Remember when we used to mix paint by eye in the shop?

I mean, back in the day at my dad's place in Toledo, we had this old scale and just added tint until it looked close. Now my system scans the chip and mixes it perfect in like 30 seconds. The change really hit me when I redid a 1998 Ford F-150 fender last month and the match was spot on first try. Has anyone else had a job recently that just wouldn't have been possible without the new tech?

3 comments

3 Comments

josephmartin23d ago

Hold on, you matched a '98 F-150 color on the first try? That's wild. I remember those old Ford reds would turn pink if you looked at them wrong. You'd be doing three spray-outs just to get close, and it still looked off in certain light. The idea of nailing it straight from the machine would have felt like magic back then.

jason_henderson23d ago

Totally get what you mean about that old paint... it's like the whole world used to be full of stuff that just wouldn't stay put. Makes me think about how much we just accept things being a little wrong now, like @matthewmartin said, because we had to. Getting a perfect match on the first try back then would have felt like cheating, like the universe broke its own rules for a second.

matthewmartin23d ago

Yeah @josephmartin, that old red was a nightmare to match lol