Scooterotica

I've seen a lot of restorations of scooters to original standards, but, you know, it never seems quite right to me. The paint almost always seems too lustrous, too deep, and somehow wrong for the period. It never looks as if it's come out of the factory, even with an original colour. So, what type of paint did they use exactly? Cellulose is often said to be the stuff, but I can't say I'm entirely convinced. Some people claim that it's some sort of synthetic. Does anybody have any thoughts on this?

The factory paint would have been cellulose, a lot of restos will be modern paints colour matched

single stage 2k is normally used now, I wet sand it after spraying, this gives a good natural finish, it's also tough and won't be damaged by petrol unlike cellulose or other 1k paint.

Cellulose was the paint originally used and there would only have been maybe 2 coats max. Celly back then did not give a very good gloss from the gun, definitely wouldn't be able to 'see your face' in the finish. There would have been some orange peal too. Acrylic (single and 2 pack) gives a much better gloss from the gun and that is why it looks more 'lusterous'. It is possible to get a mirror finish with celly, it just needs many more coats followed by lots of wet flatting, compounding and elbow grease.

I would disagree about the effect of petrol though, repeated splashing with petrol would 'stain' celly but it dissolves single pack acrylic (this is what's in spray cans these days), 2K is impervious to petrol/brake fluid etc.

Unfortunately, celly is not generally available to the public although you can still get it via mail order.

So basically original applied cellulose paint is flatter and probably thinner owing to the industrial process?

Doom Patrol wrote:So basically original applied cellulose paint is flatter and probably thinner owing to the industrial process?

Yes and economic measures