Hello C&V,

I am finally [finally] getting around to a project this week that has been sitting for something like a year: an early 80s LeCroco frame that I am restoring myself.
Heading out to "UBlast" on Thursday to DIY and I'm looking for recommendations and tips on how to best protect the BB and headtube for excess media.
Rags? Tape? What the move here?
Thanks in advance for any help you may with to share.

[PS - Hi to WileyOne, I can't seem to locate your contact info.]

I don’t know if my experience was unique, but I did not protect anything when I sent my Eisentraut to get bead blasted. The visible interior of the tubes also got cleaned as a result, and I have not had any weird effects since painting it myself and building it up.

This is a name I'm unfamiliar with, and can't locate it via Google Search. Can you offer some clues as to its location and/or website?

I do think it's worth covering the vent holes to the interior of the toptube, seatstays and fork blades, so you don't have media coming back out at bad times, like while painting, or later getting into bearings. Good thick duct tape like Gorilla is pretty blast-proof as long as you don't linger with the gun pointed right at it. We used wood toothpicks stuck in the little stay/blade vent holes.

We didn't bother keeping the media out of the BB, chainstays, seattube or headtube, cuz those could be cleaned well enough by knocking the bulk out and then giving it a little blast of compressed air. We used the air gun nozzle with a longish tube on the end. Careful with the air though; we had good water/oil traps, but even so a little comes through the line, so avoid surfaces that will get painted, and/or give the frame a solvent wipe before painting. A good idea anyway since even the blast media can have some water or oil in it, either right out of the bag, or via the air compressor.

Make sure you've done all the machining, like reaming/honing for the seatpost and headset, tapping the BB, before blasting. There's almost nothing worse for your cutting tools than abrasive grit from blasting.

Very helpful. Thank you.

It's a DIY mediablasting shop in Langley, BC.
Pretty far from Evanston!

Man I wish we had something like that in Seattle! I sorely miss working at a shop that had a cabinet big enough for bike frames. I even blasted tandems, with a sort of tent built over the open door on the side of the cabinet. Blast the front half, flip the frame to blast the back half.

Not only is getting blasting done, by the one place I found, way expensive, but I don't trust them with the thin tubing I prefer. I would have trusted them with the steel patio furniture I was repainting, but their asking price was more than the furniture cost new! Luckily I didn't care how it looked so I painted right over the rust. We're more Klampetts than Rockefellers.

I'll second that one. Blasting services are crazy expensive around here, as are powder coating shops. Even in Spokane nobody wanted to do a bike frame for me. If the business model does not support it, so be it. Maybe a bike club should find a local shop and go in on a blaster. The hard part is finding anyone with compressor capacity to run a good unit.

Honestly it was my first time at UBlast and it was absolutely amazing! I've had a terrible time finding a bike painter around these parts - it's near impossible. Luckily my friend married a guy who does body and paint on cars. I just wanted to blast something myself. $35/ half hour. It seems like a great business to run out of an industrial park or even a garage. This sign was no joke.