Technical How did the manufactures hide the belmished from the manufatcuring process

I just had four rims sandblasted and after priming all the blemishes from when they were stamped showed up that was not seen with the factory paint,years ago I stripped all the paint from a mid 50s Olds aircleaner and after I repainted it I could see all the stress marks from when it was stamped so since there is no way the factories would spend hours getting each individual part to look smooth did they have a magic primer that filled all those imperfections and I would like to find some or find a way so it will not take me many hours to look good.

 

You think the factory cared about the mirror finish on steel wheels and air cleaners?

 

There is a product called "slicksand" that amounts to liquid bondo that might help you.It goes on with a regular spraygun and works well on rough surfaces.

 

A lot of parts like frames and inner fenders and brackets were dipped in black paint....runs were part of the process.

They sanded the outside of the car to make it smooth and pretty, the rest of it they left all the imperfections. If you think everything should be perfect, your hobby could get expensive!

 

In the local factory it was called Prime dip. Huge tank that the conveyor ran down into carry wheels front fenders and other brackets. It was some strong smelling stuff. It had to be dumped back to the paint mix building. We had to time it from the time the valve was opened till it was empty. This was for fire protection. When this was done the non skilled labor guys had to go in and pick out the dropped parts. They in later years had to wear helmets with fresh air supplied. You could hang our explosive checking meter over in the tank and it would peg just over the side. If you got it on your hands it had to wear off. Get on your uniform are coveralls and it was there. The parts dripped as they went into the oven to bake.

 

probably the same way they do to this day, they leave them there. most customers don't look all that close

 

I was wondering if dipping the parts in paint helped to hide the imperfections,all I know is they are not that noticeable until the factory paint comes off and then they stick out. It looks like I will spend a week priming and sanding to get them to look better.

 

Well, he is saying that they must have done because you can't see them on the original finished items, but he can now he's blasted the original coatings off.

 

From what I remember from my factory paint days, the dip process puts a very thick coat of paint on the metal, probably 3x or 4x as thick as you would put on by spray painting. Then the baking process tends to level the paint surface. Thicker paint that is baked afterwards, hides a lot of imperfections.

Put the wheels on the car and drive it, the imperfections on the wheels won't look so bad from the drivers seat. Gene

 

...............and to no one else while it's moving.

 

As for dipping, a little known fact was Henry Ford dipped most of the small to medium parts that got black paint up until at least 1934. Even the fenders. I had an NOS fender with thick original black paint and you could see a couple small runs on the underside where it drained off.

 

THIS IS THE ANSWER!

 

For wheels, air filters etc they used semi gloss which does not show flaws. Probably a combination of all the above plus you did not look at them that close before you refinished them.

 

I have had my Ford apart... more than I intended to go, you know how that goes. What shows and what doesn't show is 2 different stories. It looks like anything that shows after sheet metal forming is nicely done, the rest has ripples and wrinkles here and there. They were over-generous with any sealant hid by the dash and firewall padding.

But the industry was producing nice looking cars even early on and any means to reduce a cost, they went for it. I've stripped many a piece on this car, dash, interior garnish and so on. Since what I'm laying on for paint and primer is so thin compared to what the factory did, I have to pretty up a piece now and then.

 

That's what hubcaps are for.........

 

If I was going to use full hubcaps I would not worry but I am not so I have some work to do to smooth them out.

 

I said screw it and the rims are getting paint right now,will see how they look when I get some color on the fronts and need to get more beer while the paint dries.

 

That's why Ford had white sales. All those white sale cars had a dark color underneath.

 

The rain came in just as I used up the last of the paint in the gun and now time to drink a beer.

 

Last couple of days of the model year run we built mostly white cars. They told me you could always sell white.

 

The stamping process is the root answer here...air cleaner was not seen as a part of aesthetic interest, and was stamped in one shot with stretch marks. If they had wanted it to be visible and finished to body standards, it would have been stamped with two or more drawings to stretch and form more smoothly.
Dip...I've been told that the tank was mostly water, with a thick layer of floating paint. Part went down, then up with water being displaced by the paint as it came out. Don't know, but makes sense to me...all paint would have inevitably resulted in a 10,000 pound block of hardened paint eventually.

 

Look good to me. When the wheels are mounted you'll be 5 to 6 feet away depending on how tall you are. You will probably be the only person to sit down next the wheel and actually look at it while waxing it.

Mount them up.

 

I still have to paint the fronts of the rims and hope to do so tonight,I was going to try to hide all the imperfections but my 55 is not a show car and never will be so no sense in spending a week going over the rims and spending more money. I wish we could duplicate the way the factory painted the parts so we will have to do it the hard way with high fill primer and spot putty if the parts need to be smooth.

 

[QUOTE
Dip...I've been told that the tank was mostly water, with a thick layer of floating paint. Part went down, then up with water being displaced by the paint as it came out. Don't know, but makes sense to me...all paint would have inevitably resulted in a 10,000 pound block of hardened paint eventually.[/QUOTE]

Bruce, I can't say what they did back in the day, but 20 years ago when I worked in the factory where we made plow parts for several large tractor builders, we had several parts that were dipped.
We had 2 separate dip locations in the factory. One was for dipping individual larger assemblies, and one was for dipping smaller items like the blades that mounted on the plows.
The smaller items had the parts hung on a continually moving (when not shut off) conveyor chain with free swinging hooks. The conveyor trolley had a dip in it that would drop the parts down into the tank and lift them back out. The dip tank was about 2' wide, and around 10' long, with tapered ends, with about a 10' long return tray on the out going end. The paint was a mix of thinner and paint, the paint was very thin and easily flowed. We had to add a 5 gal pail of the paint mixture every 4 hours or so. At the end of the day, there were lids that covered the tank, and in the morning, before the line was turned on, there were mixers that were put into the tank to remix the paint. Though never involved with the weekend process, I suspect the paint/thinner was removed from the tank and held in 55 gal drums over the weekends, then reinstalled and remixed on Monday mornings. At the beginning of each shift the mixed paint had to be tested for the correct mix and adjusted accordingly. The paint room was rather large, probably 30' x 60' and had exhaust fans and enclosed light fixtures. The paint room had very strict temperature control and access was limited to people with clearance credentials. The hanging and removing of the parts took place outside of the paint room. Once the parts were hunk, the conveyor would carry the parts through a slot in the wall, and within 10' they entered the paint tank and the parts were completely submerged at the dip in the trolley. When the parts came up out of the trolley, the excess paint would run off the parts onto the drip tray where it would return to the tank. After the tray, there was cardboard on the floor until the conveyor turned at the end of the room and traveled along the short wall then turned along the other long wall. The conveyor extended completely around the outside walls, about 1 foot inside the walls before it exited the room through a slot in the same wall it entered the room. Once outside the wall, there were a series of inferred lights to bake the paint before making the last loops for the parts to be removed from the hooks. From hang time until removal time, through the paint room was about 15 or 20 minutes, in a near continuous operation through the 1st & 2nd shifts.

The large part dip tank had a square tank 3' x 3' x 6' deep. The parts were hung on a manually controlled trolley. A section of the trolley was separate from the rest and was supported by an air hoist. The operator would roll the hung part onto the hoist section and would pin the rollers, run the hoist down until the part was submerged, for a 5 second count. Then the part was raised, and allowed to drain off the excess paint (the same stuff that was in the other paint tank). The operator would then roll the painted part to the section with the inferred lights to bake. Most of the time there was a loader, the operator, and a parts remover on the large part dip line.

Neither operation looked real efficient to me, seemed like a lot of waste, but they painted a lot of stuff every day. I suspect it was probably the same process used back in the day. Most of the other processes used in that factory were 40s tech. Occasionally a few things were slipped through the paint line for friends of the paint operators, the coverage was remarkably good, the paint coat was thick and very durable. Most of the time, the paint choice was black, but on rare occasions there were some other colors, I remember both a red and a green. Changing color was a major undertaking, I suspect they got paid well when they did that. Gene

 

I know I have seen chevy wheels from the 70s that appeared to have "popped bubbles" in one area, where the paint and perhaps water settled?

 

Around 73 car makers were forced to use water paint for pollution reasons. GM in particular had problems, anyone who was around the body shops in those days remembers Monte Carlos with big baseball size rust blisters all over them. For some reason Monte Carlos seemed to be the worst.

 

Was no water in the prime dip tank at the local GM plant. We didn't use water base that early here. The blisters resulted from a poor bond rite wash. The company that was furnishing the bond rite lost the contract. The metal was coated with fish oil to help prevent the bare metal from rusting. In the 80's we went to the water base Elpo solution to coat the whole body. The car body went under in the tank.

 

I might have been worrying for no reason since the paint filled most of the imperfections on the rims,the rattle can paint I used on that aircleaner did nothing to hide the blemishes but the single stage paint I used on the rims did a good job.

 

If they are just rims, lay them flat and just coat them many times. Since they will be flat and you have a lot of ribs in the rim, the coats will build and fill all in. Will take longer to complete and another cup or two in the gun, but should work out for what you are looking for.

 

They have about 5 coats of paint and most imperfections can not be see so good enough for me.