What polish and laquer for bare metal?

Eddie - looks quality! I'm inspired!

Keep the updates coming, its really interesting!

Will be good to know what polish, lacquer you use and how high you get doing this inside!! :)

looks good, want a beater done like this, so not bothered about high quality finish

i wouldn't bother with the brake hole

1. clearly a road bike with those dropouts
   
2. can see where you've taken off the cable guides
   
   

you going to polish now or leave it?

I may be getting help on putting in track ends, so possibly those drop outs will be gone.
And ofcourse you're gonna see where i took off the cable braze ons as they leave welding patches (not bothered about that).

Yes, i will polish it (havent bought the polish yet).

@jamesey: cheers, ill definitely inform on "what and how"

ah fair enough then.

cant believe i didnt see AutoSol suggested for the polish ?
gold and black tube, nice shine

If you're satisfied with the finish you get with lacquer only, all well and good.

If you are doing it yourself, first try some lacquer where it won't show too much(eg underneath). It will probably look ok when wet, but once the solvent has evaporated I suspect it will look 'dry'.

At this stage you might consider painting the frame silver, then lacquering. Silver paint is pigmented with aluminium powder, so naturally it tends to look like ali, but if you want to make it look like steel you can add a little black (make sure the paints are compatable). By using this technique you can first give the frame some sort of anti rust treatment - preferably phosphoric acid straight onto the steel, which won't be visible after painting.

Of course all this would be best done with stoving materials, but I don't see why it couldn't be done with airdrying paint. If using two pack polyurathene paint, bear in mind the catalyst is based on cyanide and is not a health product !

If you're satisfied with the finish you get with lacquer only, all well and good.

If you are doing it yourself, first try some lacquer where it won't show too much(eg underneath). It will probably look ok when wet, but once the solvent has evaporated I suspect it will look 'dry'.

At this stage you might consider painting the frame silver, then lacquering. Silver paint is pigmented with aluminium powder, so naturally it tends to look like ali, but if you want to make it look like steel you can add a little black (make sure the paints are compatable). By using this technique you can first give the frame some sort of anti rust treatment - preferably phosphoric acid straight onto the steel, which won't be visible after painting.

Of course all this would be best done with stoving materials, but I don't see why it couldn't be done with airdrying paint. If using two pack polyurathene paint, bear in mind the catalyst is based on cyanide and is not a health product !

as good as that sounds, dude i dont want to paint it, ive already had it sprayed silver and it looked cock...just my opinion. Dont want it fancy, because its not.

i want the rough metal look, the no paint racing feel. I want it to look like every possible gram has been shedded off and ridden through acid rain for thousands of miles. Which it has in a way, and i want to show its true, raw identity, the savage trusty frame that it has been, which is why the naked metal look suits it.

my bike was in the rain and snow outside for a few days and the hammerite clearcoat held up really well, no rust anywhere and its still very shiny

Eddie, the sprayed laquer on bare metal has little to key onto and blooms in the cold and damp (i.e now) and falls off easily. Try brush on laquer and do loads of coats in a hot room (and get HIGH) but i'll rust anyway and then you can pretend you meant it to be like that .
Check out Febs bike now from when it was first done

update on the hammerite, like the above says, the laquer on polished bare metal has nothing to hold on to, i had a little damage on the laquer and i could just peel of the 4 coats of laquer like english skin a week after a spanish holiday. I took of all the laquer and i am going to let it rust just like i wanted to do in the beginning anyway

I stripped an old Townsend 10 speed with Nitro Mors, used a wire brush on a drill to polish it up and then lacquered it with a whole can of Halfords multi puropse Lacquer, I applied lots of coats over a sunny weekend, seems to be holding up ok so far. To be honest if it starts rusting it'll just add to the character as it's a bit of a "rat look" bike anyway. I'll post some pictures once I've finished building it up.

nice one dude....kudos for the effort of lacquering..

I just sprayed it with this stuff
Hammerite Waxoyl Clear Rustproofer

Ive sprayed my bike several weeks ago now and let it set over night until i rubbed the thing in. It basically creates a thick layer of anti rust coating, but once it rubbes off with mud etc it sort of goes. My bike is rusting up a bit now, but about 5 times slower than it would have without it.

New to this so if in the wrong section please politely put me in my place but looking at pics on number 45 has anyone gone for a similar look with couple of coats of clear to create look similar to the rat look for hot rods ? And if so is there pics ?

New to this so if in the wrong section please politely put me in my place but looking at pics on number 45 has anyone gone for a similar look with couple of coats of clear to create look similar to the rat look for hot rods ? And if so is there pics ?

hmm well the photos at #45 is just sandblasted metal. Its dusty and sandy and deep matt grey.
If you're going for a rat look, a few people on here have done this - stripped the frame to bare metal, left it wet outside in the rain to rust and then clearcoat it to fix in that brown raw finish. As far as i know it should work fine.

But if you're going for a real rat look, forget clearcoating, no real rat bike owner has money for that, just take all the paint off and ride, live the moment and enjoy it. You wont need to fake the looks, it will just come naturally

eddie, what have you concluded with regards to keeping the steel without rust? clear powder coating? lacquer? value? I'm going to start putting a bike together for a friend and he wants a bare metal frame, but no rust....

The rust issue is what gets me what the look but also dont want to be a bloody idiot and trash a decent frame over time guess if you clear over the top it may just bubble up in time if any moisture underneath if try for a little but not a lot of rust and look shit anyway, but cheers for the repsonse

eddie, what have you concluded with regards to keeping the steel without rust? clear powder coating? lacquer? value? I'm going to start putting a bike together for a friend and he wants a bare metal frame, but no rust....

i just covered the frame with some rust remover (as seen above) which sort of prevents new rust forming. But that thing does sort of wipe off a bit when you clean your bike, so mine is starting to show small signs of rust in places. I dont really care about rust, i just need the bike to be as strong and as quick as i want it to be.

But if you're going for a neat, clean look,

I would say have it stripped, polished to the shine you need and then professionally clearcoated a few times. You will not be able to lacquer it yourself with the DIY stuff, it will flake off after a while. So i would make sure its done professionally and then dryed out properly by them too.

If you look back on the previous page, Bonk has done a pretty good job with his. And that was a properly paid job.

This is one I did a couple of years back. One of those wire brush thingies on a drill to get the paint off. Quick clean to get the grease off, then clear powder coat.
This is how I got it.

cool. I can blast and polish at college so the whole thing should be cheap ish.

I have a spraying business and have been custom spraying some frames in london. I think the only clear laquer that will be durable will be a clear powdercoat.
I mainly spray with automotive 2pack and candies and flakes. The 2pack clearcoat will not bond properly to bear metal that hasnt been etched. It will cover, but will scratch off quite easily. And as far as i am aware, there isnt a clear etch primer.
Here are some pictures of my work if you ever need it.

Sam

Would there be any trouble in the long term just stripping the paint and leaving it to rust? Being of a steampunk persuasion, I like the rusty look, and I'd kinda like my bike to look rubbish but work well to reduce its nickability at uni. Would the rust weaken the frame / rub off on clothes if left to its own devices? (PS - all bits that need to be kept rustproof for mechanical reasons would probably be hammerited)

On second thoughts, if that's too much like thread hijacking, let me know and I'll start another thread.

dont start another thread as there are threads which answer this, and i think there is probably an answer in this thread as well.

I've looked at every thread regarding rust.
General consensus seems to be that as long as the inside isn't rusty, it shouldn't lose its structural integrity, but I was wondering whether anyone knew what sort of time-scale we are looking at for the surface rust to eat through (obviously, sooner or later it will happen).
As for rust rubbing off on clothes, I'm yet to find anything about it. So I thought I'd ask in here to see whether anyone knew. Admittedly, I should have checked the date; didn't realise how old this thread was (I'm used to forum setups that warn you if you're resurrecting an old thread). If it's a bother, don't worry.

Interesting thing I found on Rivendell Bike Workshop (http://www.rivbike.com/article/bicycle_making/frame_materials):
"Steel critics cite rust as a weak point of steel, and even the word rust conjurs up images of broken chains and hole-y buckets. But rust and corrosion ("rust" being steel-specific) are protective responses to environmental conditions, and once a layer has built up, they become a protective layer against further corrosion. Super thin tubes are more vulnerable to rust than are thicker ones, and that's a good argument for avoiding 0.35mm walls in steel bicycle frame tubes. But if rust were the tube-killer the carb-al-ti folks would have you believe, there wouldn't be hundreds of thousands of 30-year old and routinely neglected steel-framed bicycle still roaming the planet. Even so, it is best to prevent corrosion in super-thin-walled steel tubes by spraying them with any number of anti-rust sprays readily available. FrameSaver is one. Boeshield T9 is another. LPS makes some good anti-rust sprays. If you like the old ways, use linseed oil. The point is, rust is a problem only in your head."
But having said that, there's anecdotal evidence here and there that rust can cause failures. Odd. Anyhow, having read that, I might try just stripping the paint off my frame and protecting the inside. If it breaks, I'll let you know :)

ive used the hammerite clear stuff, it worked ok but need re doing every couple of weeks. it still developed rust eventually.

i liked having a bare bike, but the rust started getting everywhere. every time i touched the bike i would have rust all over me, whenever i parked it at someones house id have the clean the rust up when i left. it got annoying so i got it blasted and painted green.

im not convinced that a powder clear coat would attach all that well to a polished surface. i reckon it might hold alright but wouldn't be as good as a rough surface.

i've just done the same to my genesys skyline (the black flyer) and it looks good so far. Removed all the paint easily" with Nitromors Mousse (2 cans needed) and applied a clear varnish on top... several layers. Lets see how long will it take to rust!

I've got a chrome frame. What's the best thing to clean and shine it up with? Is there any need to lacquer it?

Autosol, and no, there is no need to lacquer.