Although the factory finish was baked enamel, for the obvious reason of obtaining a finished handleable part directly from the paint production line, HD also offered most of their colors in an air-dry enamel that was a highly-catalyzed fast-curing enamel for aftermarket and touch-up use.
Would be interesting to know which paint product was employed when applying the "blaze", "flash", "2nd color" or whatever we want to refer to it as, over the baked enamel base color. Was it also a baking enamel or was the 2nd color a quick curing air-dry paint applied to the masked tank, then racked and allowed to cure for a shift before it was ready to handle? If not, the masked tank and tape would have been run through the cure oven and I'm wondering if the masking procedure and products of that era (1950's) would have been up to the task of surviving the baking ovens and providing the clean edges we see in the final product?
There were obviously many paint-related technology changes occurring from the early '50's to the late '60's (decal stripes for the '68 XLs) so would be interesting to hear more from anyone with knowledge of the of the paint lines, processes and procedures employed at Harley over the K/XL production years up through 1969. Thank you.
Paint images courtesy of fiftysevenXL and Starcain
- LR HD air-dry enamel.jpg (65.43 KiB) Viewed 8203 times
- LR HD air-dry enamel cure time.jpg (61.25 KiB) Viewed 8203 times