Author Topic: frame stripping and painting  (Read 4174 times)

Darragh

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frame stripping and painting
« on: August 16, 2014, 08:19:39 AM »
Hi,

Just wondering if anyone has ever tried stripping and respraying their bike. I picked up an old steel framed bike recently that I want to do up for a friend. It's a bit rusted in places and I wanted to do a custom design on it anyway to make it unique (was thinking black and orange like a bee!).

Any ideas how difficult this is to do? The local metal place quoted me £70 (probably more as I'll use two colours) and seems like they would do a good job. Anyone know of any good 'instructables' on this? I've had a quick look on the internet and seen suggestions of using paint stripper and a wire brush attached to a drill.

It's not an especially good frame, a Marin steel hybrid bike build in Taiwan

Thanks

Darragh

Daniel Beckham

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Re: frame stripping and painting
« Reply #1 on: August 18, 2014, 01:30:39 PM »
Hi Darragh

I carried out this task on and old Saracen mountain bike which I currently use for Touring. It was powder coated so had to use special paint / powder coat remover to take it back to bare metal. I then used car aerosols to paint the bike with several coats of primer (rubbing back on each coat), white base followed by the pearlescent (Ford electric orange) and finally the lacquer.

It was very time consuming but pleasurable at the same time but with hindsight I would not bother and would have it carried out professionally. The reason for this is twofold. Firstly the cost of carrying out the re spray was far more than expected, nearly £100 in the end with the stripper (paint  ;)) as the spray pattern is quite wide on the aerosol so you only end up getting a small proportion on the frame and lots in the air, on the floor, in the roof and everywhere else you can imagine. Secondly, even though I had the area sealed with plastic sheeting and well heated the paint does not stand up well to chips like a powder coated frame would be. After a couple of short cycle tours and day rides over the last 18 months the frame could do with a freshen up from chips and small rust developing.  I’m not going to as I am saving up to buy a Sherpa frame but if I was to continue with it I would strip it and have it powder coated at a local firm. It would be cheaper, cleaner and far more durable in the long term. I also find that the paint is difficult to clean grease off, the reason for which I can’t work out, but it is if it almost penetrates the lacquer and I have to use a spirit based cleaner each time which is a pain.

Darragh

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Re: frame stripping and painting
« Reply #2 on: August 18, 2014, 09:00:59 PM »
Thanks, yeah I think you're right. There is a local firm doing sand-blasting and powder coating for around £40 which seems very reasonable and I'm sure will be a much better job than I could do and save me a lot of work. The main reason I wanted to do it was to get a design on the frame (the company just do it all one colour), but seems more sensible to get it done properly.

Thanks for your help

Darragh

jags

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Re: frame stripping and painting
« Reply #3 on: August 18, 2014, 11:23:09 PM »
Darragh buy a rattle can of satin black acrylic.give the frame a good rub with wet and dry clean well and away you go just keep it dust free. ,once it dries you can start painting a design on it.

Andre Jute

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Re: frame stripping and painting
« Reply #4 on: August 19, 2014, 12:02:30 AM »
You could get the frame painted in the predominant or background colour and then do the design over that.

Unless you already have experience of doing designs on 3D surfaces, a bicycle might be too tricky to start on. Only weeks ago you could buy a perfectly good small retoucher's airbrush kit, complete with compressor, at Lidl for 60 euro; they even gave one paints in the kit. I saw just an airbrush (better than the one I bought at Lidl), no compressor, at Banggood the other day for 13 Euro delivered.

But the problem isn't the equipment, it is the skill. If I were doing this job, I'd have the bike professionally sandblasted and painted, and then make and print out the design life-size on frisket (self-sticking masking and cutting paper used in airbrushing) in sections with jointing crosshairs (QuarkXPress and other layout programs add these automatically if you ask them to). Then I'd hand bike and 1:1 art on frisket to an airbrush artist with hotrod experience, rather than the more common photo retouchers (the latter are used to working on flat images). This person will very likely ask you for another or several more sets of the printouts, if your design is at all complicated and needs to be applied in layers. If you can't find an airbrush artist, ask at the local shops who painted their signs, and get the signwriter to do the job (generally with brushes) in a waterproof paint he, she or it has experience of, very likely acrylic.

Then take the bike back to the first car duco expert and get the whole thing clear-coated with some non-yellowing lacquer. Acrylic paint is plenty tough, but you don't know how thick the airbrushed put it on, except that the more expert your painter is, the thinner the layer of paint will be. So, lacquer or some other poly-something protection.

Of course, if you have experience of painting designs on small tubes, ignore this and go for it.

In either case, don't forget to send photographs for us to perve over. Good luck.

Darragh

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Re: frame stripping and painting
« Reply #5 on: August 19, 2014, 08:15:37 AM »
So say I get the bike powder coated, can I then spray acrylic paint straight on top of it using masking to create a design.... will the paint adhere okay?

Thanks

Darragh

Darragh

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Re: frame stripping and painting
« Reply #6 on: August 19, 2014, 08:25:30 AM »
The other idea I had was to create a design and get it printed as a vinyl decal for the top tube and down tube. My flatmate can do this quite easily as he's a graphic designer. Is that cheating a bit do you think?

jags

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Re: frame stripping and painting
« Reply #7 on: August 19, 2014, 04:55:05 PM »
The other idea I had was to create a design and get it printed as a vinyl decal for the top tube and down tube. My flatmate can do this quite easily as he's a graphic designer. Is that cheating a bit do you think?
.

now your sucking diesel ,much better to design the decals and stick them to  frame save you a lot of hassell

Andre Jute

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Re: frame stripping and painting
« Reply #8 on: August 20, 2014, 03:54:01 AM »
.now your sucking diesel ,much better to design the decals and stick them to  frame save you a lot of hassell

+1

Save yourself a whole lot of frustration and go the vinyl sticker route. As long as your mate's boss, or whoever they use for printing the vinyl, doesn't hit you with a one-off set-up charge that'll boggle your eyes.
« Last Edit: August 20, 2014, 05:36:39 AM by Andre Jute »