Painting the old fashion way

Source of information?

This info is from The American Railroad Passenger Car by John H White Jr. Pg 442-443.   

I've seen similar instructions for painting carriages

Mike Flauding posted:

This info is from The American Railroad Passenger Car by John H White Jr. Pg 442-443.   

Thanks.  Things were different then and cars were not painted using an airbrush,

According to White,around 1893 several railroads began using the air gun to paint their freight cars and passenger trucks(pg.447) .  Slowly the air gun method was applied to the super structure. Spraying used 10 % more paint but work went 5x faster. Some railroads never did use the gun and stayed with the brush and bucket!  

These slow, laborious methods transferred into the automotive industry and made economical paint jobs near impossible.  This was fine for low production, high priced cars.  Ford began running into huge production line backups because of the time consuming paint processes on their highly successful Model T.  They eliminated the numerous coats method by using the "Japanning" technique of applying black enamel through a applicator devise that resembled an old lawn sprinkler on the end of a hose.  Paint was literally flowed onto the prepped body surface, with the excess allowed to drain off into a catch tough and recycled. 

Cadillac had long suffered from production backups and set about to formulate a paint that would cut down on the ridiculously long drying times, similar to those quoted by Mike.  I believe it was 1925 when they finally developed nitrocellulose lacquer, which dropped drying time to a mere fraction from before.  Others, like Ford, stuck with enamels, newly formulated for quicker drying, and therefore eliminating any polishing and reapplication steps needed for lacquer jobs.

Bruce