The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Paint and Body Shop Hammered Metal Texture

The original interior colour of the 42-46 trucks was a hammertone or fish eye brown colour. I really like this hammered texture but not the brown. I purchased some hammertone paints from Canadian Tire, a can of black and a can of brown and painted a piece of sheet metal with them. The brown looks close to original but yet again I really do not like this colour. The black ended up coming out more a flat grey colour than a black colour. I thought maybe it was because the metal was not primed and the base color of the metal was causing it to go grey so I painted a section with gloss black and then overcoated with hammertone black. It still turned grey. I then painted over a section of hammer tone with the black but that took away most of the hammered texture.

Does anyone know of a good product that I can use to acheive a black hammered or fish eye texture? Or else how I can modify some paint to produce this hammered or fisheye texture but in a black shade instead of brown?

There has to be some tonal variation to complete the hammertone look so it's going to appear dark gray. If it was solid black it would look no different from your test with black paint.

I used Rustoleum hammertone paint on my interior. It comes in various colors but I used a dark charcoal and then put a coat of flat clear over it. You need to wait a week or two before putting on the clear or it will smooth out the texture. It will smooth it out a little even if you wait.

The Canadian brand Tremclad is the sister brand to Rustoleum. They do sell a brown hammer tone which is very close to the original. There is also a black wrinkle paint that in the old days was used on lab equipment.

That is correct. In fact the original paint was not textured and only had tonal variation.

I believe Jon's got it right guys. I’ve seen the attention to detail that he puts into a project and for that reason I listen to him when he speaks. If you look closely at the hammertone paint used on the interiors of the Art Deco's you will notice that although it appears to be heavily textured in reality tactilely it is smooth. The variation is only visual do to the contrast in tone.

An example easier to find for most of us is the finish on all of the later Advance Design heaters. The silver or light bronze hammertone paints used on them also appear to be heavily textured but again are smooth to the touch with a variation in the tone only.

I’ve tried all of the commonly available hammertone paints that are on the market today, i.e. Hammertone brand and Rustoleum and there is no way that I can see of getting the pebbled texture that they produce out of the finish. I’ve tried thinning but you loose the hammered appearance, I’ve tried spraying a wet base of matching smooth paint then the hammered paint immediately over it and that doesn’t work. I’ve tried mixing the hammered paint with smooth bases and spraying that and that doesn’t work. I read somewhere that the modern hammertone paints have silicone in the formula, which causes the separation of the paint giving the hammered effect but can’t verify that. As is the case with ALL of the special textured appearing paints used through out much of the early 20th century the formulas are lost and I’ve not found anyone that has any data about how they were created. Hammered, crinkle, crackle, marbled, “heavy” wrinkle, wood grain paints were use in the automobile industry on radio components and on many other items. The use of them seemed to disappear from the scene sometime in the late 50’s when the metallics and candy colors took over although we still see some wood grain used.
So far, I haven’t found the right combination for smooth hammered paint and I would sure like to hear the results of anyone who has experimented with the hammertone paints.

Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL

Anyone ever try painting a base coat and then spraying with varsol or paint thinner before it dries using a windex bottle or something? Think that would work?

If you cannot find that hammar tone paint, try Chevs of the 40s interior paints. I used their pearl beige on my 46 which is close to what it came with.