Originally Posted by
Prowler
Great work SN. I keep a couple of 'dull' razor blades (box cutter or utility knife type) around on my bench. They are useful for pulling away not-quite-cured paint when doing this sort of thing. The blade is too dull to cut into the alloy but sharp enough to grab the paint and slice it away. If possible, I start in the center and work towards the edges (like on seat tube flutes, filled engraving, etc). Also good for nipping wee dots of rust on chrome, tar splatter on paint, sesame seeds on a bagel.
Thanks a lot, appreciated. Do you use enamel? I've found it much easier to work with than acrylic - tough to get a crisp edge as the paint keeps pulling itself past the edge lines. I need to re-do at least a few flutes in the seatpost and may switch over to enamel for this project. Nothing I'll be painting is super rare and some of it at least isn't original to the bike. This was an experiment, so I think I'll give acrylic at least one more go. Some parts turned out well, so it may just be a matter of developing a repeatably acceptable edging technique. We'll see...