Topic: lots of pics of my hammering a tank and shooting some paint

[fang]

Where'd you get the ABS side covers??

They are standard issue Maier aftermarket units, and they are readily available almost anywhere.  I think I got these from JC.Whitney becasue their price was less than eBay.

Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see which way you decided to fill in, bondo, resin, or silver solder?

I did all of the above.  Here is a quote from a forum post back in July 2009:

I spent most of today messing with my gas tank.  Stripped the paint and started with the silver solder. At first I was hoping to simply tin the knee cutouts, but that looked lousy.  So I ended up filling them with some thickness.  That means that I used a lot of lead-free silver solder (with an extra high silver content).  Below are some pics of my progress/attempts.  Up to this point I have only been working with the left knee cutout.


attempt #1a  



attempt #1b.  Here I am still getting used to laying the silver.  


attempt #2  I melted it all down again, and scrubbed off the slag with a wire brush.


attempt #3  Now I am starting to get a clean lay of the silver solder.  I still need to scrub it and melt it all smooth again.  At this point I was starting to feel like I was getting a feel for how I might need to do this.


attempt #4.  This is what I ended up with when I quit today.  This finish is the result of a good bit of sanding and some polishing.  Right now I am trying to decide if I even want to try to get it better.  I might go back and fill about a dozen of the holes, flaws and stuff.  the problem is that I am having a difficult time with heat management with my hand torches, and I am using several different ones, ranging from a butane "pencil torch" to a mapp gas blow torch.  I am pretty close to the effect I was shooting for, but I am not too sure if I like it.  I mean, I can imagine that I would like it....  The real question is would any one else?  I am shooting for the hand-formed, silver inlaid effect.  Now if I had the skills to engrave the cutouts in a classic, antique style, then that would be totally rad!


One more pic.

At this point I had almost $200 invested in silver, and I had not even begun the other side.  After some soul searching I decided that even if I pushed forward and made it all look great, it would end up costing me a lot of money that I did not have at the time.  Besides I was not too sure that I really liked it all that much.  Think Steampunk -- there is another thread about steampunk influenced bikes floating around somewhere....  

Soon after my experiments with the silver I started to bondo and solder fill the remaining dings. 

To be continued...
-fang

[fang]

I just now went through my pictures of the paint process and tossed a bundle of them in order to kind of tell the story of this tank in pictures.


I had a lot of nice CB750 gas tanks.  This was my crappiest one of the lot.  I always wanted to try to hammer in some knee cutouts.  Since this one was all dinged in and crappy, it seemed like the perfect candidate.


So I hammered the snot out of it.  To my surprise it didn't look completely horrible.  I tossed it onto a shelf and forgot about it for a few years.  Then one day (soon after I sold most of my old extra CB stuff, including all my nice gas tanks) I needed a gas tank for a project.  This was the only one I had, so I decided to see what could be done with it.


I tried to fill the knee indentations with silver, but that sort of failed.  So I slathered the thing down with bondo.


And then I sanded it all off and slathered all down again.

To be continued...

[fang]

Once it was more or less the right shape, I shot it with primer, and sanded it all off a few times, then finished with a nice sealer primer.


This is actually the second coat of the second color of my final paint job.  It is a dark metallic red for a base coat + clear coat paint job.  The previous evening I painted all the parts in silver, then on morning of this pic I laid the tape for what would become the silver pinstripes defining the lines of my paint job.  Then I painted everything in red -- If you look carefully you can see the pinstriping tape there under the red paint.


The paint only takes about 30 min to dry, and then I taped off  for the final color shoot.  I covered everything that was not supposed to be black with tape.


Here are the side covers.  Remember that there is tape already there under the red paint, so I just need to cover up to that.  The green tape might look like it is hastily or sloppily applied.  But that is because it was both sloppily and hastily applied.  Nevertheless, the edge of the paint will not be the edge of the green tape, rather the previously applied blue that that you can't see.  


Here is everything all laid out, just before I picked up the gun and shot the black paint.

to be continued...

[fang]

Black paint on side cover


Black paint on the tank.


I wish I took some pictures of me removing the tape, but I didn't.  I waited about 30 min for the paint to dry and I removed all the tape.  It looks reasonably good.  There were a few places where the solvents of the paint began to make the stretched/tensioned tape start to peal back a little.  This meant that I had a little over overspray here and there, but that was easily (carefully) cleaned up with a rag and some thinner.  I later went back a few times with a fine paint brush and touched things up a little more.


More fresh paint from a different angle.


Here is the tank with an emblem stuck on there with a little tape.


This is about a week later with some clear shot on the parts.  That is Issac my oldest of three.  He and his little brother just love this stuff; the third is still in the oven, but I think he/she/it likes this stuff too.  ...Either way, my amazing wife has let me know that all the paint fumes in the house probably are not very good for #3's developing brain cells.


This is a really bad picture of the hand painted emblems.  They now match the tank, and I think they turned out really good.


So that is that.  The first pic was taken about 4 years ago?  The last pic was shot a few days ago.  I still have a little more paint work to do before it is complete.  Then there is always more to do later.

Peace and grease,
-fang

[jtsmith]

Fang,

Thanks for the rundown. I think it looks great, and you did a fantastic job with the lines on the tank.

Cheers,
JT

[sangyo soichiro]

The tank dents and paint job are very nice, but the thing I really, really like is that seat!

[mystic_1]

The tank dents and paint job are very nice, but the thing I really, really like is that seat!

+1

Did you make and stitch the rising sun yourself?

mystic_1

[fang]

Yes I did.  I got the black leather from some high-dollar supplier.  It is really nice and thick.
The red leather for the patch came from some expensive woman's purse that I found at a thrift store.  They sometimes have the best quality stuff.....  =) 
Then I found a Rising Sun flag on the internet, printed it out, rubber cemented it to a rectangle of the red leather, cut it out following the pattern, glued it to the seat with rubber cement, then sewed it all up.  It was a fun project.

[fang]

Exciting time.  I am in the middle of shooting clear on the tank.  I have shot two out of four final coats.  I have a timer going, and seven minutes to piddle around until I head out and shoot the third.

It looks good and after this I will be done with paint work.  I will wait a few days, buff it all out using several stages of wet buffing, and then I will finally be done.

It is a beautiful day for shooting paint.  The weather is a fine, 59°F sunny, clear and no wind.  I have been waiting for a day like today for weeks.

peace and grease,
-fang