Brush Painting the First Coat of Enamel

Up until now, I have been a bit cavalier about the cleanliness of my painting environment.  But with gloss painting about to take place, all that has changed.

This is my paint shack.  In its real life it houses a leaky old truck.  It is a Shelter Logic 10 x 20 fabric building.

Obviously it is sitting on gravel.

For a person with no real painting facilities this shed has proved to be just the ticket!  It has natural ventilation between the roof and the wall.  I stapled up plastic sheeting where the walls meet and cause gaps.  For the floor, we rolled out a new, oversized tarp.  Rolling the edges up blocked the gaps under the walls.  Prior to installing the tarp, I had hosed down the ceiling and walls and allowed the shed to dry.

The makeshift environment is clean, lets in the most perfect natural light, and doesn't become a solar blast furnace like a clear plastic enclosure. The plastic tarp doesn't shed lint.

From now on, during this painting project, the shed is an off-limits zone, to minimize dust and tracking in of dirt.

PAINTING SYSTEM DECISIONS

Having invested hours in the preparation of the surface to be painted, it's time to decide just how posh you want the finish to be.

If you want to do a full coach paint job for restoration competitions, or for your own personal satisfaction, you will probably want to mix some of your undercoat with some of your topcoat and apply a couple of coats of this mix, sanding out brush marks in between coats.  Mr. Ousbey's Coach Painting Guide describes these additional coats.

Mr. Isles' Carriage Restoration book seems satisfied with the work to date, but he goes on to mix his own paints.

I am not blessed with a lot of patience, and I think 15 or 20 hours invested in sanding these shafts is adequate.  I am going straight to enamel.  My carriages are working carriages, subject to bruises and abrasions and so I do my best to create a beautiful finish, but not one that needs to be locked away in a glass case or a trailer, coming out only for shows.

SO LET'S JUST GET ON WITH PAINTING, SHALL WE?

Hang on, for a few more paragraphs!

First of all, this will be a trial with my new Redtree badger hair brush.  It never shed any bristles during priming and I have to forgive it for all the brush marks it left in the primer.  It now seems that I could have saved myself some trouble on that count, which I'll explain momentarily.

Okay.  You have your paint.  You've thoroughly stirred it.  Your brush is lubricated and you're ready to go.  But wait!  Make sure your preparations are complete.

Every time you open a can of paint, dip in a stir stick or a paint brush, you risk introducing contaminants.  It's hard enough to keep contaminants OFF the surface without mixing them in!

For that reason, I like to buy my paint in quart cans, not gallons.  I buy some empty paint cans (Home Depot has them), and I strain some paint from the main can into the empty one, using a paint strainer like this one.  You can also use the toe of old pantyhose, etc.

Have on hand a clean tack cloth, and you might want to consider a dropper bottle of paint solvent as I've mentioned earlier, for maintaining the wet edge on the brush.

And there's one more thing you may want to consider; this paint additive, "Penetrol".  Penetrol seems to have great favor with brush painters, and though I've tried it before and been unsure of my results, the opinion of superior painters led me to add two ounces of Penetrol to my pint of strained enamel.

I know Penetrol to be compatible with Pettit, Rustoleum and Schwartz paints.







So the shafts have been drying for 24 yours since wet sanding, and have been moved into the paint shed.  Everything is room temperature, the outside temp is 65 degrees, probably 70 degrees in the shed, just right.

Immediately before painting the surface of the shafts is dusted off gently with the tack cloth.

The whole trick of enamel painting seems to be getting just enough on for good coverage without trying for the whole coachpaint effect on the first coat!  Keeping a "wet edge" on the brush by lubricating it with a few drops of solvent every time it started to drag seemed to be the key for me!  Before, when the paint strokes began refusing to blend together, I was always trying to wet the edge of the brush with more paint.  The results were pretty hopeless.

I noticed that the longer I worked, the more the brush needed a few drops of solvent.

The results:  NO brush marks in the first coat of enamel.

I can still see lots of little sanding marks.  The next step will be to take the shafts out of the shed for another round of wet sanding with 400 grit paper.  I will give them a couple of days to dry as it takes enamel forever to harden enough for further sanding.

Oh and needless to say, my Redtree badger hair brush and I have become old friends!

I am VERY happy with Penetrol, and as a last note...

Penetrol can be used in the primer coats to help eliminate brush strokes.  So late we get so smart.

I still have to paint the singletree.  I'll give the Penetrol a try on it

IMPORTANT LATE NOTE!

I have just added two ounces of Penetrol to a pint of Schwartz sanding primer and applied it to the singletree.  The primer went on like HONEY!  Next time, however, I think I'll try an ounce to a pint as two ounces might be just a little too much.  Awesome stuff!.