I worked with a guy in a garage doing my appenticeship years ago who hand painted his 1600E we all laughed at him at the time but after he painted it he wet flatted the the paintwork in stages afterwards finished off with 3M finishing polish  it was one of the best paint jobs i have ever seen it was like looking in a mirror  he even won 1st prize at a Ford car show with it  no one would believe he hand painted it except us who watched him paint it.👍

The painter in our local bus garage painted all my cars, then I sold them. Roller in one hand and tipping brush in the other. Phenomenal job and lasted for years. Only thing was the colour was either green, cream or black! Just like the buses! Great info.

Retired old school signwriter here, love watching this stuff.
My boss used to make his own paint, he had it tough, and everyone wore a suit to work.
Loved the video

I painted a 1965 vw beetle with a brush 40+ years ago. I was advised to buy the best brush i could, i spent 25 GB pounds on a very fine horse hair brush ( that would equate to about 100 pounds in 2025) 3 inches, and used 2 pot coach paint.  The finish job astonished me! Sanding between coats, 2 coats primer,  3 top coats. Even with no clear coat the car looked fabulous. My advice? Buy the best brush you can afford. Cheap brushes produce a cheap finish.

Brings back memories from the 1970's when my mate's Granddad painted their family Mk3 Cortina blue-grey by brush.
His Granddad was a coach painter for a bus company, and I remember watching him loading up a lining brush with red paint and applying double coachlines along the Cortina's sides. Great skill.
Good vid, cheers.

Back in the late 80s I worked with a Portuguese fellow named Tony.  He was a farm hand here in Canada and I was an apprentice mechanic.  Tony did a lot of painting. I was always amazed at his skill at getting everything he painted absolutely flawless. You could never see a brush stroke in the paint. So I asked him one day if he ever painted a car with a brush. He said "Ya I didda my pick emup atruck" !  I was shocked! His old 70ish Ford truck looked like a factory paint job. I never would've guessed. Apparently he did that 3 years before I asked him and it was still fantastic. He's gone now and I wished I had learned his secrets. Hopefully somebody did.

Thanks ever so much for taking the time for all these mini paint videos.  Your knowledge and help is greatly appreciated!!

I have painted two cars fully & part-way through a third using Craftmaster, brilliant paint! The other benefit to painting it yourself (at a fraction of the cost of a respray) is that if the paint gets damaged, it is easy enough to repair and there is no need to be precious, which would be the case with an expensive re-spray.

I think a better finish is achieved & is more durable, the down-side is the time it takes to properly prepare and drying time, but an enjoyable task! Thanks for sharing.

They look so much more authentic when painted this way, my first mini was this colour as well.

I was a timber boat painter in my early life .. the finish we got was second to none...

Steve.  Thanks for your video, that's really impressive.  When I was about 12, my dad bought a second hand Triumph Herald, the guy he bought it from had hand painted it by brush simply because he didn't like the original colour (changed it from red to turquoise).  I remember asking my dad why I couldn't see any brush marks and he told me that the guy was very skilled, and that repainting a car using a brush was quite common after WW2.  Looking at what you've done there and some of the comments left by others it just shows what can be achieved.  Amazing 🙂

I went to school with a lad who’s father hand painted the Corporation busses in Derby. He was a real artist at the job. Poor bugger fell off a ladder whilst painting a double decker only a few years before retirement and tragically died from his head injuries.

Have always admired the skills of traditional painters and signwriters. I much prefer to paint by hand myself whenever I can.

I find the trend of powder coating everything including motorcycle frames to actually be really offensive and utterly dumb. When that stuff fails (and it always does eventually in one way or another), the surface can appear fine. But then it becomes brittle and flakes off, it’s sharp, and underneath the metal has rusted to hell.

Currently working on two bikes that will have their frames hand painted. One will be grey, so a little more challenging than standard black gloss.

Thank you for sharing.

My dad was a painter by trade and I remember him telling stories of painting his whole car back in the late 40s early 50s with a powder puff. I don't know what kind of paint they used, probably oil based, but it had enough open time to smooth out like glass. Fascinating technique heating the paint to thin it out. Thanks for the video.

Brings back memories. I was a paint sprayer in the 70's and 80's mainly cellulose, 2k. After watching an old coach painter hand paint a 3.5 Rover V8 in black I got the bug for hand painting cars. I probably painted about 30 or so more as a hobby than anything else.
I used a 4 inch Hamilton and a well used 7 inch mohair. My preferred paint was Marcel Guest and I used hot spray cups to warm the paint also a bane marie. I got to a standard where you couldnt tell it was hand painted.

Coach ( hand painting ) finishing was used widely for commercial vehicles of all types, I served an apprenticeship with London Transport back in the day. ‘Finishing brushes’ take years of use to turn them into a  worn painting brush/edge that is used only for the gloss coat. Paint needs to be heavily loaded onto the panel or even poured from the middle outwards, then messily spread out as quickly as possible in all directions to cover the panel. You then ‘lay off’ the finish with unbroken strokes from one edge to another, the skill is in the speed, the faster you apply and lay off the better the finish.

You can see the mirror finish coming as it settles before your very eyes !  Incredible !

Gotta love a practical Northerner with proper craft skills. Love it.

Great video , I recall 55 years ago , handpainting a front wing on my Surf Blue Mini with a very near matching Peacock blue Woolworths  McPhearsons paint , the result was so good , ended up painting the entire car , with a contracting grey ' Moonstone ' roof !.I know at the time , ' Valspar ' paints of Liverpool used to advertise their product for hand applied car painting  use .In 1967 , my brother painted a 1928 Rolls Limousine with Valspar , he still owns the car and it still wears the same paint of all those years ago and is still standing up very well !.One of the essential requirements for this work is a linen ' tac-rag ' , a lot do not know about them and a brilliant way of overcoming the dreaded dust.

That was really awesome seeing how it can be done, thanks for sharing. A friend of my dads handpainted all his classic Humber cars, from around the 20s and 30s, and the finish was beautiful. He mixed progressively more and more clear coat in with the paint and lightly sanded in between coats. The end result was incredible and the paint had a really deep shine, completely flat. I have bought sign writing paint from that company and it is a lovely paint to use.

An absolute joy to see the old crafts being expertly demonstrated!