MATERIALS YOU NEED TO START PRACTICING
The following is a list of bare essentials that you will need to start learning
the art of pinstriping.
A PINSTRIPING BRUSH
First off you need to get a pinstriping brush. There are lots of pinstriping brushes
on the market these days but the overwhelming majority of professional pinstripers
use a Mack Series 10. Mack Series 10 brushes range in size from 000, being the smallest,
to size 2. I’d suggest you start out with a 00. If you have small hands or the 00
feels too long give the 000 a try. Brushes cost around $12 most places on-line.
I've recently added a full line of Mack product to the website so you could
buy a pinstriping brush here.
1-SHOT PAINT
When it comes to paint, I’d suggest that you get some 1-shot enamel. This is also
an industry favorite for pinstriping. Other brands include House Of Kolor, Ronan,
and Kustom Shop paint. While these other brands are great products in their own
right and might be a better choice, when other factors need consideration, 1-shot
is the easiest to learn with.
ODORLESS MINERAL SPIRITS
Depending on the color of 1-shot you are using and the environment you are going
to be practicing in you might need to thin the paint out just a little. I’ve found
that there is some variation to the thickness of paint among colors in 1-shot. Most
of the colors are perfectly fine right out of the can, especially when you are working
on glass, like we will be for doing our drills. However, there are some instances
that you’ll have to thin the paint a little to keep it flowing. The environment
you’re going to be practicing in will play a part in how quickly the paint start
“gumming” up too much. Odorless mineral spirits is the recommended reducer for practicing
with 1-shot because it’s readily available and less expensive than other options.
Mineral spirits is also used to clean your brushes when changing colors or once
you’re finished practicing.
BRUSH OIL
After you’ve cleaned you brush out for the day, you’ll want to oil the brush and
put it away. Oiling the brush keeps any paint that wasn’t cleaned out from drying
and ruining the brush. I like using 3-n-1 because you can buy it just about anywhere
and it’s cheap. If you’re very diligent about cleaning your brushes you really don’t
need to oil them, but if you don’t you’d better clean your brush really well or
it will not last. I figure it’s easy enough to oil them up and not worry so much
about cleaning them perfectly. You might hear that you can use motor oil or transmission
fluid to store your brushes. This was pretty common back in the day, but today these
products contain harsh detergents that won’t be good for the health of your brush.
Also, I’ve heard folks talking about using vegetable oil or olive oil. Be careful
using organic or lard-based oils, they are likely to attract mice to come chew up
your brushes for you.
PALETTE
You’ll need something to palette your brush on to load it with paint. Just about
anything will work for a good palette, like an old magazine or phone book. I’ve
been using these little real estate advertising books that you find near the exit
of just about any grocery store. I like them cause their small enough to easily
fit in my travel box, free, and the pages are glossy so they don’t bleed though.
PRACTICE SURFACE
Glass is the perfect surface to practice pinstriping on because you can put your
drill sheet on the back and pinstripe right on the front. Not only that but even
if you let the paint dry you can razor blade it off and start from scratch. Also,
glass is so slick that once you get the hang of striping on glass other surfaces
will seem easy. I recently got my hands on a storm window and painted the backside
black and I use it regularly for practicing now. The drill sheets available on for
download below are sized to put behind a standard 8x10 picture frame so if you want
a bigger surface to stripe on you’ll have to create your own drills.
DRILL SHEETS
The following is provided to help you practice all the standard brush strokes. The
template is designed to be used as background on an 8” x 10” glass picture frame.
Be sure to practice each pattern in all orientations, up, down, left and right,
or horizontal and vertical in the case of striaghts.
STIR STICKS
Of course you’ll want to make sure that you stir you 1-shot up really well before
you start striping. You can use whatever you want, but you can get stir sticks from
some place like hobby lobby really cheap.
PAPER TOWELS
Just about any paper towel will do fine while you’re just practicing on glass. I’ve
been using the blue shop paper towels for a while now because they’re lint free
and won’t damage painted surfaces like cheaper paper towels can.
RAZOR BLADES
Get a few razor blades to clean the glass after your paint has dried.
NOW GO PRACTICE, PRACTICE PRACTICE...then practice some more