Paint Shop
A large part of my life was lived out in the paint and body shop business. Most of that was painting custom vans.
In June of 1976, Jack Hopkins hired me to help him paint custom vans he was getting from Custom Vans Ltd. Although each van was different and had it’s own distinctive design, it was a streamlined operation – each van going through the same series of steps. I liked it a lot and it provided a living for me off and on for many years.
My position was “helper”. That mean that I did whatever he told me to do, but pretty much I prepared vans and Jack painted them. Over time, he taught me how to do the painting and that proved quite valuable. Thank you, Jack.
The process went like this:
We picked up the van from the builder and took it to our shop on Buckner Blvd. After washing it, we took off some hardware such as taillights, turn signals, mirrors, ladder, spare tire rack, and logos. The entire van (not the top) was sanded with 600 grit sandpaper. We then spent an hour or so taping the windows, top, grill, door handles and anything else that was not to be painted. A coat of sealer was then sprayed on.
Now is when the creativity begins. Using different widths of masking tape, several panels are taped off which will contain a few different colors and/or custom paint types. We were careful to tape around windows to prevent peeling.
Next, we used 1/8” masking tape to cover to form a pinstripe 1/8th inside the panel from the layout lines. When the basic layout was made, a base coat (usually silver, white, or gold) was applied. A base coat allowed the candy colors that would be used on the panels to stand out.
Before the candy was sprayed, another 1/8” was laid out next to the innermost 1/8 just applied. Then a larger 3/4” roll was used to cover from this 1/8th stripe to the original layout line. Stay with me here. Candy colors are transparent paints that will not cover a dark color, they will only shade a light color. When applied to a silver base coat, they create a brightly colored effect. Some of the custom effects we used were woodgrain and inlays. Woodgrain was made by spraying a very thinned down coat of black paint over the silver base coat and quickly wiping your hand across it to create a grain effect. You do this over and over covering the entire panel and you have a silver and black woodgrain panel. Then a nice coat of burnt orange (brown) candy color is sprayed over the grain and it looks pretty much like a woodgrained station wagon. Inlays used a poster board template, cut out in a wavy design held up to the silver panel. A light tracing of black, or red or whatever is sprayed around the edges, then the whole thing covered with a contrasting candy color. Nice effect (in its day).
Imron was a thick clear coating applied over all of the panels and original color. It was a protective layer that smoothed over the panels and was also very shiny. It was also very expensive. One good thing about it, was that when a van was damaged in an accident, it was darn near impossible to repair the paint. That is unless you knew which colors were used and how to repair Imron paint jobs. We made a killing on repairs. I was making $100 a week, which felt like I was robbing a bank. Jack and I and another helper were painting about 4 vans a week and maybe one repair job. Im pretty sure Jack charged $300 per van. Take $200 our for helpers, about double that for materials, and $100 or so for rent and you can see he was doing allright.
By the summer of ’77 Jack had four helpers and a bigger shop. He had also taught another helper and myself to paint while he worked on repairs. We spent all week preparing vans and shot Imron late on Thursday night. Sometimes all night. Then, Friday morning we came in and untaped, installed hardware and delivered the vans (sometimes still sticky), cashed our checks and went home. He was paying me $300 a week by this time and I thought I was rolling in the dough. This was a tough schedule to keep up, but I thought it was great.
Sometime that fall, Jack came in and said he was moving to Arkansas. My dad and I took over his business and called it “J. Key Color”. We hired a few painters and went to work. We must have painted over one thousand vans. I could actually smell colors.
I went on to other enterprises by 1979, but I came back to van painting off and on for the next five years or so. I had a skill that people were willing to pay for and I’m glad that Jack taught me how to paint vans.