For the novice to repaint the average car, for instance a 30 H. P. touring car, it would require in labor only a few hours on four or five different days. The hardest part of the whole operation is preparing the car for paint. It is absolutely necessary to have it thoroughly clean before applying any paint. It should be well washed first, and then given a gasoline bath to the parts on which dirt and grease have been allowed to accumulate. It is really not so complex a proposition after all. If a woman can paint furniture with enamels that are no better than they should be, a man can surely paint a car if given the proper materials to do it with, and if he be instructed in their use.
Now as to striping. This is of course out of the question for the novice. But you can black the mouldings of the body, seats, doors, hubs and rims of wheels so that the absence of striping is not noticed. So far as the striping goes, the tendency is away from it—in fact, the most expensive cars have hardly any striping. The blacking of the mouldings, etc., mentioned makes a harmonious contrast and takes the place of striping. It looks in no ways amateurish—rather like the handiwork of the professional painter.
In addition to the saving that can be effected by repainting your car yourself, there is the feeling of personal pride when the job is finished, of having done something well yourself.
As the majority of the new cars have enameled lamps instead of polished brass as in years past, I believe a few words on the subject will not be amiss. In my experience of twenty years in the painting of vehicles, locomotives and automobiles, I have never had a harder proposition to solve than the enameling of polished brass lamps, particularly gas headlights.
An enamel for this purpose must of necessity be made highly elastic, so that it will contract and expand with the metal and stick on the polished brass surface without any previous roughing. This means that only the most expensive materials can be used in the making of such an enamel. There is one enamel of proven merit for this purpose on the market and it does not have to be baked. I have seen a great many motorists who have used general purpose enamels on their lamps and the experience has usually been that the enamel leaves when the lights are lighted. If I were buying an enamel for use on the brass parts of my car, I should be very careful to buy the one that had been long on the market, for there will undoubtedly be a large number of new ones offered.
I have made some pretty strong statements in the foregoing article, and it is no more than right that I tell you that they are based on my experience of twenty years in the painting of carriages, locomotives and automobiles, two years as the expert for the largest paint and color house in the world, and several years in the manufacture of the highest class of motor car paints.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources.
Some hyphens in words have been silently removed, some added, when a predominant preference was found in the original book.