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Appreciation post: The old-school body shop I saw in Memphis last week
They still had the original 1970s paint mixing room, with the big glass jars and hand-written formulas on the wall. Makes you miss when everything wasn't just a computer scan and a factory code, you know?
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grant.anthony17d ago
That old way was cool but man, it was so easy to get a color match wrong. The computer scans now give you a perfect match every single time. I'll take the new tech for a better paint job any day.
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jessica92117d ago
Perfect match? Those computer scans often miss the subtle shifts in old paint from sun damage or fading. A good eye can blend those variations better than a machine reading a single spot. You lose the art of matching the whole panel, not just a perfect square inch.
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charles_baker2817d ago
My uncle's old truck had a repaint where they used a scanner. The door looked right under the shop lights, but in the sun you could see it was a totally different shade of red. The machine got the color from a clean spot under the trim, but the rest of the body had faded for twenty years. It takes a person to see how the color changes across the whole thing and mix to that worn look. The tech is just a starting point.
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