When I was working on the 51 Chevy trying to break the wheels free so they can free spin in order for me to move the truck, I ran across an old hubcap. There were a couple of aftermarket rims on the back of the truck, a regular steel rim on the left front and a stock rim on the right front that had clips to hold the hubcaps that would've come on this truck from the factory. This one wheel had one of those hubcaps but it was pretty rusty and pitted with a fair dent across it. It was still solid however and still had the Chevrolet inscription on the metal. I couldn't possibly scrap this and had figured I could do something with this on the artistic side of things. My first plan was to turn it into some form of wall art, or something that could be hung in a "Man cave" type garage, who knows. But first I would have to prep this thing. The first thing I did was utilize a wire wheel on a drill to scrape as much surface rust from the hubcap as I could. Since there was no way to reverse the pitting of the metal, the best I could hope for was to at least get the metal cleaned up enough that it would hold paint since I had decided to spray the hubcap with some leftover gold paint I had laying around. After a good scraping I got the cap down as good as it was going to get. Out came the spray paint. After getting the hubcap sprayed pretty good and letting it sit overnight to ensure that the paint was well set, I showed the thing to a friend and he made the suggestion to paint the Chevrolet lettering with some black paint. After agreeing to that idea I also thought about the other design patterns around the wording and came up with an add on to the whole design. I decided to incorporate the good ole' American colors of red white and blue in the rest of the design around the Chevrolet word to make an overall complete design with the multiple colors. I took my time with some modeling paint brushes and carefully worked modeling paint into the letters then into the grooves of the design on the cap. Taking time to do double coats to ensure good coverage over the gold painted pitted metal, I was able to get the surface all painted up nicely like I wanted. Overall the art project turned out pretty good. Now again I'm still caught up between making this some type of wall piece or maybe even incorporating this painted hubcap in the interior of the 51 Chevy when I start putting things together on it since that would kind of add to the "rat rod" aspect of the truck, especially if I can manage to keep most of the patina of the body even after repairing the body in the places it needs it. Just being able to put things like this on the inside will make the vehicle more entertaining to drive when you can look at pieces inside knowing that you actually made these pieces custom for the vehicle. Not to mention it would add to the show quality or uniqueness of the vehicle when people can see something that is indeed one of a kind since there won't be another vehicle with the same appearance inside, much less the outside. After this, I may want to take a stab at trying some other automotive art, like welding up sculptures with old car parts....
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
May 2023
|