Painting Fender Welting Body Colour

You can get 1/4 inch via restoration specialties and supplies 118 of their catalog. The problem you will get when making your own is that it is very hard to get materials prepped in a way to prevent wrinkles and bunching (usually you would cut on the bias if doing it yourself). I do not mind painting the black welting - I actually prefer the grain, but I prefer a matching/close color to start with. Or you could try such as www.lebaronbonney.com/cart/products.php?Cc=FEN4 . I did a quick Google search using fender welt (as well as fender welting) and the diameter.

Thanks for all of your comments. A friend in Canada advises me of the following.
1. Wash the plastic welting with Wash Reducer.
2. Spray adhesion primer on the plastic welting.
3. Paint the welting with body colour.
I will discuss the choices with my spray painter.
Thanks,
Terry

Hi,
What I could find on the Bob Drake site appears to be 3/16" welting. The 810/812 Cord has 5/16" welting.
You can make the 5/16" welt with 1/4" piping rope: adding the thickness of a tight-weave fabric like denim will give you 5/16".
--Tom

I usually buy the Welt from Bob Drake Ford Reproductions and we add a flex agent to the paint - lots of 100 point cars going strong still via such. They also make a nice grey that could work as is - just bought two roles of light grey for a project. The colors do not have quite the same grain as the black (black is the most authentic construction), but still have been very happy (and black is a little more time consuming to paint via colors is much easier).

Here's a piping foot in use--terrible fabric for our purposes, but you can see the idea.

to editor; browse; select; add that is it Pete

Thanks for the great idea Tom. I never thought about doing the welt this way.
As for the pic posting... I too can't post pics. I'm not seeing any icom telling me "this is the pic post button".. We will wait and see.

You can easily make your own welting with close-weave fabric (Walmart), piping "rope," (also Walmart) and Mamma's sewing machine with either a zipper foot or piping foot installed.

I'd paste a photo of a piping foot (available for any sewing machine) but I don't see any provision on our new site for adding pix.

--Tom

Terry I'm not sure what type weld you purchased. Best I can tell you is contact Stan Gilland on Kansas USA about this. Reason I suggest him is he used to be a painter many years ago. I talked to him about the Laquer I purchased from him many years ago as to how it was best applied. I have 3 gallons. First gallon applied to all car and parts. Then sand with wet & dry 400 grit. Then apply the next gallon and sand the same. then essemble car and apply the last gallon. Nothing was said about the welt other than it gets painted when it is installed. I think you are better off having it on the car in the curves as it will be. Trying to paint it laying on a flat surface and then hoping it will fit and not crack may be a bad idea. I too was a painter once but that was in 1968 during my high school days... Long time ago now.

During discussions with the guy who is going to paint my Westchester out here in Australia he explained that he not confident that the paint will adhere to the plastic fender welting. We both acknowledge that the plastic moulding must be sanded to give a matt finish to begin with. However what needs to be added to the paint to get it to stick ? Also should we try to lay the welting out in the curved shapes required for fitting.
Any comments would be greatly appreciated. The colour we are using is Cadet Grey.
Thanks,
Terry