JACK: I’m Jack Smith, I do candy metal flake paint designs, and I’m from Sheffield.
Today, I’m going to be metal flaking and patterning a motorbike tank.
I start sanding the tank with a DA with an interface pad.
Then I prime it.
I give that three coats and let that dry for half an hour with a bake.
I blast flake with a flake blaster and then another three coats of clear-coat.
I need to now leave this for two weeks, let all the solvents fully evaporate out of the lacquer.
Now, I’m going to sand it with a 500 disc on a DA sander and get all that clear-coat nice and flat.
The next step is taping the patterns out.
First of all I have to make a centre line to measure from.
I make a pattern out of masking tape by sticking it to the panel, cutting out with a blade,
and then you can fold it inside-out and stick it to the other side of the tank.
I find the masking process very therapeutic, getting nice lines in it.
Next I’ll squirt water, gives you a nice water droplet beaded effect.
Next, we’ll put some black base-coat onto it and drift it over,
highlights all your little water droplets.
Give it a blow and it’ll leave nice little water marks in the black base-coat.
Next, we’re going to do a fan effect with a homemade template.
Next step is to paint the solid black outline.
I enjoy doing little details like this as it breaks up the tank.
We brush on some gold size.
I get the leaf, stick that to the size.
Now we are going to machine turn with a leaf-turning tool on a drill.
I think I prefer this way, on a drill,
it gives you a really nice turn, whereas hand you can’t really get the defined turns.
Next, I’m going to remove all the fine line tapes and it will reveal all the pattern.
It’s a good feeling that, to see the tank coming together,
see how it looks with the flake coming through.
A bit of clear-coat makes everything shiny again, makes everything pop.
So, I bake that, let that cure overnight.
I sand it with 500 again on a DA sander, get it all nice and clean ready for clear-coat again.
This is the final clear-coat, this is what we call a flow-coat,
this is where all the lacquer flows out really nice to give you a glass finish.