Faux-tina

[Diablo de la Noche]

So, I was watching "Trucks!" on tv and they had an episode on how to patina your truck. It looked really easy and looks very cool. Here is how it goes:

1- get the colors you want to use, black underneath, primer color, outside (imagined original color), white highlight. They used dupli-color pint cans for the black, red mixed with a little black for the "primer" and rattle can light blue metalic for the outside, and rattle can white for the highlights.

2- Mask off everything you want to keep clean.

3- Brush, that's right, brush on the black over the top of your dirty old paint using almost random paterns. I don't think they even prepped beyond cleaning the mud and bird poo off the surface. The rougher, the better. Let it dry. Roll on the primer color, let it dry. Spray on the outside color (it doesn't have to be perfect), then lightly spray some highlight to look like a bit of oxidation.

4- Wet sand using your hands (and sand paper of course, unless you are REALLY caloused up) with medium grit paper. Add a couple drops of dish soap to a bucket of water and use a wet rag to drizzle the water on the sanding surface, keeping it really wet. Remember that the sun usually causes the paint to patina, so sand off the paint mostly on top. You can go all the way to the metal if you want the rusty look, or you can stop at the black "under coat". If you take off too much, just add more paint and go at it again in that area.

5- Sand off all the shiney-ness on the rest of the truck (just not the windows) and there you have it, faux-tina!

It only took about 10 minutes for them to do one fender, but I have a sneaking suspicion it was the magic of television. Shouldn't take more than a weekend, or a month if you work as slow as I do.

I liked the idea, and thought some of you guys would like it too. My appologies to any purists out there, and more appologies to anyone who already did it and wanted to keep it a secret!

The blue fender is the faux-tina they did on the show. Looks pretty realistic to me!