martl

Ah, then i applaude your tenacity I myself get easily frustrated, and i got *very* frustrated by rattle cans. At some point i decided bike painting is the same as bike riding. If one is already handicapped by lack of skill and talent, one can ill afford to handicap oneself further by using non-optimal equipment

i did use a good spray gun, an air compressor and even a 3M mask, but my paint booth is amy mini multi purpose woodworking/metalworking/bike fiddling shed with no dust avoiding system whatsoever, so i hope that qualifies.

Sanding down:


Base coat applied


clear coat


gold detailing


result

Andy_K 

This is probably my final update on this thread, though I'll no doubt share pictures of the complete bike in plenty of other threads.

I applied a thin layer of clear coat to make sure it wasn't going to wrinkle the paint before I committed my decals. I put the decals on, then gave it a couple of very thin layers of clear coat followed by two normal coats. I sanded that down to get everything smooth, but I found that I was sanding through to the color in a couple of places so I gave it a few more coats of clear. Rust Oleum says that with their Crystal Clear Gloss Enamel you can recoat at any time. Various online advice says that it's important to wait about 15 minutes between coats to let it expel solvents, but other than that I didn't worry so much about drying time between coats of clear. The Rust Oleum web site says that the Stops Rust Gloss Enamel color sprays are "Oil modified Alkyd" while the Crystal Clear is acrylic enamel, so I guess that accounts for the differences in recoating recommendations.

The day after my last round of clear coating the temperature here in the Portland area was forecast to get up to 106° F so to give everything one last bake I took the frame to work with me and made a point of parking in direct sunlight. One online article I found gave an estimate that the temperature inside the vehicle would get up to about 140° in these conditions. Perfect!



That got me back to the sanding and polishing. I used successive rounds of 1000 grit, 1500, 2000, and 3000 before finishing it off with Meguiar's Ultimate Compound. I'm not a particular patient man, and consequently my results were inconsistent, varying from a beautiful glassy finish to good enough the I probably won't mind. I'm debating with myself whether to call it done now or go back and try to bring everything up to the best quality I can get. I'm concerned that I may have already reached the point of maximum practical quality because in the last few steps I've found that everything I've done has also introduced a problem of some kind. You'll notice that I've uncovered the white base coat on the tips of some of the edges at the lugs and bottle cage reinforcements. There are a couple of other white specs from the sanding. Before the last round of clear coat, I accidentally peeled up the corner of one of the decals. I figure I at least need to take a break from it. Given that it's never going to be perfect, I may just touch up the white spots and enjoy what I have.

The one thing I'm seriously considering is painting the flutes and top of this seat post blue to match the frame.

jdawginsc 

Super impressive.

Andy_K 

Thanks! You know, it was your encouragement that got me into this project. When I bought this frame I thought I had no business trying to paint it, but you mentioned liquid mask and told me I could do it. So far, so good! We'll see how long it takes this to deteriorate.

jdawginsc 

It’ll be plenty durable. And chips are just badges of honor for the bike. I am interested to see if I will have the same patience and talent once I get going on the many projects in the queue.

davester

Some nice work here! I have spent many years working in a field that involved selecting and using appropriate respirators, so my contribution to this thread is to comment on respiratory protection. Note that the OP appears to be wearing a particulate respirator (e.g. N95 or N100 or similar). This is not an appropriate respirator for painting since it won't filter out the organic compounds in the paint. A paint respirator generally uses an organic vapor cartridge (usually purple in color) to remove the paint vapor combined with a particulate filter (usually white in color) to remove condensed paint particulates. Note also that although OSHA and NIOSH previously required supplied air respirators for isocyanates (due to the inability of humans to detect by smell when respirator breakthrough (i.e. the filtering medium becomes saturated and no longer removes toxics) occurred, they now allow use of combo organic vapor/particulate filters if they are changed out frequently. That said, isocyaniates are extremely toxic so many have criticized this approach.

Another point to make is that cartridge respirators are completely useless if they don't seal tightly to your face.There will be instructions with the respirator for testing the fit. Make sure that you follow them closely and don't even think about using a respirator if it can't pass the tests.

Paint safely guys!

Andy_K 

Thanks, @davester, for the safety tips!

Andy_K 

Not wanting to be one of those people who just brushes off safety issues, I took a look at my respirator. It's this one:

https://www.harborfreight.com/safety...tor-66554.html

The Harbor Freight page doesn't have much useful information, but the product packaging says "usable with isocyanates when in accordance with change out schedule" and "NIOSH approved for organic vapor/P95" but the instructions do say I shouldn't have a beard. So, I failed my safety inspection. I'll shave first next time and buy fresh filters. I have been putting back in the ziplock package it came in between uses, and I bought it just before starting this project.

RustyJames 

I have embraced a philosophy of “it’s okay for old things to look old”. Embrace the patina, etc. Understandable that it’s not for everyone. It’s made my life much more content.

RiddleOfSteel

Man, that looks so good, Andy! Well done!

mhespenheide 

That looks great! Andy_K , can I ask where you got the decals? I have a Merican that -- if I keep it -- will need a full restore.

Andy_K 

I got the decals from VeloCals just before they stopped doing bike decals, but you can get the real thing direct from Mercian.

mhespenheide 

That's far too sensible. I should have checked them first!

George Abitbol

Very nice result.