People spend lots of time removing paint from their bicycle frames to paint them. I thought I would pass on a tip .

I scraped this paint off a Richey frame using the disposable utility knife shown that you can buy for a dollar at many big box hardware stores. What you see took about 15 minutes or less. Using this method you can remove maybe 80% of the frame paint in a couple hours, then using a electric vibrating or orbital sander, remove almost all the remaining paint except the lugs in another hour. The lugs will need stripper or, in my case, a small home sand blast kit. This is a lot faster and less messy than using stripper or sand blasting on the the whole frame. I have done it on three bikes so far and am sold on the method.

Agreed, for some cases. My very fine '74 Gitane Gypsy Sport had some odd purple paint that was still soft. Stripper was a messy fail so I scrapped most of it off. Not hard at all. I've also had good luck making scrapers out of steel banding material, like what secures pallets of lumber or bricks or pipe. Higher carbon steel than normal and holds an edge fairly well. You can sharpen it with a file and easily vary how sharp it is. I've not tried rolling an edge on it yet. No need.

I'll guess that scraping may not work well on some paints though. Can't hoit to try, eh?

When I painted frames for Rocky Mtn. I used a three sided knife like this....

The rigid point allows you to scrape in some pretty tight spaces.

Would this method be safe for aluminum frames too?

I just use wettable sand paper to get the tube paint off, and then dental picks and such for detail areas. It doesn't take very long and causes no fumes or dust. Doubt it would well on Imron though. I haven't done it in a while - I have reconsiled with patina.

Does it double as a potato peeler? Seriously, though, where does one get one of these?

Paint stripper and a pressure washer will get the job done a whole lot easier.

https://www.macsautoparts.com/model-...6-54440-1.html

Haven't wielded one of those in over twenty year. But now that I've sourced one, I want one! lol...
Use paint stripper to soften the paint first then use the knife. Aluminium is too soft and gouges too easily to try and scrape hard paint but you can get away with it on steel.
Also depends on product your removing. If it's powdercoated just fuggedaboutit and use copious amounts of paint stripper. And be cautious media blasting aluminium. I think most brands tell you it'll void your warrenty but after chemical stripping, scraping, and soft wire brushing I would lightly media blast the frame to blow out any crud or specks that would show up under a coat of paint. Of course I could sand out the primer coat if needed but time money yada yada.....

I hope you have REALLY good goggles! I visualize stripper-laden backblast.

That said, I'm still all in for chemicals, but whoever suggested a wooden roux spoon to get loosened paint off a frame... thank you!

And that's worse than breathing in toxic paint dust? It's not only quicker, it's far cleaner.

Both are far safer than riding on today's roads, eh? Just worried about eyeballs, that's all -- I've had serious pain from getting stripper on my skin enough times...

Ideally, we need to be able to teleport the frame to one place, and the paint finish to another. "Energize, Scotty!"

I make my own scrapers from old hacksaw blades. For the handle, just wrap an old rag on it. Recycler or cheapskate? 😄

My experience with CitriStrip has been that on the parts of the tube where it's going to work it works well enough that I could probably wipe most of the paint away with a paper towel.



It's super simple for paint over chrome, such is in the example above. For paint that's well bonded to the surface, I find that pre-sanding before applying the stripper helps. For areas where the paint doesn't cooperate as well as in the pic above, the stripper still softens it substantially so that I can get most of it off with a putty knife (which is what I actually use for the easy spots too). This generally gets me 90% of the way to the finish line. For the main tubes, a belt sander strip makes for easy work. For the crevices I start with a wire brush attachment on a drill. If I want to be super thorough, a smaller wire brush on a Dremel tool will clean up the smallest of spaces.

That said, the wire brush step is very messy and your point about flying stripper at this point is well taken. It's probably mostly gone by then with my typical technique, but it's definitely something I'll pay attention to next time.

I finished stripping a 1989 Fuji Ace a couple of weeks ago. I did what worked for me on the other two framesets I did: chemical stripper and let stand overnight in a garbage bag. Next day used a scraper and a utility knife to remove the broken down paint and pressure washed it to get the rest off. I do not have any idea what paint was used, but it was very difficult to strip. I had to give up on the utility knife as it would get hung up and scrape/scratch the steel too much. I still had to use a good bit of sandpaper and manual labor to get the frameset to bare metal, and then to get it smoothed out. The other framesets I stripped were much easier and less time consuming. The Fuji is Ishiwata steel, the Ochsner is Columbus Aelle, and the Lemond Tourmalet is Reynolds 853. I have no idea if the grade of steel makes a difference, or if it is just whatever paint/process was used. I put the final coat of rattle can spray paint on the frame yesterday. My first time painting a bike and I think it came out pretty good, better than I was expecting. No pictures yet.