Pearl Paint

 When asked for advise about pearl paint the first thing I have to do is narrow down what kind of pearl we are talking about. There are three kinds of pearl paint jobs. Pearl is an ingredient used in automotive paint. Pearls are used to add a sparkle to paint much like metallic. There are dozens of colors available dark and light blues, greens, golds, and reds but also slivers and bronze and copper.

 Automotive manufactures will use just a pinch or 3 or more different pearls to add life to the paint. With modern base coat systems pearl coat will lay down as nice as solid colors. One note of caution the more coats of pearl you put on the darker the color gets. So when doing a repair leave a panel open so you don't put more coats on than necessary to achieve the color you are after. 

The second use of pearl is on thi stage paint jobs like the Cadillac or Lexis white pearls. These involve a white ground coat then a pearl mid coat then a clear coat. Once again it's critical that you have the same number of coats on the whole project.

 The third kind of pearl is used in custom painting to give a color shift for instance a white car with blue pearl mixed into the second coat of clear. I don't mix it into the first coat because I want the pearl to be suspended above the base. I fog on this coat then clean my gun and mix up some more clear to give it a couple more coats. SEM makes eight nice liquid pearls and Old School Flake makes about 20 powder pearls. How much to use? Well that's an artistic decision, I shoot a lot of test panels and take the panels out into the sun before I decide how much to use on the car or bike I'm painting.

 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Hard times for some opportunity for others

These can be hard times for paint stores.  These can be hard times for your customers, especially if your customers are big body shops at the dealership level. These can also be times of great opportunity. There are plenty of small shops that have had no slow down in their business at all. 

I have given this quite a bit of thought for the paint store owner and the paint store counter men and women, you need to take more time slow down and give the small shop owner and the backyard warrior more service. In the end it's better to have 40 small shops than 8 big ones.

For the shop owner you need to be more agile I was talking to one of my customers today. Al of Exclusive Image here in Denver and he has been having a good no a very good winter. He does some dealer work, some rental car work and complete paint jobs on higher end cars;  Bmw's Mercedes, Chrysler 300s. He sets his customers up with custom tires and rims and really treats them right. He's honest, detail oriented and doesn't cut corners it has a given him a great word of mouth following.    

 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Miles per Gallon

Thinking about getting a new car? And you want a more economical one right? It turns out that looking at the MPG (miles per gallon) is more complicated then you would guess.

Rick Larrick and Jack Soll of Duke University explain it all at The MPG Illusion

Which is more useful to know: How far you can drive on a gallon of gas? Or, how much gas you will use while owning a car?

MPG answers the first question. GPM answers the second question. We suspect that, when buying a car, most people want to know gas consumption. Gas consumption, as measured by GPM, can be directly translated to the cost of driving the car and to the amount of greenhouse gas emissions. MPG cannot.

MPG can be a misleading measure of fuel economy when comparing two cars. 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Planet Color Update

A couple of months a ago I complained that I was out of the loop with the Sherwin Williams Planet Color system. Well I'm happy to say that my local SW rep took care of us and we have the snazzy fold out color display. We can make all of the colors and some of them are fabulous.
I always thought that thinking up names for colors would be a great job and these guys have some good ones click on the products tab to see the Sinister colors like Black Magic and Golden Violet. Click on Classic Muscle to see Dick Balsley Blue, or Gene Winfield Red, or Jon Moss Yellow. Dick Balsley a GM engineer that is Manager of Special Fleet at The GM Heritage Center. Gene Winfield is a custom car builder from Mojave California. And hot rodder and GM designer Jon Moss. Other great names are fitynine caddy, fritz the cat green and Stan Betz yellow. honoring Stan Betz of Betz Speed and Color. As for fritz the cat you may have to find some one that remembers a the late 60's to understand that one.
Great idea honoring these giants with cool colors



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Sherwin Willams HP process

Sherwin Williams has posted a preview of their new web site design very clean very web2.o

The web 2.0 part? Well they are calling it the beta site and they are posting videos to Youtube
I've just finished watching an eight minute video on the new HP process.
This is quite remarkable stuff very very fast curing at 75 degrees Fahrenheit prime, sand, paint,clear and buff all in 15 minutes. No bake cycle no ultra violet lights all at room temrerature. If you run a production shop you should take a look at this







This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Electic Cars in Americas Future

The news today revolves around a multibillion dollar bailout of the Big Three auto makers. I'm not sure where to come down on this on one hand we can't let millions of people to be thrown out of work, on the other is the management of these companies have resisted raising CAFE standards and suppressed new technologies. Are they going to embrace change and give us new highly efficient cars to break our dependence on Mideast oil. Or do they just give new gas guzzlers.

There are other car companies here in the United States that are making, well some are odd looking , but still innovative cars. If we are giving billions to the Big Three shouldn't the discussion include small innovative companies.

Here is a link to the Venture Beat Clean Tech blog post that has links to 30 companies making electric cars






This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

More on the return of Acme

A note on the return of the Acme Paint label. I heard a rumor that one of the reasons Sherwin Williams has resurrected the Acme is a mater of use it or loss it.
Sherwin folded Acme back into the product line back in 1996 and now 12 years later if they had not used the name they stood to lose the rights to the venerable old name. Back before Acme was associated with Willie E Coyote and his plans to get that pesky roadrunner Acme stood for the best of something, the name implied it was as good as it could be.
As a marketing tool Sherwin Williams used Acme to differentiate it's market along with other brands Rogers and Martin Senour. I always thought that Acme had the best numbering system


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Memo to SW we are not the competition

A customer came in the store the other day and with a very nice presentation book The Sherwin Williams Color Planet custom color book. It is a very nice book very cool colors much like PPG's Vibrance collection or Dupont's Hot Hues all interesting. All vying for that special niche market that House of Kolor has owned for years.
House of Kolor was started by Jon Kosmoski and made popular Kandy paint (Semi Transperent paint that is used over Metallics so the metallic sparkles through) HOK is owned by Valspar but they have recently brought Kosmoski back in to the company in a contributing capacity, they seemed to have been drifting for a long time.
The thing is about the Color Planet book, I had never seen one before and I sell Sherwin Williams automotive paint. We are and authorized jobber for SW and we buy form their company store here in town. But they treat us not so much as the competition but as the ugly step sister that "well we don't like to talk about don't-you-know."
It just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. In trying to keep all of the sales to them selves they keep it from being viewed by a larger market.



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Acme Returns not with out problems

I got to work this morning to find a new product on the shelf. Sherwin Williams has brought back the Acme label. When I first started in the paint business the store that I worked for sold Acme and aside for some snickers about the name association with Wiley Coyote and the Roadrunner it was a widely loved product.
Like a lot of big companies SW markets it's products under lots of trade names but in 1996 SW folded Acme into the Sherwin Williams, I remember the binder we received "Combining Our Mix in 96" Now it's back.
Down to practice maters I looked on the gallon cans of acrylic enamel to see the mix ratio you know so I could tell my customers how to use it. THERE ARE NO MIXING INSTRUCTIONS ON THE CAN! I hate this why, didn't the know when they made the label or is the information secret. But undeterred I went to the website that contained the PDS (product data sheets) www.acmefinishes.com sounds good I'm pretty handy with the keyboard and all. The web site does not exsist it redirets you to http://www.paintdocs.com/msds/ and there are noPDS on the site. Come on Sherwin Williams you can do better than this.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

The evolution of Car Logos

Thanks to Karen Taylor for the link to this story on Neatorama an exhaustive look at how car logos have changed over the years




This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Gunslinger Flake Job part 1

Sorry for not having posted for so long, I broke my arm and that slowed me up for a while.
I went to visit a fabulous shop this week, Gunslinger Custom Paint in Golden Colorado. I would love to share some photos with you but they asked me not to take any pictures and of course I complied.
I went out there specifically because they completely flacked a custom motorcycle. They used the Old School Flake F-19 Chrome .064 this is the largest size OSF makes and in the sunlight it was dazzling the next step for this project will be to candy over it and I hope to have photos of it as a completed project to share.



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Favorite Colors and Art Cars

Everybody has favorite colors it's one the things 5 year olds say to each other "Whats your favorite color?" orange? purple? Today at the paint store a guy came in and wanted to paint his car white. I asked "which white?" I mean there are dozens if not hundreds of whites. He had no opinion but was stunned to know I had a favorite white. It's Ford ZR ultra white it was used on 1999 Mustangs it's a very pure white with just a touch of blue.
Do you have a favorite blue, red pearl or green metalic please let me know.
A friend of mine is working on an art car. One side has a Japanese riseing sun in the background and Godzilla in the foreground I hope to get some photos soon if you have any please send them to me I would like to post some




This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Neil Slade's How to Paint Your Car

If you have read this blog for any length of time you have figured out that I work for a retail automotive paint store in Denver Colorado, Allen Paint. We are a small store and really specialize in hobbyists, restorers and back yard painters. We have taught many people to be painters.
Neil Slade came in one day angry and confused about bad advise he had gotten in the past. Neil became a good painter but more than that he has written about his experience, Thats what he does he's writer, musician and creator of new media.
Neil has written a book and set of movies that he is selling from his huge web site. Neil gave me a copy of the book to review and he has incorporated the important points that was in Jim Wallen's short paper " The Absolute Basic Guide to Painting Your Car"
Neil does not come at this from the point of view of as a seasoned professional but as a self taught amateur and that is really quite refreshing so if you have been doing this for a long time you are going to have some points that you will differ with Neil, I certainly did but nothing of substance.
Here is a sample of the video's that accompany the book



Whether you download the book or get the printed version I think this book is well worth it





This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

PPG Waterborne at NACE

If your going to NACE this year stop by the PPG booth and see their line of waterborne basecoat system or their seminar "Introduction to Waterborne," on Friday, Nov. 2.
PPG has had a lot of expericnce in Europe with their NEXA AutocolorAquabase and we will be compelled to use it soon.
According to Doug Beuke, compliant segment manager for PPG North America,
"Shops in California and Canada are converting to PPG waterborne systems right now. PPG waterborne basecoat systems are as easy to use as solventborne systems, require no special additives, and feature non-stir toners that make mixing colors particularly fast and easy. PPG waterborne systems also provide consistent color and metallic control across a variety of different application techniques"




This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

The 50 Worst Cars of All Time

Time has this list the 50 worst cars of all time. The the 1899 Horsey Horseless to the 2004 Chevy SSR. Some of my favorites are on the list the Renault Dauphine, the Ford Edsel The Pinto The Corvair The Gremlin, The Yugo and many others see if your favorite is on the list.




This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

BMW's Hydrogen 7

Cnet has a review of BMW's Hydrogen 7 The car runs on hydrogen by default but can switch to gasoline. A nice car but I can't imagine that this will be the model for the way most cars will be powered in the future. Sure would be nice to play with one for a week or so though.






This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

The 50 dollar paint job

I can't really believe this is going to last very long and I could think of a lot of things I would do to improve it but maybe in the interest of fairness make up up your own mind. The 50 dollar paint job



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

The new Jaguar XF

Pictures of the new Jaguar XF are out see lots of them at 4hweelsblog.com, and I have read that the first one will be actioned off for charity. The auction will be September the 7th just four days before the car makes it's debut at the Frankfort car show September the 11th.



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Icar rumors?

There are rumors of Apple and Volkswagen getting together will it be the icar? Will it be all white, have propitiatory gas connector, scratch real easily, you wont be able to take it to a regular mechanic, the parts will be very expensive, none of the parts will be avalible at NAPA and you will not want a first generation. (Thanks to Tom and Molly at Buzz out loud)


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Mind your CO2

When out shopping for a new car consider the carbon foot print you will be leaving. The British goverment web site Act on CO2 has a ranking of cars by their carbon emissions per km. The top cars are the hybrids and the diesels with top marks going to the Volkswagen Polo Blue Motion.

The Polo Blue motion is available now in Germany it was first seen at the Geneva Auto show and gets 62 mpg.
Thanks to Tree Hugger for the photo and their good work.



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.