Hobby, Addiction, Profession? You Decide!

Recently we were contacted by Terry of Tbird Specialty Powder Coating to praise us on our products. After hearing his story, I decided I’d do a blog entry on him. I feel his attitude/story epitomized the philosophy that drives us here at Eastwood. Many people go at restoring and modifying cars differently. Some of us will just want to tinker and are satisfied with the little changes we make to our ride on a Sunday afternoon. While with others it becomes our livelihood and takes over just about every aspect of your life. For me the exact instance I realized I was the latter, was the day I was caught by my girlfriend boiling a pot of  bolts in degreaser on the stove. I was trying to explain it was for a set of multi-piece wheels I was refinishing and “I read on the Internet boiling softens and removes the old clear coat”. Needless to say, some angry words were thrown my way and I realized……maybe, just maybe I was into this auto restoration/modifying thing a little “deep”.

Now Terry is a 3rd of these categories and he turned his hobby into a career and is still as enthusiastic as he was on day1. This should be a inspiration for us all, and I felt some of our readers would enjoy this small glimpse into Terry’s story.

After getting out of the Army in ’75 and going to commercial art school, Terry worked as a Industrial painter. He was given the task of spray painting Waukesha engines (see pic below for reference) and associated parts. As you can imagine the precautions for breathing the fumes were not the same as they are today, and Terry had the foresight to move on from this position. He then worked in the auto body field, sanding, prepping, and learning the trade. This surely gave a great foundation on understanding how to prep parts for powder coating as he does daily.

After dabbling in powder coating as a hobby and honing his skills, Terry began doing it professionally in 1999. This was the birth of “TBird sand blasting and specialty coating”. There he was focusing on many aspects of auto restoration. Terry told us he loves his original Hot Coat Gun and also uses our (now discontinued) Pro gun from time to time as well. After a number of years of powder coating, Terry has found that he  really enjoys working with our Hi Techcoatings such as the metallics and translucents. He also indicated he had pleasurable results with the Reflective Chrome on the ’36 Chevy grill he restored. He even went as far as to quote on his website “I Only Use Eastwood Powders Because Of Their Consistent Quality !”

In closing, I couldn’t think of a better way to sum up his great attitude, than to let Terry say it himself “I enjoy restoring old stuff and making it look new when I was a kid I didn’t have the way at all to do it right NOW I DO! I Like powder coating because its durable and being an old spray painter it has none of the hazards of paint.” In the end, in the most basic form, this is what a lot of us are after with this hobby “restoring stuff and making it look new”. Just some of us get a little more addicted/involved than others and let it consume their life (and for me, my kitchen too!)

Check out some of Terry’s work he submitted to us below, and also feel free to contact him directly through his website if you’d like some work done! T-BIRD SPECIALTY POWDER COATING