TOUCHING UP.
Matching colors preparatory to touching up is probably the most difficult process related to this class of work. To match colors successfully one must have a correct eye for colors. To distinguish between closely related tints, shades, hues, and tones, in an accurate and conclusive way, brings into play talents, or a gift—call it what you please—not vouchsafed to the average mortal. This is one important feature of the trade that practice does not make perfect. The colorist does not acquire his skill by practice merely.
If the fading of colors tended in one general way and to something like a uniform degree, the successful matching of colors might be controlled in due time by all painters interested in experimental work. Chemistry and other scientific aids to color-making have wrought mysterious and, to the practical man, undemonstrable factors in carriage colors. As a result, colors fade in all the varying degrees imaginable, and are subject to so many influences that their control, as a rule, is quite beyond the skill and practical knowledge of the painter.
Many of the colors, notably the radiant reds lately so fashionable, are naturally so fugitive that unless extraordinary care is exercised in preparing the groundwork, they quickly fade; and, their original identity once lost, it is a feat beyond the ability of the most masterful colorist or color matcher to restore. To a less extent, perhaps, other colors operate in the same way.
The question, therefore, presents itself:—Is not the best way to match colors to prevent their fading, so far as prevention can be made to apply? One's doctor will affirm that a mound of prevention is worth a mountain of cure.
It is not expected to make this prevention so sweeping and effectual as to merit the title of a cure-all. But preventive measures, diligently practiced, will lessen the fading evil, and thus reduce the work of matching colors to the minimum. The mixing of colors, as already alluded to in these chapters, should, so far as it is within the power of enlightened paint shop knowledge, be made an exact process. Carelessness and guess work are not to be tolerated. Exact measurements of all the ingredients which go into a batch of color or paint are necessary. Then a firm insistence upon hardy, durable grounds, regardless of the hurrying shouts of the populace, is in order. A fugitive red, or any other fugitive color, as a matter of fact, is given a support that will add to its permanency, by adjusting the ground color with such a strong binder of varnish that the color has a "live look" to it—an approach to a faint egg-shell gloss, let us say. The retention of the final color's original purity and strength is in this way made more permanent.
In color matching, however, which, despite our best efforts, must continue to be a part of paint shop practice, it is best to take over to the mixing bench a certain part of the work to be touched up, and, touching a few inches of space with varnish so that it can be seen what the spots and what the color as a whole will look like under a fresh coat of varnish, proceed to gauge the matching color to it. It is a principle adhered to by many skilled workmen in the matching of colors that the touch-up color should contain sufficient varnish to cause it to dry with a stout gloss. A color furnished with a strong varnish gloss will reflect more light than it will absorb, and vice versa. And the color which in process of drying absorbs more light than it reflects, will, as a rule, when varnished over, be a different color (or a different shade, hue, or tint of that color) than it looked to be in the mixing pot or on the surface after it had simply dried free from "tack." An absorption of light has effected a chemical or other change in it, and what was judged as a close match proves a wide departure from it. Even with the counteracting agency of varnish, a color is pretty sure to dry out lighter than it appears in the mixing cup, so that close calculation and the exercise of the colorist's art in a fine way is needed to get the desired match.
The touch-up color having been satisfactorily prepared and tested, the felloes and all places on the job worn bare to the wood being, in the meantime, touched with lead and oil, the work of touching first the body and then the running parts is carried along.
Then the dressing of the top, side curtains, and, if need be, the dash, ensues. The interior of the body is next varnished, then the outside surface is flowed, and, finally, the running parts.
Coming next to the touch-up-and-varnish job, and by many painters regarded as belonging to the same class, is the job that gets one coat of color, striping, and one coat of varnish. This job offers an opportunity for deception of which the paint shop graduates in the school of intellectual villainy are quick to take advantage. They solemnly assure the prospective customer that they will paint his vehicle for, say, $6, the price asked ordinarily for the color and one coat varnish job. The stranger, caught by the price and the alluring prospect of getting the job painted, responds to the "hold up" until the dishonesty of the thing is revealed, as it is sure to be, by the exacting needs of service. The color, stripe, and varnish job calls for no little dexterity in many cases, in placing the color directly over a hard, flinty surface of paint and varnish and making it stay for a reasonable term of service. The surface once cleaned, as per directions in the preceding case, the body is given a light rub with water and pumice stone flour, and the gear is treated to a smart smoothing off with fine sandpaper. These fine, and, to the naked eye, almost invisible scratches and furrows, suffice to afford a foothold, a gripping place, for the color. These hard, adamantine surfaces over which quick colors are often necessarily placed may be classed as prolific sources of color flaking and chipping. In addition to the sandpapering as a means of promoting durability, the use of a strong binder of varnish in the color is advised. The one coat color, stripe, and varnish job is quickly done and should afford a good profit.
The color, color-and-varnish, stripe, and finish job simply means a coat of color-and-varnish applied over the color after it has been placed as just described. Then a "mossing" or rubbing with hair to the extent of knocking of the gloss of the color-and-varnish, striping, and finishing, the body surface, of course, to get a rather light rub with water and pumice stone, both before applying the color and after applying the color-and-varnish. Should the body surface show signs of being fissured and cracked somewhat, it were better to forego the rubbing with pumice stone and water, substituting therefor a dressing down with No. 1/2 sandpaper. This provides against moisture getting into the checks and causing trouble.
Following in the wake of the above class of work come the jobs that are afflicted with all sorts and conditions of surface ailments; jobs that ought properly to be burned off if the owners could be convinced of the economy of the process. One way of treating a body surface threaded with fissures consists of taking a two-inch scraper, such as car painters use, made of a file cranked over at both ends so as to give two cutting blades, and scraping the varnish completely off down to the undercoatings of color and paint. Follow the scraping with a quick rubbing with lump pumice stone or a fine grade of brick and water, avoiding even a close approach to the wood. In most cases the cracks will, by this process, be pretty cleanly removed; when they are not entirely slicked off the remaining vestiges are, as a rule, so faintly traced as to give no further trouble when bridged over by the coats of lead, color, and varnish. The rubbing once completed, the surface is given time to dry out thoroughly; then sanding with No. 0 ensues, this, in turn, giving way to a coat of facing lead mixed to dry without gloss, the lead being colored to a decided slate shade with lampblack. Apply with a camel's-hair brush. Sandpaper this coat with No. 1/2 paper; then apply color, and finish out as previously advised in these chapters. If a different plan of filling up is preferred, cut down the surface with No. 2 sandpaper, and first apply a lead coat mixed of 1/3 raw linseed oil to 2/3 turpentine. In 48 hours give a coat of roughstuff made of keg lead and filler, equal parts by weight, thinned to a stiff paste with rubbing varnish and japan, half and half, and then reduced to a free brushing consistency with turpentine. First puttying should be done on the lead coat, and the second one on the first filler coat. A couple more of roughstuff coats will suffice to give the needed body of rubbing pigment. Thus the old flinty foundation is furnished with the requisite elasticity through the medium of the oil lead coat. The roughstuff foundation is made to dry hard and firm, like unto the condition of the old foundation itself, and in this way an affinity between the old and the new is established.
Another foundation is quickly builded by taking any good roughstuff filler and reducing it to a spreading consistency with shellac, the first coat, however, being made a bit thinner in body than the succeeding coats, so that it will more readily penetrate the cracks. Three coats of this preparation usually suffices to yield the necessary foundation free from fissures or other blemishes. The roughstuff filler and shellac make a compound remarkably quick setting; hence, it must be worked very quickly if smoothness of application would be achieved.
Again, it is the practice in some quarters to sandpaper the old surface down as close as possible, giving a stout coat of lead mixed with 1/4 oil to 3/4 turpentine, and when this coat has dried for a couple of days, putty all the deep cavities, following, the day after, with a glazing of putty over the surface, the glazing being done with a broad putty knife, and the putty being worked out to a uniform film and as smooth as possible.
In respect to the running parts, all flaky, shelly patches of surface should be scraped. All torn and shredded places require smoothing down nicely with scraper and sandpaper. The old remaining paint should be perfectly solid and secure. The parts cleaned and scoured to the bare wood had best be given a lead coat containing, as one of its liquid ingredients, at least 1/3 linseed oil. The second coat, applied, like the first, with a camel's-hair brush, may contain merely a binder of oil, avoidance of gloss being a strictly observed rule. Then putty deep holes and indentations, following this with draw puttying all parts in need of such treatment. Upon this lead coat, or a second one if the owner is not averse to paying for it, the finish is reached in the usual way, as advised in a former chapter. In painting over these cracked, flaky, and insecure foundations, the first principle to be observed is to get the shaky, shelly material completely removed, leaving nothing but the firm and securely fastened pigment. The second one is to secure as thorough an amalgamation of the old and new materials as practical paint-shop knowledge and skill will insure.