I'm gona paint my chevelle soon. It is a 67. I want to do some type of flames on it. I am wondering after I do my base coats and apply the flames. How do I get rid of the ridge left from the tape. Do you wet sand these edges and if so what is the process. I am goint to be puting a clear coat over the top of everything. Is there a good book I could get to learn this process. Thanks

I don't know of a base-coat that allows you to sand it and then apply clear. You can, however, sand base and then re-apply more base (done to correct mistakes). I've never done a flames job myself, but my thinking on it is that I'd apply at least 3 coats of clear (depending on the clear) and carefully sand and buff the clear to remove the ridge.I've seen a few jobs where the painter didn't bother to remove the ridge, and you couldn't tell unless you ran your fingers across the paint.

I can't recommend a good book, but I can tell you about a couple of neat things I've seen. I saw one job that was done with cheese cloth. After spraying the primary color, cheese cloth was laid out over the panel and the flames were taped off over that and sprayed. The result was a really cool texture to the flames.

Another job I saw had the flames "crystalled", if I remember the term correctly. The result was a very light blue sparkly flame that was very subtle and very cool. You could see the primary color beneath the blue, and it was sparcely speckled with silver flecks that looked like the refractions from a crystal.

Finally, another job I saw on a boat looked like the painter had taped off for flames in the usual manner and then performed a sort of fade job for the flames. The perimiter of the flames had a misting of a darker paint (I'm failing to remember the exact colors). Then working toward the center, the flames took on a more yellowish-orange color.

Well, hope I posted something you can use. smile.gif

I believe the "crystallized" you are refering to are called "ghost flames". They are just barely visible and you can see the base color through them.

Thanks for the info to it did help.

nobody knows of a book though.