OEM Tailgate Letter Paint

[ThreeQuarter]

I acquired a take-off tailgate from a ‘71 that is supposed to have been in storage since ‘73. Based on what I know about these tailgates, it seems to check out. One part I am not too familiar with is what the factory lettering paint job looked like. Descriptions by board members seem to be consistent with what I’m seeing, but we all know a picture is worth a thousand words…

I’d like to ask those who can recognize it—does this look like factory tailgate lettering paint?

[cericd]

I'm gonna say it's factory. I'm trying to figure out how they did it so I can replicate it for my tailgate. I'm sure it was a stencil of some sort but I've been trying for years, without any luck, to find someone who actually knows how it was done. It would be much easier to make it look "nicer" than factory at this point but that's not the look I'm after. Here are a couple pics I took of the tailgate on a survivor truck.

[Shifty One]

My guess? Factory.

[Rick Bollinger]

If I were to guess I would say they had a metal stencil they laid over the tailgate that matched the stamping and just sprayed it. That would definitely account for the overspray.

[ThreeQuarter]

Thanks for the replies. I don’t see anything that disagrees with that assessment—seems genuine to me.

Chris, that’s a worthy goal. Normally I’d turn to Keith Seymour for this kind of inside knowledge, but I’m not sure this technique (painting debossed lettering) was used during his tenure at GM. I think all the lettering was embossed by then. I’m open to correction on that.

I may have to reconsider the year of this tailgate, though, because this one doesn’t have a disc brake sticker. Did every single ‘71 pickup get that sticker?

[jumpsoffrock]

Originally Posted by Rick Bollinger

If I were to guess I would say they had a metal stencil they laid over the tailgate that matched the stamping and just sprayed it. That would definitely account for the overspray.

I agree, you can see the very outer edge of the painted letter is kinda "shadowed" paint, not fully painted. I'd naively assume that'd be from the "weird" aerodynamics at the very base of the metal stencil causing turbulence ant not allowing proper paint application.

If someone was obsessive maybe they could 3D print a plastic stencil, and if you're stuck in the 1800's maybe you could kinda dremel one outta wood....???

If you stencil'd it with tape it probably wouldn't look the same as factory.




PS I spent many nights researching how to do my GMC tailgate and I never got to that part of the project.

[mrein3]

FWIW, I took a good hard look at my original paint tailgate and it looked like that too.
I wasn't too concerned with getting the repaint to look like that so I just masked it off and shot and got what I got.

[weq92f]

Originally Posted by jumpsoffrock

I agree, you can see the very outer edge of the painted letter is kinda "shadowed" paint, not fully painted. ...<snip>...

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This was my thinking as well. How did they keep it so uniform though. Guy standing with sprayer making swaths at the gate through the stencil is gonna be able to do it exactly centered with the spray going exactly the same each time? Hmmm.

Could use tape to stencil but make two passes so that the main lettering is painted and then you have a surrounding small strip that gets painted a different shade of either the letter's color or body color. It would need to be the right hue to get that subtle "shadowed" look.

-Kevin

[72c20customcamper]

Originally Posted by weq92f

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This was my thinking as well. How did they keep it so uniform though. Guy standing with sprayer making swaths at the gate through the stencil is gonna be able to do it exactly centered with the spray going exactly the same each time? Hmmm.

Could use tape to stencil but make two passes so that the main lettering is painted and then you have a surrounding small strip that gets painted a different shade of either the letter's color or body color. It would need to be the right hue to get that subtle "shadowed" look.

-Kevin

I’m sure after doing the first thousand or so you would get it pretty uniform
My oem tailgate the letters are just like that

[ThreeQuarter]

While I was visiting the body shop and talking about painting debossed tailgate lettering, the owner walked me over to where these were stuck to the wall of the paint booth. He said these magnetic stencils(?) were a common tool for the job back in the day. After painting the lettered area in white (or black), these were put into place to mask off the letters while the color was applied. Pretty neat.

But I don’t think these were used at the factory, because I think the overspray is done with white paint—not body color.

[dagnabbitt]

What a smart idea. Simple, too.

[IronCanine]

Like a lot of the factory masking, it's a tough effect to nail. What you have is definitely factory. To achieve that soft edge I had stencils made the same size as the base of the letter "well". As noted, because the letters are recessed, the stencil overhangs the edge and creates a shadow and soft paint edge. If I had it to do over again, I'd probably downsize the stencils just a bit. Because we did base clear, it takes too many coats of color to get coverage and the resultant fog increases the density of the soft edge. If we had done single stage white, probably would have been perfect.

Those black dots are magnets holding the untaped edges down.

[slikside]

Beautiful!

[ThreeQuarter]

Love it! Thanks for sharing.