VCCA Home Forums TECHNICAL - 1945 AND EARLIER 1912-1928 28 disk wheel pin stripe!!

Hi All

Here is a crazy question..... Anyone out there have a "trick" on how to apply the two black pinstripes to the disk wheeles. I have the correct measurements but How in the devil is it done. Do I make a rotating dolly and hold the brush/paintwheel on a fixed arm? If I use tape, How do I tape off such a small circumference and keep it truely round the whole way so it looks good? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

mromano

The only way i could invision that is to make a fixture to spin the wheel while keeping the paint brush in a stationary fixture. Any other thoughts?
joe

MROMANO...
I had the same problem with the stripes on my 16 inch wheels for my 1940 Chev. I did a lot of checking and ended up at Eastwood's homepage where they had all kinds of striping tools and one shot lettering enamel. That turned out not so good, I never was much of an artist! :)
I then ran into a local pin striper and he did it for me with not much fanfare. If you don't mind having someone do it for you, find a local pin striper...There is a pin striping association you can check. My guy was Bob Davidson, Striping by Davidson, in Tacoma, Washington 253-531-7603.

The 1927 "Chevrolet Service News" Vol. I No. 2 February 1927 shows a neat trick for striping disc wheels. Leave the wheel on the car, take off the hub cap, use some sort of ridged hand rest such as a large box-end wrench, put the wrench on the axel nut, hold your striping brush at the appropriate distance and spin the wheel. With a little practice you'll be striping like the pros!

One of the guys in our Puget Sound region came up with a jig to hold a pin stripe tool to the front wheel axle nut, then just rotate the wheel. I've done two 50 Chevs this way and it works quite well. Works best with no valve stem in place. The jig consisted of a large flat washer with a peice of welding rod welded to it, the striping tool is then clamped in the desired position. Large washer goes behind axle nut. Hope this helps.

Here's a couple of pics of a jig I made to stripe wheels. I've done several sets of wheels for myself & friends and they've turned out very well. The fixture locates from the center hole on the wheel and the arm that holds the striper rotates around the wheel to give a perfectly concentric stripe. The small commercial striper I bought at a swap meet and it has interchangable wheels of various sizes to give different width stripes. The locating cone is a piece of wood I turned down on my lathe and will accomodate various sizes center holes. The rest of it was made from scrap pieces I had laying around (never throw anything away !!).
The stripes can be laid on with the tire mounted, too.
The wheel shown is one I had laying around and is shown for illustration only - it wasn't prepped correctly and I did it in a hurry to get pics taken.





-Bob

Thanks for the pictures. I sure wish I had thought up something like that...You make it seem so easy. :)

Thanks,

Guys, these are really some very good ideas for doing a job that isn't done every day, and with good results without speending a small fortune for equipment and dodads. We should encourage everyone to post their "Tips and Tricks of the Trade" somewhere here on a place where everyone would see them, not just 1912 t0 1928 Chevy lovers!

Bowtie

Thanks so much for the tip. That is a great idea. I'll let you know how I make out with my project.
mromano

Hey Bowtie Bob, that's really cool. The lathe you speak of, is it a wood lathe or metal? I ask because I've wanted to buy a mill and a lathe for many years. Did you use a drill press or a mill to locate the center post, or just weld it down to the plate? Seems like perpendicularity would be important...

Grumpy,
I have an old (1942 vintage) 12" Atlas lathe that I use for the occasional wood turning that I do. It's used 99% of the time for metal turning.

I drilled a hole in the bottom plate (which is 1/2"x7"x9") on my drill press, so the post would just press in and be perpendicular to the base. I welded it to keep it in position. The post is 1" OD tubing and stands about 8" above the surface of the bottom plate.

The wooden centering plug is 5" thick and is 4" in diameter on the top and 3-1/2" on the bottom. This size has fit the wheels I've encountered, so far.

The rotating bar is approx 13/16" in diameter, turned to fit the ID of the tubing just enough to allow it to pivot in the tubing, and is approx 9" long. I put a 1/4" carriage bolt, centered in the bottom of the rotating bar, to give it a nice center pivot point on which to turn.

The adjustable arms are made out of 1/4"x3/4" aluminum flat stock - one is 10" long and the other is 5" in length. Holes are spaced 1" apart. I made square holes for the shoulder of the carriage bolt to grip in the short arm and 1/4" round clearance holes in the long arm. I have wing nuts on all the carriage bolts for fast adjustment.

For holding the pin striping bottle, I just used an old pipe clamp - not fancy, but works great.

The pin striping kit was purchased at a swap meet for around $8 or $10 - don't recall exactly. It's a "Master" model 1100. It came with 6 wheels & 4 spacers to allow different width stripes and can lay on a double stripe, within limits.

As I'm too cheap to have it done for me and too un-artistic to do it by hand myself, I had to come up with some fairly easy-to-use fixture and so far, this has worked nicely for me.

-Bob

Thanks for the answer... you should send this to the G&D: with a little editing, you've got a good article here.

Unfortunately there are probably several hundred articles of this kind that could be written for the G&D that never make the magazine. Maybe some of us with a writing talent can get with those with the imagination and mechanical talent to get it published. How about it guys?

Yes Chipper I think this approach has possibilities, maybe even a series of articles like those we see from Ken Kaufmann, where each month we show a detailed story of how to do some operation, and include more than one way to do the job, maybe something like "Tips and Tricks from the Vccachat.org web site" It could be sent to Jean Fink in an email attachment with photos. She has accepted articles emailed in. We should do everything possible to make the article ready to be used by her without a lot of editing and having to write for answers to questions she may have about the article. After all she feels responsible for the quality of the finished product.

All of my recent submissions to the G&D have been sent electronically. They need to be ready for publication, proof read and reviewed by at least one other person. It is always a good idea to have someone not familiar with the subject look it over to make sure it makes sense. If technical in nature a review by an expert is recommended. I am sure there are several people on this forum that would read any articles and make comments. Just remember once it is published in the G&D someone will be spending his hard earned $$$$ on what is written. If it is wrong or he gets points off on judging he (or she) is likely to be unhappy. And we need happy people.

OK, if you guys think this would make a good article for the G&D, I guess I'd be willing to give it a try and do my share for a contribution. Anybody want to volunteer to give me some article writing pointers and then proof read it, etc. ?? Also, if it's sent electronically, are digital pics reproducible for printing in the G&D ? What format should be used ??
Also, could I use the old wheel pictured above? I don't really have time to sand blast, paint & stripe a wheel from scratch, just for an illustration.

-Bob