Finishing a Masterpiece

Modern Rodding TECH

InTheGarageMedia.com

Part 2: “Wild Bill” Carter Left a Paint Legacy … and an Unfinished Larry Watson tribute. Here’s how Marcus “Shaky” Sullivan and “PPG Paul” Stoll Honored the Deal.

By Chris Shelton

Photography by Marcus “Shaky” Sullivan & “PPG Paul” Stoll

ecently, we introduced you to Marcus “Shaky” Sullivan and his legacy project, a Square Bird custom that painter Bill Carter started. For those of you who just joined us, Carter set out to build a tribute to his mentor, Larry Watson. He had some friends drop and shave a survivor car before he painted it. Only the car remained unfinished upon his death in 2019. So, Sullivan took it upon himself to sort out his hero’s unfinished business. He bought the car and set out to replicate the paint design that Carter’s longtime pal Steve Stanford rendered.

That’s a big ask, even for a pro like Sullivan. But he has the next best thing to an interstellar portal: “PPG Paul” Stoll. He’s a retired PPG rep who teaches custom painting classes using information gleaned from people like his mentor, Bill Carter. Stoll insists that he wouldn’t have had the opportunity to enter the paint industry if not make a career of it if not for Carter, and that it’s his responsibility to keep the tradition alive.

Last month they explained how they laid and sprayed the purple panels. This month they do the same for the white areas among the panels and on the top. As they did before, they reveal the ingredients that Carter specified to create this shade of Billy Brew. They also explain how they got the graphic effects.

Once upon a time these techniques and formulations were highly guarded secrets. And to a degree, they still are—some enthusiasts still pass off production colors as custom blends, which is pretty lame, too.

But thanks to the generosity and commitment of pioneers like Carter, their designs and legacies live on. The ultimate way to honor those techniques is to pass them on to others. Because if we can see further, it’s from standing on the shoulders of giants like Wild Bill Carter.

1. Marcus “Shakey” Sullivan started by spraying a wet coat of ECS81 White Sealer through a 1.4 fluid tip. He then mixed a batch without reducer and, using a 1.8 tip with 5-10 psi at the gun, shot a so-called dry coat.

2. The dry coat produces a rough texture like what you’d expect from an interior building wall. This is the cornerstone of the famed pebble base. He covered this with T400 white.

Mixing T452 Fine White Pearl with mid coat clear

3. He then mixed T452 Fine White Pearl 1:1 with VWM5556 waterborne-midcoat clear, 10 percent T492, 5 percent T493, and 20 percent T494. He shot two coats.

4. Sullivan laid out some designs over the pebbled-and-pearled base using the FBS tapes. He covered this with a pearl intercoat that he made from 25 parts T4000 Crystal pearl, 75 parts VWM5556 clear, 10 percent T492, 5 percent T493, and 25 percent T494. He protected that coat with a lock-down intercoat of WVM5556.

5. Sullivan then re-masked the pearled area to expose the blades that flank the center graphics. Paper can stick to waterborne basecoats, even if dried overnight. But quality, poly-faced paper won’t stick, so give it a shot.

6. He mixed a batch of VWM5556 with 10 percent VM4603 Violet Murano Pearl. That also got the 492, 493, and 494 formula. He shot a few light coats of that.

7. He then removed the masking from the center and laid some 1/4-inch stripes with the FBS tape. That area got T400 white that fades from opaque at the base of the trunk to transparent toward the window. He repeated the process on the hood.

Various shades and opacities of white on trunk lid designs

8. You’d think white graphics wouldn’t show up on white backgrounds, but here we are. The pearls and opacity distinguish each element from the others.

Binks 2001 spray gun used to draw squiggly pattern in black

9. Sullivan re-flaked the top then ran some unreduced black lacquer through a Binks 2001 equipped with a veiling tip and cap. The squiggly pattern was a standby for things like cake decoration and fiberglass lampshades when this paint style was popular. Iwata makes a gun that shoots what it calls a disheveled pattern. But save your pennies: an SGD-71 usually runs a grand or more—if you can find one.

Vintage rocket shaped mask on roof with inset stripe

10. He laid out a rocket-inspired design in the roof and striped out a pattern with FBS’ 1/8- and 1/4-inch vinyl tape.

Removing tape from roof after laying Billy Blue coat

11. Sullivan sprayed Billy Blue candy mix in the VWM500 midcoat. The purple fades from back to front.

Masking on roof for second stripe design

12. He masked off a second stripe pattern. He shot another Billy Brew fade, but this time in the other direction (from front to back). After removing the masking for the second stripe pattern in the center, Sullivan shot another light coat of Billy Brew purple.

13. He masked the graphics that he shot along the center, removed the masking from the remainder of the roof, and blew another fade from the graphics to the veiling. Here’s how it looks under VC5700 mixed as a lock-down clear.

14. Then he shot some blowouts. He mixed T411 Blue with 10 percent T492, 5 percent T493, and over-reduced it with 50 percent T494. Turn the fan adjustment in all the way (no pattern), blast some paint in a spot, then back off the trigger to blow the color around with the gun.

15. He laid a string of blowouts along the purple graphics on the hood and fenders. Once buried in clear, this design will basically disappear until light hits it at just the right angle.

16. Sullivan finally buried everything in VC5700 mixed as a conventional final clearcoat. Spraying the purple and white areas independently of each other instead of over each other minimizes finish buildup, saves materials, and yields a very flat surface with minimal (if any) ridges or steps to bury in clear.

PPG Refinish
us.ppgrefinish.com

I meant to do that.

Sullivan did something that usually makes paint reps like Stoll squirm: he dry sprayed a panel. Only in this case, Sullivan was following Stoll’s orders.

In the straight world, dry spraying falls under the heading of poor practice. It makes sprayed paint particles tack up before they land. So, rather than flow out into a glossy skin, these partially dried globules stack up as a textured finish. And in a world where everything must match existing finishes—which are usually smooth—any deviation is a flaw.

But for every rule, there’s almost always an exception. Take dust. Best practice says to keep it out of our paint mixes. But it is dust made from ground-up materials with reflective surfaces that give metallic and pearl finishes their reflective characteristics. With some thought, the results of so-called poor practice can turn into features.

In this case, dry spraying is a feature, or at least the foundation for one. It’s over this texture that Sullivan laid a coat of clear with a pearl additive. Pearl additives are really nothing more than reflective minerals ground to a crystalline powder (the dust we invoked earlier).

Think of the grains in the powder as mirrored salt or sugar crystals. The angles of these facets vary, and that makes each one reflect light at a slightly different angle from the others. This random orientation causes light reflected from the surface to diffuse or spread out over a larger area. Pearl laid over a perfect surface can glow; one laid over an imperfect one can glow like crazy.

Like many custom-painting techniques, this lends itself to detail work. Anybody can accidentally get that dry-sprayed finish, but it takes some technique to do it consistently over a large area. Even if it was possible, a whole car done this way runs the risk of looking a little too extra. And a little too extra is how much clear it takes to fill in that texture. So, practice some restraint if only for your financial health.

This is far from the only example of poor practice resulting in an interesting and desirable finish. Just about every popular custom-painting technique—freak dots, veiling, lace painting, splatters, crackling, and marbling—has one foot planted firmly in so-called poor practice.

So next time you screw up, think of a way and place where you could use the result. Honor thy error as a hidden intention and you, too, could invent the next trend.

Here’s an exploded detail of the pebble finish coated with white pearl and buried in VC5700 (for reference, the PPG logo is about the size of a quarter). It resembles a textured wall encased in plastic, and the way the pearl reflects light makes it look almost otherworldly.

Modern Rodding

VOLUME 4 • ISSUE 31 • 2023

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