Introduction
Where do you start when talking about flame jobs? You could write
a book about it but the purpose of these articles isn’t
to say everything there is to say about flame jobs but to provide
a decent overview of the process and what we had done to our project
car.
Up until
now, we haven’t mentioned that the car would be flamed but
it has been a given from day 1. We love flames on a hot rod. Let
me qualify that. We love good flames on a hot rod. Nothing can
spoil a car quicker than a bad flame job. We’ve all seen
them and they are typically characterized by a bad layout. There
aren’t many people who can lay out a flame in such a way
that it suits the vehicle, flows nicely and almost has motion.
Also, there
are many types of flames. That is, traditional, ghost, tribal
and variations on the traditional such as Ohio flames with very
long narrow licks. In fact, there are almost endless variations
although, in my estimation, there are only so many that work.
Call me a flame snob – no prob.
For our car,
we’ve always figured on a flame design based on the traditional
but not necessarily following traditional colour combinations
or the order that the colours are presented. It wasn’t until
we had decided on our car colour that we started to think about
flame colours. We’ll get into our flame colours a little
later in another article.
The
“Flamer”
We were extremely fortunate to have secured the “Canadian
Rat Fink”, Ron Gibbs, to flame our car. We have admired
Ron’s work for some time and were especially drawn to Ron’s
layouts. He manages to combine both the traditional elements with
a flame that is neither too fat nor too narrow. And, he insists
on an overall length that is right for the car – another
critical design element.
Getting
Underway
Ron and I had spoken on numerous occasions about the project and
what we did and didn’t want. Fortunately, we were in sync
from day 1 so getting down to it wasn’t a really big deal.
In order
for Ron to do his thing, our painter, Dave Bell, took the gloss
off our already clear-coated car with 600 grit paper. Ron then
proceeded to find the centre line of the car from the cowl to
the rad shell. The rationale for this is that Ron draws the flames
on one side of the car (on paper) and then subsequently flips
the pattern over to create a perfect, symmetrical other side.
Some graphic artists will create the flames with tape right from
the start. This can work too but getting symmetry is a real chore.
