Hi Bootsey, thanks for the compliment.
The final finish? Well it is for now. Its also a bit of a story. My wife's father was a WWII P-38 pilot in the pacific. He was a ground attack grunt so was always being shot at. He actually lost 5 planes in the war having had them shot out from beneath him! We used to call him Americas only Japanese Ace. 5 planes = Ace. So doing he had little time to fancy up his plane like the guys whose job was to shot down enemy fighters like Bong the great P-38 ace. At the time Captain Shaw did get credited for one shoot down. The time we talked about it I could see in his eyes the disappointment in them. He so wanted to have placed his wife's likeness on the nose. This nagged at me until I realized I could build that plane for him! I had been a modeler of some note and quite a slope glider guider and builder in my day. So I bought a kit that had the fiberglass booms and pod with some foam cores to make the wings with. When I got to the part of how to paint the plane I was stymied in how to get the aluminum look? Then I ran across a product called flight metal. It was pages of really thin aluminum with an adhesive on one side with a paper covering which you cut to size and rubbed on. It was great when covered it was very shiny but working P-38's were not all shiny but dull and dirty. So I proceeded to weather the finish after I placed all the markings of his outfit and a likeness of his wife on the nose. When I presented it too him he was overwhelmed. One of my better days.
and a few of my other planes
Its 15:30 in the morning and I still have to upload some Pics with this. Roger Wilco I'm out
So I had tried to do this new chrome/polished aluminum look, expensive and I should have has pro do it and it would have been done long ago. Well I couldn't afford it so tried to it myself with limited results. Here again I should have stopped there and be satisfied with it but NoOOOOO not me. So then set out on an odyssey of using other paints to gain a different look by was still not satisfied, did I stop there? NoOOOOOO I finally gave up for awhile so when I got near the finish of the build last year I tried to find a reasonable painter to do the job? NoOOOO $2200 Then I learned about hydro graphics, which was suppose to be affordable, well all the guys I found to do it apparently didn't get the memo. Tank and Seat $2400 so NoOOOOO I ran out of ideas. Then the weirdest thing happened, it came to me in my sleep of all things, I hardly ever dream but the idea woke me up. I remember the P-38, hell if it worked on that why not on my stuff. The Metal Flight stuff was too thin and too expensive so I had more research to do. I solved the problem when I found rolls of aluminum that heating and cooling workers used to seal joints with it. I came in array of thicknesses and widths. Most any length was available on flea bay. I went with a much thicker one, had I to do it again I would get something thinner (more workable) 6" wide and 65 feet long. I hadn't thought about the fact this stuff didn't come with a paper backing but I could live with that. Took some preplanning to make it fit the curvature of the tank, (work from the top down). I had used these artist sticks of tightly wound paper, they would use it to smudge chalk or something forgot the name of them be it didn't mark the metal. I could use it to stretch the metal if needed to a certain extent. My theme is something of an industrial look, not a show bike but I like to think of it more as a "Gentleman's Ride". So its not perfectly polished which I like, adds a juxtaposition to the other polished parts of the bike. I know its different , pops a little I wanted rivet's but my painting skills just weren't up to it so I thought to simulate rivets. I used 3/8" upholstery tacks. The seat I could drill small holes for them, a tight fit and some "goop" on the inside. The tank I could not drill so just gooped them well. I have used this stuff before and it is tenacious in it hold ability and if you need to you can remove it sort of like rolling off rubber cement. I couldn't find an aluminum lookin tack so painted them myself, I later found some zinc, I think, or not a polished nickel which would have saved me some work. The aluminum is also able to be removed, don't know what it might be like in a couple years to do. Theoretically you could remove it all and go some other direction at a later day with little harm that could easily be repaired (the little holes in the seat, very small). Once that was all done I set out to weather it a little with giving some dimension to the panel lines and rusting the rivets a little. I may at a later date get a name on it. Well that's my story and I'm sticking too it! Are there any questions?
Too finish the pilots story in brief he was shot down near the end of the war , in New Guinea, between the dropping of the atom bombs, captured by General Yama#$%*a's army, didn't lose his head, taken to his camp, interrogate by the General, who had hoped to find out what the Atom Bomb was all about, which he knew little of, given a letter to take to his General and was instrumental in getting General Yama#$%*a to surrender in so doing saving many lives on both sides. The rest of it you will have to buy the book to find out. Its fantastic, hope we can do it some day? Title "Between the Bombs" a Pilot, a letter and a Promise. Quite a man, very unassuming and the exploits would make your head swim, he went through flight training with Chuck Yeager and Bob Hoover all some of the best of the best pilots their ever were. IMHO
