Andy_K 

I expect the paint will come off of the polished chrome if I just stare at it really hard. The same might be true of the rest of the frame, really. I saw a video of Brian Chapman using an Xacto knife to cut the last bits of paint from the edges of the chrome on one of his bikes. That came out beautiful. We'll see if I can manage similar results.

I have also found myself wondering about the cost of professional clear coating. I suspect it would be more than I want to pay for this project, but who knows. My plan was to do this as a learning exercise and to see how I liked the color scheme. I'm hoping to get a few years out of it and then have it professionally repainted later when money is flowing better. I expect professional clear coating at this point would extend the life of this paint job, but it would also enshrine all of my little imperfections. I have definitely decided that I don't want to mess around with the 2k stuff myself. The risk/reward balance just isn't there. I'm playing with Rust Oleum clear coat on the fork. So far, I'm not impressed with the results, but I expect I'll be able to improve it a bit. There are some scary videos on YouTube of people ruining projects with Rust Oleum clear over Rust Oleum paint.

jdawginsc 

I am not going to mess with 2k clear either when I begin the projects in earnest. I am guessing Rutoleum clear can be polished and rubbed smooth?

BTinNYC 

I'm sure it can. The Duplicolor (non 2K) clearcoat polishes out nicely.

Steve B.

I read the thread title and wonder why a topic on the Trump Presidential Library.

Andy_K 

I expect so. The problems I mentioned with ruining projects had to do with the clear coat causing the color coat to wrinkle. This seems to have been caused by people putting the clear coat on after the initial recoat window had passed but before the color coat had fully cured. The directions on the can say "within one hour or after 48 hours" for re-coating. I don't trust that 48 hour recommendation. I'm giving it two weeks. We're supposed to get temps in the 90's next weekend. I expect the space above my garage will go well over 100. That should take care of it.

noglider 

I used liquid latex on my chrome lugs when I painted my frame. I don’t consider myself skilled, but that aspect of the paint job came out well.

AdventureManCO 

I had wrinkling problems as well with a project, and what I found made it worse was heavy coats. When I kept that in mind, and sprayed many light coats on top of 'already painted' paint, I got much better results.

Andy_K 

That's what I've been doing with the fork. So far, that's working except that it doesn't really show any signs of the kind of gloss I expected from it. Maybe I need more light coats, or maybe I just need to polish it.

52telecaster

Looking good Andy!

Mr. 66

That's a really neat project. I was hoping you would do the barber poll, lol.

I don't think recoat times are the problem with paint and clearcoat. The dry time is about adhering best. Not following may be soft, weak or flake but shouldn't bubble the undercoat. The paint guy told me I needed to be real careful in making sure that I had compatible products when it came to chemistry. He was trying to tell me that my auto clearcoat was going to react with the black 2k paint I used for bands I painted on 2k primer, my color coats were auto blends. I don't think that was true with my selections, but I did heed.

I did paint the black w/ a 2k, but I did mask that to paint the colors and clear coatings. That project, not with great details, I re-did the masking every coating to try and lower peel and lessen the sharp edges of the detail. I cut my own strips about 1/16", that's a good width for forming curves and cut points. I cover the rest with larger pieces a will 'kiss' cut on the strips. 1/8" masking tape is available but that can be bulky for bike detail.

I used to do this with light masking for lithographics, the knowledge transfers well for paint. It's pretty fast and the razor shouldn't touch the metal in the process.

thanks for sharing

Amitch

So cool! Thanks for sharing!

Andy_K 

The clear coat from Rust Oleum is enamel, the same as the color coat, so they should be compatible. The video I watched made it look like the color coat just wasn't adhering to the surface. A lot of people in the comments thought drying time was the issue. I guess I don't really know. I've seen some people claim they got the same result applying a second coat of color a day after spraying the first coat. There just seem to be a lot of ways you can mess this up.

USAZorro

Hey Tom, This tip sounds like gold. I see a bunch of liquid latex products out there. Is there something specific I should either look for, or avoid when acquiring some?

zandoval 

One of the most important parts of the process. Man this baby looks nice!

I use rattle can Rustolium Metal Primer then impatiently wait a few weeks or more before going for the top coat.

I do a hand brush of the top coat with Rustolium Gloss Enamel mixed with Penitrol at about 15% to 20% so the brush flows the paint on easy.

I get a nice thick protective coat but I have to hang the frame in a clean area (attic) and wait wait wait on drying time. I know the paint job is dry when the fresh paint smell is gone.

noglider 

I don’t remember the name or where I got it. It was from a craft supplies business. I bet any liquid latex will do. I’m really bad at painting in many ways, but I guess I’m a good sculptor. I think I might have used an x-acto knife after it dried and before I painted, but now I don’t really remember. And my paint job didn’t come out very well overall, but this aspect of it worked out perfectly.

52telecaster

I thought I did a nice job brush painting enamel on my Raleigh professional until I brought it home from Maine on the back of my car in a rainstorm. The head tube lost a bunch of paint. Looks gruesome but the brown is still covering. I guess I should have clear coated it.

zandoval 

Very interested in the type of paint you used.

If it was Rustolium Enamel I would like a note on how it failed. I do remember ruining the paint on a refrigerator I was pulling in an open trailer over in West Texas during a rain storm. The paint was excoriated on the leading edges.

Of further personal note I wonder if 2K Rattle can clear can go over Rustolium Enamel.

Andy_K 

I'm pretty sure I watched a YouTube video where someone did that and got great results on a car.

Andy_K 

Are you sick of my updates yet? You could say, "get a hobby," but this is my hobby so what can I do?

Since it would be easier to start over and repaint the fork if something went disastrously wrong, I've been using it to test out the clear coat. It didn't get a really glassy finish, but it also didn't wreck the paint. I start with a few very light coats, then tried to put on a thicker coat. I got some runs from the thicker coat, so I sanded that down with 400 grit paper, then worked my way up to 2000, wet sanding all the way. Eventually I got some blue on the sandpaper, so I roughed it up with 400 and applied a couple more coats of clear. That came out decently smooth, so I wet sanded with 1500, 2000, and 3000 before finishing it off with Meguiar's Ultimate Compound.

I could get this smoother and glossier with more work, but I have a fairly low threshold for calling the point of diminishing returns. After the last respray, I think I spent less than 30 minutes on this. It looks great from two feet away, but doesn't look professional on close inspection. I'm OK with that.



If you've been following this project, you may recall that there was a blemish in the chrome on the fork crown. I had been playing with a chrome paint pen to cover that up, but I took it back to bare metal before I started painting. It looks awful close up, but at a glance it's not too bad. I may go back to the paint pen, or I may just leave it as a tribute to the bike's age.



The other side has a blemish too. I had barely noticed that when the whole frame was rough. Maybe these will distract from the flaws in my paint.

martl

Rustoleum, i thought, is designed for maximum protection, not necessarily for most refined finish or thinnest coat, am i wrong here?

Andy_K 

It's marketed as rust protection, but I just see it as cheap spray paint. The idea behind this project is to see just how far I can push the results with cheap spray paint.

martl

ah i sort of missed that self induced challenge i painted a bass guitar once with rustoleoum to get that utilitarian look, so i feel you

Andy_K 

I should clarify, it's not just that I particularly wanted to use cheap paint as such. Rather, I've been slowly trying to learn to paint bikes and using commonly available rattle can stuff seemed like a good way to learn. I don't have an air compressor and a paint booth or anything like that, so I started out with rattle cans, a dust mask, and an open garage door. In fact, when I started, I didn't even imagine this was a reasonable thing to attempt. My first foray into spray painting came in June of 2020, after I had @gugie add bottle bosses and front rack mounts to my 1969 Raleigh Competition. To do that, he had to take some of the frame down to bare metal, and I decided to hit it with primer and Rust Oleum to keep the rust away until I got around to having it painted properly.



To my surprise, the gloss black Rust Oleum was a perfect match for the original paint, and with virtually no skill and very little effort, I managed to match it so well that I still haven't bothered to get it repainted. Even on close inspection, I can't see the transition between the spray paint and the original paint. I honestly have no idea how that happened.



So that gave me the itch to try painting a whole bike. The first bike I painted was a 35-pound bottom-of-the-barrel 1973 Nishiki Olympic that was so riddled with rust that it was beyond touch-up. It came out about the way you'd probably expect a first attempt at spray painting a bike to come out, with lots of orange peel, drips, and quickly chipped spots.



But, significantly, it also turned out good enough that I decided to try it again.



Later that year, I bought a 3Rensho-built Specialized Allez that some previous owner had defaced. The paint had been stripped from the lugs without doing anything to keep it from rusting, and the bottom bracket and chain stay cable guides had been filed off. Here's how it looked after Gugie replaced the cable guides.



What was left of the original paint was in excellent condition, but again I thought I was painting it just to prevent rust until I could give it the professional restoration it deserved. But once more, I found a miracle paint match with Rust Oleum gloss cherry red, and while I didn't get this one as smooth as the Raleigh, this is another instance where I haven't felt the need to go beyond my home paint job.



Fast forward to May 2021 and the Clunker 100 Challenge. There's a restaurant at the end of a popular Oregon bike trail that had had an old Takara sitting outside on their bike rack since at least 2016, so you can imagine how rusty it was. I talked to the owner of the restaurant, who told me it was his brother's bike. He agree to let me take it home and restore it for the Clunker Challenge. It badly needed new paint, and by this time I was hooked on spray painting. The results were great.



With the Takara, I started to learn how to properly sand the frame after painting to fix texture issues and then polish it to bring back the gloss. It was a bit of a lipstick-on-a-pig project, so I didn't put a lot of time into it, but enough to convince me that this could be something that would really come out looking good.

Next up was April 2022 and another Clunker Challenge. This time, I found a Centurion Elite on Craigslist that someone had repainted, apparently without successfully getting the paint to bond to the frame. I bought it for $60 and it was ready to ride apart from the rust.



I felt like this was a slightly nicer bike than the Takara, but only slightly. It was still a great platform for me to develop my painting skills. I don't think I learned anything new with the Centurion, I just got more practice and developed more confidence. I was very happy with the finished results.



After the above projects I had (1) developed a fair bit of confidence in my own ability to spray paint a bike, and (2) found that I really kind of liked the results I was getting with Rust Oleum paints. So, when I came across the Mercian frame for the project in this thread, I decided to go all in and see just how far I could push this. One of the big unknowns from my previous projects was long term durability. The Raleigh and the Allez only have small patches of spray paint, so I might just be getting lucky with them, and I gave away the other three bikes, so I don't know how they have fared. I feel like the Mercian is worthy of a professional paint job, but I didn't have the budget for that this year. So, here we are.

gugie 

I remember the difficulty we had sourcing authentic Shimano bottom bracket cable guides for that Allez. I'm pretty sure Bob Freeman told us that, to be authentic, they had to be Shimano. We were lucky to find these.

Andy_K 

Let's not besmirch Bob's reputation. No doubt, he could tell from one glance at 50 yards whether they were Shimano or not, my recollection is that he said he doesn't worry about things like that. It was me who insisted that we try to source Shimano guides since that's what would have been on there originally. I just hope the primer didn't cause the Sharpie writing to dissolve.