I am soon to assemble a 27 Pontiac buckboard from a big pile of parts I bought. Most of the body work has original paint on it, a sky blue colour which is beautifully aged. The bonnet is from a different car and I'd like to come close to matching the finish, as close as possible anyway. Does anyone know a good way to prematurely age paint? I was thinking start with a matt or semi gloss paint, scotch brite it down a bit and maybe even use a gas torch very lightly to oxidise it in places. I'm open to ideas though.

 

Buy a cheap oil based paint from the hardware store. Spray it on and set it out in the elements for a few weeks. I'd bet it would bleach out and fade in a short time.

 

The "experts" will say you can't match fade.......

But after 30 years of mixing paint I've been successful a few times. Sometimes you can add flattener, or add a lighter color like white or yellow to the tint. Lots of trial and error. Or fog a lighter color over it.....

This truck had a flatbed, when I added the box I wanted to match the weathered paint on the cab. I used some red GM basecoat (no clear) and fogged some flat white over it. Came pretty close........
After setting out in the sun for a year or two it all looks the same.

 

I have faced this issue numerous times with my 'restorations'. Like you, I value original paint when possible. Here is what I do and have had pretty good success with the method. Not sure if you have Rustoleum paint in Australia, but it's an oil based enamel and it happens to come in flat black and flat white as well as the standard gloss colors. I used to use flatting paste added to the gloss colors with white to 'oxidize' or lighten it, but that amount of flatting paste to make the color dull thinned out the pigment too much. Then I started using flat paints to add to the base color and that was better than the paste. For instance, to make the toyota 'horizon blue', I took rustoleum's royal blue gloss enamel, added flat white, then flat black as it was a sort of blue-gray. Along the way I determined it needed a splash of hunter green. I also am known to use flat grey primer in my mix. In this case I was re-creating a truck I once had to sell to keep my house in a divorce. The lost truck was faded horizon blue and actually the white truck I later found to replace it was originally horizon blue anyhow. After I thinned and sprayed it (outdoors), it was too evenly 'satin'. I have noticed over the years that old trucks are shinier on the crowns of the fenders, the tops of the doors and where your elbow hangs out on sunny days. In these areas I buff out the paint , often down to the primer and they seem to stay that way or just get better with time. It's always better to go too flat, because you can polish up the flat paint to the desired sheen. I have used old burlap sacks and they are sort of oily feeling and work really well. The 38 tonner I bought 25 years ago and later found a blue pickup box that had been made into a trailer. This is where I got started with the paint matching. Now I'm doing the same with faded meadow green on my '59 f350. It also came with a flatbed, and I added an off-color 9' flareside bed. Too dark now for a picture. Sorry for long winded post, just a favorite subject of mine. Hope I have been of some help.

 

These are great suggestions, exactly the kind of information I'm after. No such thing as a long winded post when it's great info!

 

GB Sisson is the go to guy for this kind of paint. I was gonna recommend him
until I scrolled down an seen he had jumped in. You da man Gibb

 

I've also heard of using cardboard to "sand" down the finish.

 

I have also seen a bloke wait until the paint was just still tacky, lay a cloth over it and press it on to create a vintage textured surface. It worked ok but not well enough. The blue paint has a layer of white oxidation over it, I might mix up a very small amount of white in a heap of thinners and blow a light translucent coat over it at the end, not too evenly. I'll do a test panel first.

 

If you paint with a standard enamel and reduce it with gasoline ( petrol ?)it will fade / oxidize very quickly in all that sunshine of yours . Caution should be used when messing with gas

 

Great idea mate, I can see a lot of test batches coming up.

 

Just as a side note , thats what we used to paint with on the farm . We always painted outside

 

I have some interesting effects I did with up to seven kinds of spray paint as well. And the thing about the torch, I tried that too, but some of the grille was made of styrofoam, window screen and epoxy, and I didn't want that to get too hot. Couple of pics of this and my ford meadow green tomorrow. Huge honey-do list today. She got a bunch of chickens, and it was chicken house sunday today........

 

ha ha, mine keeps talking about chickens. I keep telling her eggs are cheap.

 

I'll get a jump on you Gary. I visited GB this week with our son, Michael, and his family. It was a great visit, great adventure going out to Orca's Island, and quite a window into the man's talents. I took this pic of Gary and Michael before hearing the story of the grille repair. Gary will post a picture I'm sure, but you won't believe how original it looks. The old Toro has a Timken axle and drives like a truck. And can get some speed up! Thanks for the hospitality, Gary, much appreciated. Stu

 

This is the one I did with fire and spray paint. The bottom 1/3rd of the cast aluminum grille was broken off and missing, so I had to remake it, and I didn't want the time and expense of restoring the whole tractor, so I just repainted the grille. The color didn't match much else on the tractor. It was already a bunch of different colors, now its seven more. I want to try the light fog of thin, thin flat white as an oxidizer. Tinman, yours looks excellent! And thanks for all the positive feedback. At about 20 mph, Stu was looking kinda worried, so I backed off.