brushing aluminum car
 

Hi all - I have been following the forum for years but have been quiet. I have ordered a Kirkham car and should be getting it soon - years of thought, planning (financial) coming to fruition.

I have decided to do the car in a brushed finish. i originally planned to do the brush work myself. I enjoy working on my cars myself. i have done full restos on a 67 corvette, a pantera, 57 chevy, and 69 mustang. I have learned how to sand, paint, weld, etc. although working with aluminum is new to me. (The kirkham videos on panel working are fun to watch and make me want to give it a try )

I have found David Kirkham to be a wonderfully fun person to talk to, and a pleasure to do business with. He told me that it probably isnt a great idea to do the brushing myself - the sanding is messy and tricky and can lead to trouble. I believe him, but I am still such a do-it-myself person that I still wonder. I have searched the internet but havent really seen any example of an individual doing this on their own.

Has anyone ever done the work to take a car from file to brushed finish themselves? is it doable by a skilled hobbyist?

There is a lot of satisfaction in working on your own car. I do mechanical and electrical things on mine but not body work.

So doing a brush finish takes some skill. You run the risk that you will have bitten off more than you can chew. Since you've never done it before, you need a teacher. Propose to David that you will make a trip to his shop, have him show you how to do the finish, and then decide if you want to complete the job yourself or have him do it (with a guarantee that it will be uniform, etc...)

Good luck!

There is a older link to a thread that explains the whole process. Its a very messy time consuming task that's requires skill patients and a steady hand.

I think you have a great idea here OP. After all you don't have that much invested in the car. I think it would make a great mule car to learn how to brush finish aluminum on.

What's the worst that could happen? Let's say you manage to successfully destroy all the body panels, and get aluminum filings and sanding dust all over the car including those very visible but almost impossible places to clean. A little down the carburetor for good measure and just a dash into the fuel tank / fuel system.

At that point you would have a good handle on what it means / takes to brush finish a body. You could sell the current mule car for say 40 or 50 cents on the dollar, providing someone a good buy on a resto-project and you could buy a brand new one and start all over again.

Shucks with a little luck, this could not only be a lot of fun it could even get exciting. Imagine all the possibilities if you could just repeat the process two or three times!


Ed

Ed, that's a little heavy on the sarcasm.

I understand it's not an easy job. I was looking to actually hear if anyone has done it themselves. So far, it sounds like no.

So far, my experience with Kirkham has been fantastic. They seem to run a really interesting shop. I would love to have their job. Unfortunately, I'm stuck in my life in my job, so I can't take the time to go hang with them out west.

Wow Ed that's not helpful
 

There are things I do that take knowledge, logic and patience. I sum them up in a catagory I label as science. You are talking about art. I don't do art. I leave that to the experienced.

An example: I hang drywall, science. I pay someone to mud it and hide my crappy drywall job, art.

Enjoy the car there will be plenty of fun things to tinker with, brushing the finish ain't one of them.

Don't do it. The risk it too great. There will be a ton of projects/enhancements/tweaks involved in getting your car "just right." It can actually go on forever. In the meantime, let the craftsmen handle the aluminum bodywork.

Firstly welcome and congrats...

FWIW:
I've done it... and I'm hopeless, I can't claim to do any of those other things you can.

It takes next to zero skill to do it, but does take a fair amount of practice to do it well,
It does take ton of time, patience and lots of cleaning. It is quite a messy process.

Believe it or NOT, I found Brushed harder to do right, than polished... YMMV

To achieve a high end brushed finish, where lines seamlessly merge, and where you can't obviously see where the brush strokes start or stop, requires a fair bit of practice though. As does brushing a curved body without having the strokes wander and wave around. That is where the skill is.... in doing it well!


In short is it beyond you? Probably NOT.

What concerns me is less the brushing final step but the sanding from filed to ready-to-brush. It sounds like that is more complicated than just sanding out body primer for regular paint

Get a piece of aluminum , file it, then try getting it to a brushed finish that you are satisfied with. That test will put you in a great position to know if you can do it, and if you want to do an entire car. I'll bet you can.

Have the Kirkhams made a video on brushing? I can't remember.
Seeing it done is half the battle.

brush finishing a Kirkham
 

I had Kirkham file and sand my car with 300 grit. Then, my son and myself sanded it with 600, then 800, then 1000 grit finish and polished the car. After we polished the car (3 different grits of Nuvite) we taped off the stripes and brushed them in with red scotch bright pads.

Neither my son nor myself had ever done anything like that before, and the whole process took us about two months and liberal amounts of budweiser and jack daniels.

If you enjoy dyi I would recommend tackling the process yourself, but I would highly recommend letting kirkham remove the welds and file marks by sanding the car to at least an initial smooth finish so you can take it from there.

Like the others have responded it is a very dirty job and I share the earlier sentiments about hanging sheet rock but paying someone to mud it!

Good luck with your project!

You're right JK but if I just told you it was better not to risk the particularily nice car you have on a DIY project that at best would not be as good as Kirkham does, it would not have had the same value.

You have perhaps one of the most accurate, in almost every respect, Cobra replica's out there. Why put its appearance and value at risk on a DIY job that Kirkham has so much experience in. The ability to get the final brush strokes on the car to look the way Kirkham does, as you go from panel to panel and section to section, is not a walk in the park by any stretch of the imagination.

When you are done and it doesn't look like Kirkham did it, you will attempt to fix it never getting it quite the way you think it ought to be. Pay the Kirkhams, get it done right and then take care of it, drive it and enjoy it for all the reasons you originally bought it for — none of which was learning how to impart a brush finish to your brand new Kirkham.



Ed

I have painted whole cars and rebuilt engines. I have also applied brushed finishes to small aluminum parts (valve covers and the like).

For me painting an entire car, including all the prep, was a lot easier.

I'm not saying that the OP doesn't have the skills to pull it off. Just that it's going to be an excruciating job to do a proper brushed finish on an entire Kirkham right. Know what you're getting into and then if you still feel comfortable, go for it and report your results. You just might teach all of us a lesson or three.

Kirkham has been brushing and polishing Cobras for over a decade. No one can do it better.

The OP is mighty brave to be experimenting on a $100,000+ roller. More huevos than I have.

I think Bill is on the right track.

Perhaps you can talk David into doing the rough work...getting rid of the seams and knocking down the welds and the worst of the file marks, and then you can take it from there.

I never did anything like my whole car, but I did touch it up from time to time. It takes practice in getting a consistent stroke, but as long as you're not taking significant material off, there will be room to correct your inevitable errors.

Would I tackle the body from scratch, so to speak? No. It really is time-consuming (especially because you will be extra careful, not having done it before), and messy. As it is, you will be buying paper towels in bulk from Costco.

btw, I miss my car, and the Kirkhams are great to work with.

Get your azz off that boat Columbus, the earth is flat and if you sail west you will drop off the edge!

Be bold.

Hi, a lot of good ideas here, make sure you are capable or you no some one that has Tig machine, once filing the jointed area's if its to low you may have to build it up, so you don't file down the aluminum around the area, I would get a piece of aluminum 2 ft , have some one weld a joint on it, file it down, then use multiple different grits of wet sand paper or scotch pads, to get the finish you desire. You will go thru many doing this process, but you will be able to do this. A little trick I use is a little dove soap in your bucket, it keeps every thing clean and reduces build up on your pads. don't be in a hurry, its going to take some time.Good luck.

First off Welcome to the Club!
Second, kudos for considering doing it!
Best of luck if you do it.

Fact is, I have an "extra" body, and was thinking about painting it with: http://www.luminore.com/ and then attempting to brush it.

While TIG welding I believe (but don't know) would work, the body aluminum is not TIG welded by Kirkham. The body sections are gas welded which is a somewhat specialized skill for aluminum.

This thread is displaying the kind of experimental tinkering with a not well understood process that is difficult to do correctly w/o proper mentoring and guidance the first (and probably second and subsequent) times. What's even more disconcerting is that the experimentation is being done on a $160K car (possibly more expensive).

To the OP who started the thread, why not grab a fist full of $100 bills soak them in gas and set fire to them to see if you can put them out quickly enough to just produce the correct golden patina you would like to have on each one? That's how foolish hand finishing an aluminum Kirkham body is — when you've never done it before and do not have a mentor near at hand to prevent you from screwing up.

I presume you work hard for your money like most of us do. Why would you want to toss potentially significant amounts of it to the wind on a lark? Kirkham charges $15K to finish the body. That is not because they are trying to rob you it is because it is that work intensive! There is a hidden message here that is attached directly to your checking account / charge card.

Pay attention, it is worth more than the $15K that Kirkham charges to finish the car correctly. Once the car gets screwed up badly enough to require welding on the body (arghhh) you have entered a whole new phase of expense. Now Kirkham has to repair the previously printine aluminum body work and then get to the $!5K body finishing labor.

This kind of a decision is not rocket science, it is in fact pretty simple stuff ...


Ed