Thread: Paint a Car by Hand with a Brush??

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I remember hearing that back decades ago they painted old cars by hand. I was just wondering if you could still do it this way? Just seems like it would be pretty cool.

It used to be done with the old synthol enamel, a good retarder (slowed drying time and allowed flow...didn't "thin" the paint) and a really fine bristled brush.

My uncle painted a '64 ( I think ) Ford Van with a roller at 1 time, didn't look too " Bad "

You're kidding, right??? In this day and age with all the good paint guns available at a reasonable price, why would you want to use a brush??? A few threads ago you were asking about opening a hot rod shop, do you really want a brush job to "showcase" your talents??? JMO

DON'T DO IT DUDE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have tried it and it does not work worth a crap, you will be unhappy, and it will look like warmed over horse crap. You will see brush strokes in your paint unless you use a roller. You will see roller marks in your paint unless you use a brush. At least go buy some Rustoleum and a bug sprayer, you will have much better luck. I tried it because I bought one that had already been done with a brush and it looked so bad I figured that I could do a better job. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'.

i primered my first car with mother;s vacuum cleaner on the blow side with the pint mason jar blow sprayer. a lot of orange peel but it kept it from rusting, i was working on a farm irrigating and had spare time between turning on and off the water so i would wet sand one panel at a time then prime it at night then after about a week i would be around to where i started and wet sand the primer. then color sand it again but a friend let me use his paint shop to spray the color. it was a good job with all the sanding i did

Originally posted by dljdad
It used to be done with the old synthol enamel, a good retarder (slowed drying time and allowed flow...didn't "thin" the paint) and a really fine bristled brush.

Same with Alkyd Resin Enamel that was in use when I was a kid, you could put it on with a broom and it would flow out nicely.

Ever brush on boat enamels?

Particularly the enamels available from a boat chandlery.

The Ventura Marina in SoCal used to paint their dock wooden bannisters with white boat enamel and it flowed out to look like plastic and was very glossy.

I've seen as well where 2-4 guys with a brush start out painting the hull of a wooden boat and as each painter gets down the hull a bit, the next guy starts.
All of which gives a nicer - like in invisible - overlap horizontally speaking.
One guy painting works out ok, but it always seemed the multiple painter bit did better.

There are some definite brushing techniques and you flow the paint on more than brush it out.
Overbrushing can thin it out among other things.

If the marine enamels aren't too costly and I had an old work pickup or the like, I'd give it a shot and see how it works out.

Well back in 1953 I brush-painted a '31 Ford Fordor light blue with red wheels using the Alkyd Enamel and it looked OK from about six feet back and even had some gloss since I put it on pretty heavy to let it flow into the brush streaks, but (!) the brush streaks were clearly visible up close. I have wondered whether a sheepskin disk and some compound could have smoothed it out some. I think today you really do not want to do this, but if you do it might help to buff it with compound after the paint sets up for a month or so.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

In edit mode (not worth another post) I never tried compound on the enamel, so I didn't get to the dull stage; sorry to mislead you and certainly Brian has more experience in painting and many other things. I guess after I got it uniformly dull and lost all the gloss I would then try some form of wax, but the bottom line is that you can probably get a better job at Maaco than you can with a brush. However this afternoon I priced a good quality PPG job with clear coat and was told the paint, solvents, hardener etc. would come to about $500 and the total job by a local guy who does excellent work would be about $1500. Still that $35/gallon candy apple red looks tempting if I could find somebody to apply it after I prep the body.

You can not rub out an enamel paint job. It never gets hard enough to do that. When you apply an enamel, what you see after 1 hour is what you got forever. If you try to sand it or rub it out, it will go a uniform dull finish, and never ever shine again. If you want to do a dumb thing like painting a car with a brush, use enamel paint and don't thin it.. If you can do it safely without setting the paint on fire, (seriously), heat the paint up to about 100 degrees Fahrenreit, and brush it on while its hot. This will help a lot to eliminate brush marks. There was a time many years ago when you could brush paint a car with nitrocellulose laquer, and sand it out and buff it to a gloss finish afterwards. This paint was harder than Hell when dry, which is what allowed people in the model T era to do this. You can't even buy that kind of paint now.

no rustoleum
i used some cheapo rustoleum for some gym lockers.

1 .they said to thin with mineral spirits-it RAN like crazy using several different viscosities, and always ran.
I was trying to emulate an orange peel finish but mineral spirits was SUCH a SLOW solvent it never worked and always ran.

2.My paint gun never did clean up, and I had to use spray gun stripper to get it to spray again.

Jees and I remember reading a job ad for a paint chemist for rustoleum in Chicago, so they know their product is cheap.

I dont care what they charge for a good catalyzed enamel or polyurethane paint, the end result is WELL WORTH IT

When I was a kid, there was an "old dude" who ran around Danville, Illinois in a brush painted coral colored '56 Buick. Didn't look TOOOO bad.

I would say that today's automotive paints might not work too well, as they are designed to flash quickly. You would have to go to older or non automotive paints, and then do some test panels.