Next the front end was assembled on the build buck. This build was called building the "dog house" by the men.
The buck fixture was a series of fixed structural attachment points designed to force the front end into an acceptable tolerance.
Sheetmetal drop (through the hatch) was the action of transferring the completed dog house down to the main line where it was matched to the correct body.
On to the question: Were petcock's painted? YES they could be, but not with consistency.
The buck tended to scratch the sheet metal up while the front end was being aligned on it, therefore fender skirts, and the core supports were typically scratched while being maneuvered on the Buck so one of the last operations after the doghouse was craned off the buck (but prior to the physical transfer to the 1st floor) was a minor black out operation.
This was literally a guy with a rattle can of black spray paint whose job was to look and see if he thought the scratches were bad enough then at that operators discretion would touch up the areas for cosmetic purposes only.
I am told that petcocks that are found painted today on original cars are likely the singular result of an operator's preference to discern what was responsible and appropriate to spray some black paint on before it went through the hatch.
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