Story by DinaRella / Photos from Dave Sikorski and Brian Holmes
Part Two
Since the ‘80s when fiberglass and paint specialist Dave Sikorski first started out, he never had a proper name for his business. He never needed one! He was known as Glass Dave and work came his way by word of mouth. It still does. His shop in Toledo, Ohio, is booked two years out. Offshore racing played a big role in that success.
Glass Dave was specially selected by several Wellcraft 38 Scarab KV “Miami Vice” edition owners in the high-performance powerboat community to re-paint their rarified Vee-bottom restos. Luckily, with a little persuasion and lots of my pestering, for him to dig up the pictures… for the first time ever, Dave un-bottles his secret sauce for spraying and striping. But before that, he shares how he wound up with the throttles in hand prior to the paint guns.
“I’d been working on sports cars but was drifting more into boats, doing stuff for a local Donzi dealer and nearby marinas. One day, my friend Scott reached out to Chris Reindl (fellow Ohio native who passed away last July) about using one of his Reindl One Design Bat Boats for a poker run. He agreed, and the deal was that we’d do some touch-ups on it,” he says.
“Getting to know Chris better, I started doing more cosmetic work on his fleet and became quite involved in his racing program. And like you know, I wound up throttling the Bat Boats at races if a free seat came up.” (Dave and I raced the purple Bat Boat together in Key West in 2003.) More winged boat seat-time pursued with driver Dean Howard in Zero Cavity, before the duo stepped up to Super Cat and Super Vee under Team Wahoo. Joining Michigan-based owner/driver Ed Smith in his green 377 Talon Cleveland Construction came next.
Dave credits Chris for it all, “Racing offshore was like a dream for me, and the opportunities from that chance first meeting just grew from there. As a kid, I’d buy every boat magazine there was, and on Friday nights I’d wait for Miami Vice just to see the boats. I’ve been a Scarab guy forever. They put the biggest smile on my face and are a riot to run.”
As an adult, he’s called a 26 Chris-Craft, a 34 Scarab and a 38 Scarab his own, so, in 2014, when Brian Holmes of Cleveland, Ohio, reached out about painting his 1986 Vice edition, of course the answer was yes.
“The stripes were always an urban legend. One guy said, ‘There used to be 36 colors.’ Another would say, ‘Two guys did it with five guns.’ All the ones I’d seen weren’t faded and you could see the color differences, whereas, the originals were smooth and clean. At the time, Wellcraft used a custom paint company and thanks to fellow Scarab wiz Wayne Kolb (introduced in part one), I was fortunate to talk to Scott, the son of the original painter Fergie, who assisted his dad on the Vice paint schemes. And from that I determined, it was done with three colors, one gun, and the rest was technique.”
“Back then, with the Imron single stage color and “old school technology” you didn’t have to clear coat it. You could mix a color and blend it across the surface, in a way you can’t do with today’s high solid, basecoat, clearcoat paints. This means I had to adapt and base coat it with the color and clear it.”
“I did my fade with four colors and one gun. The blending technique of the high solids was trickier. Mixing in the intermediates of each one, I ended up with nine colors. It was essentially orchid in the front then blue-purple to teal and green,” says Dave.
Asking about any challenges, he explains, “I had to do a ground coat base coat underneath it which is called a gradient fade. When you’re painting a silver car for example, a light gray sealer goes down first, then you throw on the silver and clear, and it covers faster. Well, I needed to use those methods, but now I had four colors to blend down the side.”
“What I did was put on a ground coat of gray from front to back that goes from dark to light, and then I did the fade over the top. That’s the secret! I’ve never told anyone. Any boat I’ve ever painted, I will freely give out the numbers, but these I keep guarded. My customers paid me for that exclusivity, and I owe it to them.”
“While prepping Brian’s boat, it helped that I had access to an identical Scarab owned by someone here in Toledo with the original fade. What’s funny is that the boat went to Florida, but was later sold to Sam Tamburino and has returned to Ohio. Sam, who is friends with Brian, also owns the MV themed jet boat, Bad Ad-Vice (pictured below).
Talking with Brian from his home in Bonita Springs, FL., he says, “It came out flawless and was a perfect representation of the Miami Vice fade,” before adding, “My three sons love it. It was also great to run together with Sam. Back in 1986, our boats were in the plant next to one another when being built.” Removing the Merc Cyclone 454/400s and repowering with 750-hp Dart engines, the seasoned speedboater re-rigged the boat on his own. Moving onto new potential center console adventures, Brian recently listed the boat for sale.
Dave has since said yes again. Two more times! First up, he painted Canadian Jim Look’s Scarab KV, which is one of the last of the 33 units. When finished, it was said that, the seamless fade came out better than the factory job. More recently, and still a work in progress, Blown Cover, one of Wayne’s four, was dropped off to have its stripes freshened up.
How to Spot a Star
Last up, for those who missed the MV memo and never knew how to spot a TV Star, Glass Dave sheds some light, “On the filming models, the middle green stripe makes a curve and drops off amidships. On all others, the stripe goes around the back to the transom. All the ones I painted were personally owned Vice editions.”
Next week, we finish our forty-year celebration coverage with a look at Stiltsville and its place in history, before and after Miami Vice put it on the map for so many!
Return to Part One
https://www.riverdavesplace.com/forums/articles/do-you-really-know-your-“miami-vice-tv-show”-38-scarab-kvs.1220/
Part Two
Since the ‘80s when fiberglass and paint specialist Dave Sikorski first started out, he never had a proper name for his business. He never needed one! He was known as Glass Dave and work came his way by word of mouth. It still does. His shop in Toledo, Ohio, is booked two years out. Offshore racing played a big role in that success.
Glass Dave was specially selected by several Wellcraft 38 Scarab KV “Miami Vice” edition owners in the high-performance powerboat community to re-paint their rarified Vee-bottom restos. Luckily, with a little persuasion and lots of my pestering, for him to dig up the pictures… for the first time ever, Dave un-bottles his secret sauce for spraying and striping. But before that, he shares how he wound up with the throttles in hand prior to the paint guns.
Offshore Opens the Door
“I’d been working on sports cars but was drifting more into boats, doing stuff for a local Donzi dealer and nearby marinas. One day, my friend Scott reached out to Chris Reindl (fellow Ohio native who passed away last July) about using one of his Reindl One Design Bat Boats for a poker run. He agreed, and the deal was that we’d do some touch-ups on it,” he says.
“Getting to know Chris better, I started doing more cosmetic work on his fleet and became quite involved in his racing program. And like you know, I wound up throttling the Bat Boats at races if a free seat came up.” (Dave and I raced the purple Bat Boat together in Key West in 2003.) More winged boat seat-time pursued with driver Dean Howard in Zero Cavity, before the duo stepped up to Super Cat and Super Vee under Team Wahoo. Joining Michigan-based owner/driver Ed Smith in his green 377 Talon Cleveland Construction came next.
Dave credits Chris for it all, “Racing offshore was like a dream for me, and the opportunities from that chance first meeting just grew from there. As a kid, I’d buy every boat magazine there was, and on Friday nights I’d wait for Miami Vice just to see the boats. I’ve been a Scarab guy forever. They put the biggest smile on my face and are a riot to run.”
As an adult, he’s called a 26 Chris-Craft, a 34 Scarab and a 38 Scarab his own, so, in 2014, when Brian Holmes of Cleveland, Ohio, reached out about painting his 1986 Vice edition, of course the answer was yes.
“The stripes were always an urban legend. One guy said, ‘There used to be 36 colors.’ Another would say, ‘Two guys did it with five guns.’ All the ones I’d seen weren’t faded and you could see the color differences, whereas, the originals were smooth and clean. At the time, Wellcraft used a custom paint company and thanks to fellow Scarab wiz Wayne Kolb (introduced in part one), I was fortunate to talk to Scott, the son of the original painter Fergie, who assisted his dad on the Vice paint schemes. And from that I determined, it was done with three colors, one gun, and the rest was technique.”
Three Becomes Four
“Back then, with the Imron single stage color and “old school technology” you didn’t have to clear coat it. You could mix a color and blend it across the surface, in a way you can’t do with today’s high solid, basecoat, clearcoat paints. This means I had to adapt and base coat it with the color and clear it.”
“I did my fade with four colors and one gun. The blending technique of the high solids was trickier. Mixing in the intermediates of each one, I ended up with nine colors. It was essentially orchid in the front then blue-purple to teal and green,” says Dave.
Asking about any challenges, he explains, “I had to do a ground coat base coat underneath it which is called a gradient fade. When you’re painting a silver car for example, a light gray sealer goes down first, then you throw on the silver and clear, and it covers faster. Well, I needed to use those methods, but now I had four colors to blend down the side.”
“What I did was put on a ground coat of gray from front to back that goes from dark to light, and then I did the fade over the top. That’s the secret! I’ve never told anyone. Any boat I’ve ever painted, I will freely give out the numbers, but these I keep guarded. My customers paid me for that exclusivity, and I owe it to them.”
“While prepping Brian’s boat, it helped that I had access to an identical Scarab owned by someone here in Toledo with the original fade. What’s funny is that the boat went to Florida, but was later sold to Sam Tamburino and has returned to Ohio. Sam, who is friends with Brian, also owns the MV themed jet boat, Bad Ad-Vice (pictured below).
Talking with Brian from his home in Bonita Springs, FL., he says, “It came out flawless and was a perfect representation of the Miami Vice fade,” before adding, “My three sons love it. It was also great to run together with Sam. Back in 1986, our boats were in the plant next to one another when being built.” Removing the Merc Cyclone 454/400s and repowering with 750-hp Dart engines, the seasoned speedboater re-rigged the boat on his own. Moving onto new potential center console adventures, Brian recently listed the boat for sale.
Dave has since said yes again. Two more times! First up, he painted Canadian Jim Look’s Scarab KV, which is one of the last of the 33 units. When finished, it was said that, the seamless fade came out better than the factory job. More recently, and still a work in progress, Blown Cover, one of Wayne’s four, was dropped off to have its stripes freshened up.
How to Spot a Star
Last up, for those who missed the MV memo and never knew how to spot a TV Star, Glass Dave sheds some light, “On the filming models, the middle green stripe makes a curve and drops off amidships. On all others, the stripe goes around the back to the transom. All the ones I painted were personally owned Vice editions.”
Next week, we finish our forty-year celebration coverage with a look at Stiltsville and its place in history, before and after Miami Vice put it on the map for so many!
Return to Part One
https://www.riverdavesplace.com/forums/articles/do-you-really-know-your-“miami-vice-tv-show”-38-scarab-kvs.1220/
