Practical Carriage and Wagon Painting / A Treatise on the Painting of Carriages, Wagons and Sleighs, Embracing Full and Explicit Directions for Executing All Kinds of Work, Including Painting Factory Work, Lettering, Scrolling, Ornamenting, Varnishing, etc., with Many Tested Recipes and Formulas

by M. C. Hillick

PAINTING OF A FULL-PANELED TOP BUSINESS WAGON

offers more difficulties than any other style of wagon. The workman first proceeds to clean off all the grease smears, and then takes full care to get the job thoroughly sandpapered. Then prime job throughout, running parts and body inside and out, top, bottom, etc. If the job is to be painted in dark colors use the priming formula No. 1, given in [Chapter III]. of this series, and if light colors are desired prime with white (keg) lead thinned to working consistency with raw linseed oil, tempered as to drying with a teaspoonful of japan to each pint of the primer. If no time limit intervenes omit the japan. The running parts, in due time, are next given careful sandpapering, and then rub lead, as fully detailed in [Chapter III]., is applied. The body receives sandpapering and a lead coat adapted to the final color, mixed, if the job is to go roughstuffed, with 3/8 oil to 5/8 turpentine, half and half. Apply to inside as well as outside of body and top, then when these applied mixtures are dry, putty, using as mixture ingredients dry white lead, 3 parts; keg lead, 1 part; and rubbing varnish and japan, equal parts.

For the running parts, if to be painted in light colors, use the next coat of pigment mixed to a brushing consistency with a trifle less than 3/8 oil and a corresponding increase over 5/8 turpentine. Thus gradually reduce the percentage of oil as the final color is approached. In case dark colors are to prevail, apply over the red lead a coat of lead pigment carrying a firm binder of oil, say one-sixteenth.

Upon the body, if it is to be painted in dark colors, next apply four coats of roughstuff, choosing from among the formulas given in [Chapter III]. one suited to the time allowance to be reckoned with. If light colors are to be used, and stuff coats tabooed, all the open, coarse-grained sweeps of the surface require an application of knifing lead (again refer to [Chapter III].) put on with a bristle brush and then pressed into the minute wood orifices with a broad blade putty knife. Then in the next coat of pigment, colored fittingly to meet the final color, reduce the oil to the proportion of one-fourth oil to three-fourths turpentine. In the next coat which will have practically a full percentage of the desired color the quantity of oil used, as compared to that contained in the preceding coat, should be cut in twain. The next reduction should bring the pigment down to possessing simply a good binder of oil. Then, in easy procession, follow the final color coat, color-and-varnish, if the system permits it, clear rubbing, and finishing.

On large top paneled jobs, however, when strictly high class results are desired, it will be quite necessary, regardless of the colors employed, to employ roughstuff as the body surfacing agent. The surface is brought up to the roughstuff stage as above advised, and then, in case of a white job, resort is had to the white roughstuff, formulas for mixing which will be found in [Chapter V]. of this work. The colors used over the stuff coats are either japan ground or washed with benzine to free them as much as possible of the oil carried.