Hey!
In this video, I show you this cool project that I recently completed here at The Headquarters.
It is at a fast forward pace but it will show you the bare metal tank, the little body work stuff that I did, the primers and everything it took to get it done…painted base coat, clear coat, flakes, all of that. And this is something that you can take and apply to any kind of project that you’re working on.
Watch the video as I show you how to auto body and paint cars, bikes and toys yourself.
We have step by step videos of doing complete car paint jobs in the VIP Course.
You could do this same thing to a car. We have a member doing classic refrigerators and gas pumps and selling them on eBay, making extra money. Some kid is also doing XBoxes and other stuff. You could basically paint anything with automotive grade paints and just do cool custom stuff.
This is something that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time and I finally banged it out.
It’s a scissor lamp, an architectural style lamp. We painted the shroud and the gas tank, put the Harley Davidson decal on it and I think you’re really going to like it.
I found a washer that fits the top of the gas tank. This is the steel gas tank that we got from eBay. I had to drill a hole on the metal washer to fit the scissor lamp.
I will not lie, I’m not the best welder. I basically put some tacks around the whole thing and I didn’t bother to fill it up with weld because I’ll probably burn through it. I’d like to start taking up some welding classes pretty soon but this is good. 🙂
What I did was, mix a very tiny amount of Bondo and filled up all the cracks, make it all look nice. You can see me use my fingers as I apply it to the area.
After sanding and buffing, you can still see the scratches on the tank from pressing the form out when it was manufactured. We covered it with 2K primer thick and block-sand it out.
Then I greased the whole thing with wax and grease remover using some old baby clothes or whatever rags you’ve got.
We filtered the primer before we put it in. After spraying the 2K primer, we block-sanded the tank to get the grooves out of the metal tank. You may have to give it another coat on some of your projects but that’s all you have to do. Make sure it’s all flat before you paint the thing.
I like to use the palm of my hand when sanding round corners on gas tanks and other projects. The wrong thing to do is put your 3 fingers on the sandpaper and just sand it on one spot forever because that’s how you get grooves on your primer. That’s not the way to do it.
Sanding with your hands is a great way to sand if you know how to do it. It’s better than doing it with the block because it’s flat while the area is all curved and rounded.
Just keep on sanding until everything looks nice and flat.
In the previous video and blog post, I show you how to guide coat and block sand spot putty to fix small dents.
After wet-sanding the whole tank, with the water on it you’ll see how smooth it looks. That’s how your clear coat will look on your finished product. If it looks nice like that, it’s going to look excellent when you have your paint and clear coat on it.
Then I wipe it dry and apply base coat.
I decided to also paint the shroud to match the tank.
I used silver micro sequin flakes because it’s going over black paint so you will see it. I used a tack rag to clean up the lint off the lettering before spraying it on.
Check out the finished product of the Gas Tank Lamp Project. We painted the shroud the same color as the tank, black base with a little bit silver micro sequin flakes on it. You can see it looks pretty cool especially under the light of the sun where you can see the flakes.
I’ve always wanted to make something like this. All my family members are asking me for one. You could probably sell them. It’s a lot of work to make one. For me, I don’t think it’s worth making a bunch of them and selling them. I’d like to make more as gifts for special people. This one is going to Japan.
I hope you like it!
Check out the LearnAutoBodyAndPaint VIP Course if you want to learn exactly how to do cool projects like this.
You can also get a a FREE 90-minute Auto Body And Paint DVD
I’ll talk to you soon!
– Tony
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