decals vs. painting
 

I have got some project bikes that I am going to be starting to restore. A couple of Schwinn road bikes to start with. My plan is to strip them down and paint them for beginners. I do not really want to mess with having to get decals and all and was wondering why I could not paint the names back on them. It should be easy enough to get a stencile made and paint the names back on. Has anyone tried this and how did it turn out? Any other suggestions?

It works, but has its limitations. You're pretty much limited to single colors and the fineness of detail is governed by how handy you are with an X-Acto knife. I think the Schwinn 'spaghetti' script would be easy enough though. Here's a pic of stencils I did recently, on the toptube, headstock, and forks:

http://home.comcast.net/~mswantak/ws...7/site1377.jpg

Get mylar paint mask at an art supply store that sell to sign painters.--sam

Good suggestion. Frisket paper for airbrushes works too. Things not to use: Label paper, like for inkjet printers -- the adhesive's too aggressive, you can't get it off; spray adhesive (like 3M Super 77) on regular paper -- adhesive's not aggressive enough, and the plain paper doesn't have a very clean edge after you cut it.

One important thing; don't cut the stencil in place on the frame -- you'll cut into the paint and when you peel the stencil off some paint can come up with it. I cut mine on an old piece of plate glass, weed the letters out, then peel it off the backing and position it on the frame. Don't try to cut bridges for closed letters like 'O', 'D', etc. Just peel and position the centers once the stencil's in place.

How did you make your stencile? Did you trace it from the bike? I am a newbie so this is going to be my first time attempting this. Has anyone ever had a sign shop make the decals for them? Or is that just to expensive. I would think that a guy could get some vinyl lettering made up pretty cheap.

In the case of the Bridgestone, I found a catalog photo that showed the 450 logo, and the Bridgestone 'B' I got from the Bridgestone Tire website. I used those photos as templates in Adobe Illustrator and redrew them so I ended up with just a thin black outline of the characters. I printed these out on the stencil material and simply cut along the outlines.

I'm not sure how much sign shops charge these days for mylar lettering, but it's something to check into. They usually have a wide range of colors and typefaces to select from, but some shops can also cut custom artwork from a customer-provided computer file, which would be the way to go to reproduce the Schwinn script. The mylar's pretty easy to apply and durable, although it's probably a good idea to clearcoat over them once they're applied.

Since this is your first time trying something like this, do what I did: I made a couple practice runs on junk frames to test the stencil material and paint -- as well as my own ability. It's lots less traumatic to bollix up a junk frame than your good bike.