Tailgate painting on my 69 c10

[mrein3]

I'm the inverse of you guys with the raised letters but let me show you what I did. I am FAR from a professional painter. In fact, I still use single stage paint. All the photos of my work are shots of stuff I sprayed myself. I use PPG Omni MP170 epoxy primer on bare steel and shoot Omni MAE Acrylic Enamel over that. I'm very satisfied with the results.

First off I recorded the factory paint job on the letters. They were punching these things out by the thousands so the detail work around the letters wasn't that great. You can see what looks like green over spray on the white letters. And if you look at the top right of the "C" you can see it is far from perfect.

[mrein3]

I first sprayed the tailgate green. Then I masked around the indented letters and sprayed that white.

Wet sand, wet sand, wet sand...

[mrein3]

Then I taped off the letter area I wanted to stay white, scratched the fresh green and now some white paint, and re-sprayed green.

[mrein3]

Voilà

[fourspeedwagon]

Mrien - Very nice

[Smitty]

The gentleman who did mine. Sprayed the silver over the letters. Then put the lettering you can use instead of paint. Painted the color on the tailgate then removed the adhesive backed letters and cleared it.

[Smitty]

Another

[georgieb51]

Originally Posted by Smitty

The gentleman who did mine. Sprayed the silver over the letters. Then put the lettering you can use instead of paint. Painted the color on the tailgate then removed the adhesive backed letters and cleared it.

This makes sense to me. And it eliminates the job of hand masking everything. I have done that before. Never again. I will try your method.