Originally Posted by solveg
But you see, I'm bugged by the loosy goosy-ness of it all. You see people do stuff all the time like paint woodwork without a shellac coat so some poor fool has a hell of a time stripping it. Or strip an old violin and varnish it because it will look nicer. People just go do things because they don't bother learning about it first, or they really don't care if they destroy it in the process.
I got some bids on powder coating, and this bike isn't worth it, so I'll let it stay beat up. I don't know if it's important to keep the stickers. I suppose pictures are good enough. It's that SR I posted about in a different thread, but only one SR has been posted with photos, and there have been questions about where they were made and there might even be 2 companies using that name. During that discussion, people wished there were more clues.
Mine apparently is a different model than the others, because I think* it says touring. Mine says Japan, but some of the others didn't. There's so few of them, that I hesitated to repaint it in case someone wants to know which bikes were double butted, etc. It's not a particularly good bike, or an important one, but it is part of the solution to a mystery.
To be honest, all these bikes having braze-ons ripped off makes me a little sad, too. I feel like in 10 years we're going to be paying an extra $200 for a bike's brazeons.
Being this is my first attempt at a restore, I didn't want to approach it irresponsibly.
I like* the idea of painting around the stickers. That's a great idea.
Kudos for thinking about the people that come after. I understand what you're saying.
It's all about trends and fashion. Take woodwork for example. I live in an old residential neighborhood. People moving into these old houses will sometimes strip all the paint off the woodwork and grumble about the fact that it was painted in the first place. But this is judging the past through the lense of today where most woodwork is not painted. If they wanted to be period correct, they'd leave the wood painted.
Even though the layers of paint obscure the detail of the woodwork, they are also like rings on a tree. Each layer represents a period in time.
It's all in how you look at it.
I too would rather folks not cut off the braze-ons but I understand why they do. Cable guides on the top tube without a cable in them are going to catch on stuff and they detract from the appearance if they're not being used. If a bike is rescued from a junk heap only to have all the braze-ons cut off well, it's better than being in the junk heap.
The rise of the fixie is a trend that is part function and part fashion. Just like road bikes in the 70's and Mountain bikes in the 80's and 90's, I think a lot of people riding fixies today do so because it's trendy and would be better served by a different type of bike. The nice thing about the trend is that it's helped rescue some old bikes but at the cost of altering their personality.