Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 91.djvu/474

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��Popular Science Monthly

���A sponge saturated with clean gasoline will be handy in the work.

For your priming coat, mix the white lead with turpentine, adding a little oil and Japan drier. Add enough of the coach black to color it a dark gray. Apply this evenly to the surface, dusting it off first, just before painting.

When this coat is thoroughly dry, fill up the cracks and depressions with the crack filler, or putty, allowing the filler to project a trifle above the surface, as this permits the filling to be cut down level with the painted surface. Now smooth the surface all over carefully with No. oo sandpaper. Some painters use the crack-filler mentioned as another coat painted all over the surface. Then it is smoothed with sandpaper. This is easily accomplished because of its hard drying qualities.

Black Color Coat

Mix up some of the flat-black with turpen- tine, adding a little oil to act as a binder. Do not add any Japan drier. Apply a smooth, even coat of

this, and let it 3TAHI

dry.

After this, lay on a coat of black color and rubbing varnish mixed. Use the ready mixed article, rather than your own mixture of black coach color, rubbing varnish and a little turpentine. When the color and varnish coat is dry, rub it down even with pumice stone and felt pad. Do not use sand- paper, as the succeeding rubbings are to be done with the pumice stone.

Wet the felt pad, dip it in the pumice and shake off the surplus powder; then go over the work with an even circular motion on the large spaces. Rub in straight lines along the edges of the doors, panels and on the mold- ing. When the surface is cut down evenly, wash off the pumice, dry, and apply a coat of clear rubbing varnish. Let this dry and then rub down with pumice stone as before. Wash the surface thoroughly and when dry, put on the striping and letters. A carmine, or dark red stripe looks well on a black sur- face. The object of all this rubbing down is to secure a perfectly even surface before applying coat of finishing varnish.

���Methods of holdingbrush for striping

��During the progress of the work you may notice that the surface is slightly unlevel here and there, but as coat after coat is applied and rubbed down, these places will gradually come up to the level, and when the finishing varnish is applied the surface will be smooth and glistening; that is, if the work has been done carefully and plenty of time given each coat to dry before resuming the work on it.

Sandpapering

Sandpapering must not be attempted if the surface is not thoroughly dry. The loosened material should fly off like dust during the operation. If it clings to the sandpaper in spots and cakes, the surface has not dried out. Give it a day or more to dry out before going at it again. The same advice holds good for the rubbing down with the pumice. No dust will fly, as the pad must be kept wet, but the su r f ace should be just as hard as for sand- papering. Dur-

FIN.SH mg the pum j c.

ing, wash off the surface with a wet sponge to remove the abraded ma- terial, as well as to see how the work is proceeding.

Striping adds a distinctive ap- pearance to any car, but its applica- tion requires the skill, the accurate eye and steady hand of the expert. Poor striping is an irritant to the eye. The proper and only stripe on a pleasure car is a thin, hair-line Yl or z /i in. away from the edges or moldings of doors and panels. This stripe should follow the lines of the doors and panels. Some- times the curves of the mudguards, and those of the hood are also striped in the same way. All automobile wheels are not striped alike. Examine the striping on various wheels and follow the style that pleases you best. Actually, the stripe is a contour line — sectional or continuous.

To stripe, take a clean, flat piece of glass or tin, place a small quantity of the tube color upon it and thin to working consis- tency with a little turpentine. Then take the striper and draw it through the color to load it. Draw it toward you several times an the clean surface of the glass or tin,

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