Andy's post is an illustration of how challenging and difficult painting a bicycle frame can be. It takes considerable knowledge and skill to get it right. I showed Andy how to use toothpaste as a masking agent. One can't use just any toothpaste, it has to be a kind of dry non-runny (Crest is the worst). And it has to be applied super carefully with just the right amount right up to the shorelines without going over. After painting the primary color, the paint has to be cut (I use an Exacta knife). If it isn't cut, the skin of paint will continue to be pulled off where it should stay. This cutting only works if the knife is held at just the right angle - which is always changing as the knife is moved around the lug edge. This is a kind of sawing/sliding action. Of course nicks are enviable and then touch up is necessary. This is why adding a 2nd color to a frame can be as time consuming as painting a 2nd frame.

This beginning of 2025 summer I'm celebrating the 50th anniversary of when I went to Ellis Briggs in Shipley West Yorkshire (in the Bradford Leeds metropolitan area) to learn how to build frames. Fortunately for me they also did painting there too. Both the painting and framebuilding room were close together on the 2nd floor. Andy the journeyman bulder and I would take breaks and lunch together with Rod and Bill the painters in the painting room. While I didn't try my hand at painting while I was there, I learned how the whole process was done.

Mark B, one of the painters I trained in the 70's (Richard Luthas) went to paint for Davidson in the 80's. Was he there when you were there? And if so do you remember him? He graduated from the academy where I taught high school but that was a year before I got there so he wasn't one of my history students.