A new life for old plates..

This is Reinergirl doing a guest blog on my sisters site.... yes, I have permission!

So my sister asked me a while back if I'd be willing to redo their SS# plates.  "Sure" I said,   thinking I'm an old pro at this having done mine, not once but twice  (story here  and here!) 

Somehow I managed to forget that she has a 1960 Airstream that had vastly different plates than mine.  Back in the day there were more curves in everything... women, cars and evidently fonts too!  
 Here's what the 1960 plate looked like:

Barely a straight line in the whole thing!












This is what mine looked like in 1963:

  In three years Airstream went from the equivalent of a Marilyn Monroe to a Twiggy!!!

I actually like the flying Airstream logo,  very cool. Look  at the detail though, there was no way I was going to be able to use my original method of green tape and a razor blade!!





I started by stripping the plates and polished them up exactly how I did mine.  I used green frog tape to mask off the edges

 Here's where the tedium starts. I coated each letter with Vaseline,  using very small brushes like these.  The one on the right I could get down to a very fine point, basically a couple of hairs.  This was a great time to listen to The VAP,   not such a great time to have that third cup of coffee, steady hands are a must!  







 At one point my daughter's Border Collie who is friendly..... seriously friendly without mercy :) ..decided to ambush me, and I had to start all over.  Fortunately for him, he's too cute to be mad at for long! He's particularly cute when sleeping ( I think he needs a bigger bed, that one is my dachshund's!)

I then sprayed both plates with Duplicolor adhesion promoter and a couple of coats of Duplicolor Ford Blue.

Then what?   Well, with this highly specialized tool I scraped off the top of each letter.

Yup, a toothpick. Each letter, one by ever luvin' one.     Tedious, as tedious as planting crops in Farmville.  Those were dark days, thank goodness I snapped myself out of that addiction!

But I was lucky I had my friends at The VAP to keep  me happy.  A couple of episodes and Voila!

I need to wait 7 days for them to cure,  then I'll clean the remaining Vaseline off and clearcoat.

There ya go sis!  Now I'm off to update my own blog!

Here they are on the trailer!  They are  beautiful!