Here's a few of the miscellaneous things I've custom painted over the years

Flamed Refrigerator

         

Summer 2007.  I painted this for our dorm room in Michigan and the sad part is, when I got it up here, even after letting it sit overnight, it didn't work!  I took it to a guy who specializes in them and he said the capillary tube is clogged and it's too much to fix it when I could buy a new one for cheaper!  So this is going to find a place on the wall of one of our garages.  Anyway, it was an all white fridge that I prepped with primer and based in red.  Then I used fine line to lay out the flames and sprayed the black, removed the tape and cleared it with a satin for the retro look.

Jack's Flamed Mailbox

                                             

Summer 2006.   Josh and I made this for our ASEP teacher, Jack, as a surprise gift.  This turned out GREAT.  We used an old torque converter and a 3.5 liter Olds Short-star crankshaft that the school was throwing out.  Josh welded bolts into the torque converter to steady it, then put some spot-welds on the nose of the crank to give it a tight, yet removable, fit into the torque converter.  Then we used John's old Buick 3.8 camshaft and welded it to the flywheel mount of the crank and then Josh had an old lift pad that he welded to the distributor gear on the end of the cam.  We mounted the freshly painted mailbox on top and decided to prep and paint the cam, crank, and torque converter setup GM pewter.  The mailbox is a Ford blue with the same GM pewter flames.  I believe the blue had some more metal flake I added.  It now sits in Jack's office at school.  

Nick's GMC Sonoma Bumper for his '02 Xtreme

Winter 2006.  My college buddy Nick was doing the GMC Sonoma conversion on his S-10 Xtreme and wanted me to paint the GMC bumper cover the Victory Red his truck was.  I did a neat little touch and used high-build primer to fill in the textured area on the lower part  to make it smooth.  This turned out really good and it wasn't long until he sold the truck.

Mike's '97 Dakota Cowl Hood

Summer-Fall 2003.  Mike and I went up to the Truck Nationals at Carlisle, PA and he bought this cowl hood for a really good price because it had some low and high spots in it and the corner was bent a little.  I showed him how to take care of that with body filler and I painted both sides.  This was my first "large" job and turned out really good.  He wrecked the truck the Summer of 2004.

Flamed Lawn-Mower

The Flame Painting Process of the Lawn Mower Hood

Spring 2003.  Our old lawn-mower that I experimented with an airbrush and some beginners flames.  Dad's old Chevy center caps in the rear and some knock-offs on the front wheels.

 

The header shot, why not?  The #3 plate too.  Good stuff.  That's how rednecks roll.

 

Flamed Calculator

           

Long time ago- That's my Casio calculator I was experimenting with.  I'm sure all of you have seen what you call "chameleon" paint on cars that dramatically changes colors depending on how you look at it.  This was Dupli-Color's version of that in a three stage kit containing lacquer rattle cans (flat black basecoat, color combo mid-coat, and a lacquer clear-coat).  They have different color combos you can get them in and the one I used is Silver/Magenta combination.  In the left picture, you can see the main color which is green, and in the right picture, it's purple under sunlight.  Anyway, this was a simple, couple day project that I just used the Mirage paint as a base and then painted florescent orange flames on the top to stand out.

Flamed Toolbox

Winter 2002.  This was a gift to one of my dad's friends and my buddy. I made this toolbox so it would match his Chevy pickup which was black with purple ghost flames.  I bought a regular tool box at Wal-Mart which was red when it started out and I just taped off the handle and lock and used the same process as I do with everything else I paint flames on. I also added a blue Chevy Bowtie on the top as a little something extra.  The flames are painted all around the bottom of the toolbox. 

 

Flamed Dirt-bike Helmet

Winter 2002.  Here you see a helmet I painted for one of my best friends, Mike for driving me to school and many other places before I had my license.  The helmet was originally white so it was a lot of time to get it looking this good.  First I had to spray the helmet with adhesion promoter but that didn't turn out so well since it started cracking everywhere.  So then I spent a few hours wet-sanding the whole thing with 400 grit to get the cracks out and then I taped off the whole thing to prepare it for it's Black Pearl paint.  The flames I then laid out a few days later with masking tape are fade from white to yellow to orange to candy red.  Then the whole helmet was sanded again and I put a "www.RyansCustoms.com" decal underneath the visor which you can see in the left picture.  This was the first time I used the masking tape-flame method because the flames were too small for fine line tape.