I have two tanks - one with original paint and pretty good. The other was fairly crappy. Old paint, many dents, but sound. This weekend, I had not much to do, so I thought I'd give painting the tank a try. After previous failures (read earlier blogs), I wanted to try a new approach. The great Guys at Big Island Machine bead blasted it for me. This revealed even more damage than I knew about. Additionally, there were 2 fairly large repairs done with ... lead swipe! Wow - that's OLD SCHOOL!
Anyhow, with a goodly supply of rattle cans in hand, a tube of putty and a lot of time to kill, I made a start. With the previously mentioned issues of soft paint, I had a little brain explosion (or a stroke - dunno which). The tank fitted nicely into the oven! So, I thought I would bake the tank between coats!
During the week, I puttied, sanded, re-primed every afternoon and by Saturday, I had what I thought was a reasonably straight tank, ready for base-coating. Saturday was a rare fine day which is perfect for painting. All day was spent painting, baking, sanding, touching-up and more painting. By mid-afternoon, I started with the clear coating. There were a few adventures in-between including the discovery that the oven should be set to low in order to prevent the house from filling with toxic fumes. At the end of the night, I felt I was ready for phase 2: rubbing and buffing.
And that's what I did all day Sunday... Rub back, buff, rub back, buff et.c. And how was the final result? Actually not too bad! Remember, my standard for "acceptable" is that it looks ok at 10 feet. Well, I reckon this effort looks good a 1 ft. Not bad for a self-confessed amateur , some rattle-cans of spray paint and a Kenmore oven.
Nice and shiny... not bad for a bug man!
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