreground.




rear trunk lid mural


now with all the airbrushing done the body is rolled back in the booth and i apply the candy red. once it all flashes off i pull the masking paper off. btw, all the candies i use are of the basecoat type.



in the pic below what i have done was masked off the red, again using the vinyl masking as the divider. once masked i shot a nice graphite color down. i let it dry a few hours and i began to lay out the bottom edge of that with some 1/4" fineline. you can see in the pic its just edged out. from here i just took masking paper and masked from that edge up to protect the grey from overspray of the next color. the grey is a very simple and smooth graphic so it is much faster and easier to do this by hand with tape. i layed out the side you see here first then used the transfer tape method in the 101 thread to copy to the other side.



they graphite color was masked off and i shot the bottom of the body in maseratti black which is a color i use here alot. its a metallic black that still looks black without being too charcoal. just a little coarse flake in it. now i took off all the layers of masking paper revealing all 3 colors. only thing i still left on was the masking vinyl for the graphics. you could not see from the pics but i had a 5/16" border cut into the masking so we could airbrush a beveled edge onto the graphics. i peeled away just that edge from the vinyl masking, airbrushed in the bevel then peeled away the rest of the masking revealing the center then we airbrushed some light cracks in that area.





you san see on the tailgate area i molded in some taillights which will be smooth an painted over.

once all the colors and airbrushing done i rolled it back in the booth and applied 5 coats of clear. i then let it set overnight to dry. next day i blocked the whole this down with 400 grit dry to flatten out all the graphic edges. once wiped clean i busted out the striping brush and began to pinstripe all my edges.




once everything was pinstriped i had some afterthoughts. i airbrushed my logo on the tailgate and i had ed throw in some red realfire off the side of the logo and on the lower part of the car, from the front firewall going back just in the black areas. we also went in and tightened up a few things. its pretty easy to make any corrections now since everything is on sanded clear. once i got it 100% the way i want it i rolled it back in the booth again to apply 4 more coats of clear. i let dry overnight again. next morenig i did the same thig as before. i blocked it down dry with 400 grit to flatten out my pinstripes and anything ense that was done. finished that then back in the booth again to flow coat with 4 coats of ms clear. yes thats 13 total. once that was done i wated a couple days, colorsanded and polished it out. here are the finished pics.







notice you cant really see the taillights.




well hope you guys get something from this setp by step.....enjoy!!

nice work jim .

Wow!
If only I had a 1/10 of your talent

Good shit man.

If I didn't know any better I would've thought your build room was a booth with all that lighting, LOL.

thanks!! brian, it is kinda. i have intake filters in the cieling of the main building so if by chance i want to paint something like a 50ft race boat i can clean the place up of course, pull it in, close the doors to the building, open the booth doors and turn the fan on. it turns the whole building into a big booth.

nice work. candy/red/silver are my favorite graphic scheme. especially with a bevelled blade graphic. ur airbrush artist has nice detail.

Jim... that is bad a$$! Can't believe it's been that long since the last write-up.
The benefit of dry sanding is obvious. And for the sand and buff, what grits
did you use??

thanks again guys. for the sand/buff step. i will do 1000 and 1500 in the finishing film on a da. about 6-8 mos ago i started going on to the 3000 norton pink stuff which is a copy of the original 3m trizact. it was giving me alot of pigtails so about 2 months ago i tried the 3m trizact foam discs. the ones that are 1/8" thick. man what a difference. i dont get a single pigtail with those things. they work so much better and cut the buffing time way down especially with euro clear. i think i did the whole cut and buff on that whole thing in less than 4 hours and its like a mirror.

4 hours?? That's seriously fast. I do have P3000 trizact discs but it's
a bit too fine. I'll get some P800 and P1200/P1500, that should work.
Cool.

i didn't mean to imply i only used the 3000 if thats what you thought. i go 1000,1500 then 3000 trizact. occasionly if i have a large flat panel like a hood i will start by putting 600psa disc on a stickit type pad on my da and wetsand with it. it cuts the urethane wave right off because it doesn't have the cushon of the velcro. works really well.

Since we're on topic of colorsanding, any of you guys try the Mirka Abralon foam discs? My jobber told me that 3m copied them for their trizact line.

It's about $50 for a pack of 20 compared to trizact's $75 for pack of 15. The pads look practically identical.