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March 15, 2003
2.0 Hours

The Great Gloss Debate

First off, I want to say that the company that plagarized my text has changed the information on their website and complied with my request to have it removed. I appreciate that, and I won't start slinging mud here or ask you to send them hate mail or anything. No harm, no foul as far as I'm concerned. If the guys at Gentry Lane are reading this, thanks for doing the right thing--it is appreciated.

In the restoration department, you're going to start thinking that I've completely lost my mind. Maybe I have. I'm struggling with the degrees of glossiness on many of my black powder coated parts (is this a stupid thing to worry about or what?). I have four different grades of black powder, as well as an additive that will flatten the powder even more. I'm trying to get the glossiness as exact as possible because I have decided that before I start driving this car, I will win a trophy, maybe an AACA 1st or a BCA Junior or Senior at a National meet. That would be a real thrill. I just want to prove to myself (and my skeptics) that my work is every bit as good as anyone else's.

Here are the fan and the PCV hose just before being baked. Note
my new ventilation hood, which makes a HUGE difference in air
quality in the shop during powdercoating. It does a good job of
sucking out all the fumes and excess dust and powder.

With accuracy in mind, I'm using Bill Anderson's excellent 1941 Buick Fact Book to determine what color and gloss I need to use on each part. For instance, it says that the radiator shroud, fan and the air cleaner under the hood should all be 60% gloss black. Other parts, such as the distributor body, horn trumpets and coil base should be 30% gloss black. And things like the horn bells (domes) should be high-gloss (100%?) black. I also reviewed my photos of Doug Seybold's Roadmaster convertible's engine compartment to try to determine how glossy these components should be. Hard to tell.

What I've done so far is powdered the fan, shroud and PCV tube that feeds the air cleaner what Eastwood calls "Underhood Black." I really like the low-gloss finish (you can see how great the shroud looks) that the Underhood Black leaves, but I don't think it's 60% gloss. It's probably closer to the 30% gloss, which is incorrect for these parts.

Now the chassis springs I've already coated in Chassis Black, which is definitely glossier (see the springs here), but not super glossy. I'm thinking that this might be close to the 60% gloss black, and that I should re-coat the fan and shroud. You can see a comparison between the gloss of the Underhood Black and the Chassis Black in the photo below.

You can clearly see the difference between the Chassis Black spring
(back) and the Underhood Black pipe (foreground). I think true 60%
black is somewhere in-between.

I decided to mix up my own batch of powder that may ultimately be the 60% black I'll use. I used the deglosser on the Chassis Black to take some of the gloss out, but not down to the point of the Underhood Black. As a test, I decided to powder some small squares of  sheetmetal in each gloss (including my own blend) and look at them side by side to determine what looks correct to my eye. Let's see what happens...

From left to right: Mirror Black, Gloss Black, Semi-Gloss Black,
Semi-Gloss Black with 15% deglosser and Underhood Black

The results were intersting. It appears that there is no visible difference between the Semi-Gloss black and the Semi-Gloss to which I added some deglosser. I also noticed that on these surfaces, the Semi-gloss looks pretty good and not as shiny as I thought it would. I think I'll just go with the Semi-Gloss as the default for the 60% gloss. I'm also going to use the Mirror Black as the gloss black wherever it's needed--it looks awesome!

So if you're restoring a '41 Buick, here's what I've decided to use:

Looks like I'll be recoating the fan and shroud...

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E-mail me at toolman8@sbcglobal.net

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Last modified on 02/06/2005

Thanks, Fidget!