Etsy Listing - Wooden Toy Car, Hot Rod Freaky Ford, 27 Coupe, Pine, Amber Shellac, Metallic Purple Hubs

October 15, 2017

Top Right Front - Wooden Toy Car - Hot Rod Freaky Ford - 27 Coupe - Pine - Amber Shellac - Metallic Purple Hubs

I made a bunch of Hot Rods primarily to build something simple that I could learn to do finishing and painting. Until last year I had not made any painted or finished toys. It was a major learning curve for me. I was trained and worked for awhile as an professional auto painter but this was very different. All of the paints and tools were different.

One of the biggest things I had to do was learn how to apply finishes in a place where very high humidity was the norm. Where I live in the Florida pan handle the humidity generally starts at 99% in the early morning and doesn't get low enough to paint until some time in the afternoon. In the summer there is blistering heat in the afternoons. In by yard this summer the heat index got up to 116 degrees. You can't paint in this kind of heat either. This is especially true for spray painting wooden toys. Water in the air will get mixed in with your spray and ruin your finish. I was attempting to spray some shellac on one of these wooden toy hotrods I make and the alcohol pulled water out of the air and I had dew drops all over my freshly sprayed shellac. Then there are the afternoon thunder storms.

The humidity goes down to 60% by afternoon and then the storms come. It pours down rain for awhile and goes away. The sun is beating down and humidity levels are back in the 90% plus range again. I can't spray pretty much anything in these conditions. I also work full time at my day job and only have about a two hour window to work with. That's when the storms come. What I really need is a small spray booth.

For these reasons and several more that I plan to write about in future posts most of what I make is painted/finished with a brush. This Wooden Hot Rod Freaky Ford is no exception. All of the finish you see in the photos is done by hand with a brush.