Learning how to paint a motorcycle has a simplicity and approachability that many other crafts do not. Everybody who’s been to preschool picks up a brush, right? But there’s never engine building or welding classes at that age. At least not at my public school.
Despite our early exposure to painting, few ever master color, graphics, and finish. Great paint with the right striping can make or break the presence of any motorcycle, hand built or otherwise.
Why should the dedicated hobbyist or aspiring hand-builder concentrate on pinstriping? Because for about $40, you can buy a couple cans of quality paint and a few brushes and you're in business "pulling lines," as Pete "Hot Dog" Finlan calls it. What does Hot Dog know about striping? He's been painting motorcycles and cars for 35 years, has had "hundreds of magazine covers," and was the painter at West Coast Choppers for seven years during its crazy heyday. I first knowingly ran into his Hot Dog Kustoms (hotdogkustoms.com or @hotdogkustoms on Instagram) work at the Born-Free motorcycle show a few years ago and was blown away by the execution and detail in his work—particularly in the striping, though Finlan's graphics and general painting skills (as in spraying base colors, etc.) are remarkable.
Step one to making stripes? Practice on glass or some other surface you can wipe clean and start over. That’s one of the beauties of striping: If you don’t like it, wipe it off. Try that with a bad weld on your alloy gas tank…
Use oil-based enamel paint to lay lines on an existing paint job. Finlan uses the brand 1 Shot for this kind of work.
The classic Mack Brush Company sword-shaped striping brush has a “belly” that holds paint in storage. Says Mack’s website: “Natural hair will hold a tremendous amount of paint because it has microscopic scales along the shaft of the hair.” So with the right kind of paint “you can lay a line from headlight to taillight on a car,” Finlan says. It should make it easy to do some simple, clean stripes on your motorcycle gas tank without a lift of the brush.
And Finlan recommends a massive amount of practice doing what he calls “mechanical striping,” which is just laying a straight or curved line or accent on bodywork. “You need to be able to do the line before you can do the design,” he says. Everyone envisions and aspires to pinstriping as illustrated in the photo, but that only comes from forming a deep and lasting relationship with the tools and mechanism of laying a line down with control first.
“I don’t think about the brush when I’m doing it anymore,” Finlan reveals. “The tool is a natural part of my hand. I concentrate on what I’m doing with the brush, not the brush itself.”
The guidelines for getting started, though, are simple according to Finlan: “Position the part. Clean the area with prep solvent. I run quarter-inch masking tape as a guideline for what I’m going to do then run the stripe an eighth inch away.”
After talking with Finlan, it now makes sense to me when I see a striper’s shop and find almost everything has stripes and accents painted on it—toolbox, trash can, paper-towel dispenser, coffeemaker. Life and learning are a constant experiment with the tools of the trade and the common objects that surround us.
As for shooting your own base coats, Finlan offers a caution: “With spraying, there are 100 technical things involved and 100 different ways you can execute a paint job.” He says that on a full job of spraying base coat, graphics, and stripes, it’s all done in much less forgiving urethane paint since the whole job will be clear-coated.
But if you want to lay a few enamel lines on your black Sportster? “I could show you everything you need to know about pinstriping in 10 minutes. Then you need practice.”
Pick up that brush.