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The paints I chose. Available from http://www.bricklanebikes.co.uk/bike-paint at £7.95 a pop. The lacquer ain't too hot, so think I'll be masking it up and going with 2K clear coat. No vinyl to degrade as all spray-painted, so should be ok.
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So, in terms of spray technique, I misted then covered the whole frame in Gray's Inn, then misted and dripped the Battersea blue over the top, not worrying too much about slight drips. I'll get proper shots of this technique done tomorrow, but the photos don't do justice to the effect. One thing I'd recommend is if you're working in less-than-perfect light, get a torch/phone light out to check any spots you've missed; since I was spraying directly onto black with dark grey there were a few I missed, especially on the head tube and underneath the down tube. Tricky areas like rear brake junction and BB will need some care. Bear in mind too that if you're misting a lot of paint will gather on those areas that are privy to the laws of gravity, so the uppermost surface of the top tube, down tube and particularly welds will attract overspray.
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And let's have a look at vinyl. I've had the idea for using topographic stencils for a few years now, and am aware that @hoops has done something similar of late, not to mention Stinner's Black Sheep frames, but I don't want to appear as if I'm ripping them off; it's merely a nicely graphic way of representing the places I grew up in - the Highlands - and trying out some new painting techniques that I've had in my head for a long, long time. Here's the top tube and down tube graphics which I'll spray white with orange sprinkles over the top.
All graphics are hand[mouse]-drawn in Illustrator.
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Great story, nice write-up!
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Excellent
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It's a wee bit tricky to get the splatter effect; one way to explain it is that I'm rocking the nozzle backwards off its axis (forcing the paint to come out unevenly) with my thumb after initially spraying away from the surface, which seems counter-intuitive at first but works with practice. The pocket Spray.Bike cans seem to coat a lot thicker than the larger ones, so the surface of what you're painting will be egg-shelled if using this technique.
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Arc 31 rims with Sapim bladed spokes, from here: http://www.superstarcomponents.com/en/arc-cx-ray-probuild-volta-11speed-clearance-dealx.htm
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Scilly.Suffolk
sacredhart
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onyerbike
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About
The Heavy Methil Spesh Spray.Bike Paint Project
Posted by
@i_am_lono
A bit of back story; the last band I was in released records under the entirely made-up and purely-for-comedy Heavy Methil Recording Co. (heavymethil.com). For non-Fifers, it's a pun on one of The Kingdom's less salubrious towns, but which had a rich history during the war as a major port for coal and which was one of the busiest ports in Europe. My family and I are all from the area, East Fife being a former coal and heavy industry powerhouse in the 20th century but the 80s/Thatcher did for that and the area underwent a fairly steep decline into unemployment and social depravation. My granddad went from fighting in Burma in the war through to working in the local mine, then the foundry to finding himself laid off at the age of 60, moving on to work as a porter in the hospital where he would die three years later from lung cancer, perhaps due to the chemicals he and his co-workers inhaled on a daily basis. Other parts of Fife are more renowned for their picturesque qualities, like the East Neuk from Anstruther to Pittenweem and up to Oxbridge’s bastard step-son St Andrews, but there remains a kind of hardness and authenticity to East Fife that endures.
With that in mind, I wanted to spray my own frame and fork using Spray.Bike powdercoat in a can, and design my own decals. I’ve had a lot of vinyl cut and weeded over the years, and wanted everything to be sprayed, so I’ll be masking everything up and spraying then 2k lacquering over the top.
The colours I chose were Battersea, Gray’s Inn, Fluoro Orange and Whitechapel, which is to say petrol blue, dark grey, mental tangerine and plain white.
Back to the bulld. I had an old alu Spesh Allez lying around and wanted to build up a cheap new bike - provisional budget £700 - so started off by stripping the frame of its old Sora groupset and binning the wheels. Rear axle had bent so that was binned also. Sold off a few parts to some folk on here, and managed to pick up bits and bobs in various sales. Here’s the parts list so far:
105 5800 Groupset inc.
53-36 chainset, 170 cranks
Brakes
Shifters
11-28 cassette
Braze-on FD (need a braze-on adapter)
Long cage RD (bit of a pisser; don’t plan on running 32 on the back and it looks shitter than the short cage version)
Cables etc.
Cost: £264.95
Wheelset
Superstar Components ARC 21 wheel set with gold hubs and gold skewers
Got a good deal on this,
Cost: £218 all in
Tyres
Got some Michelin Lithion 2s on sale, £11.95 each. Have ridden Pro 3s, Krylion Carbons and Pro 4s so these sounded good at the price, and have some tread on em too. Fuck me were they hard to get on the rims. Ended up doing ye olde cable-tie method to get them on, but killed my thumbs in the process.
Bars and stem I had lying about to practise spraying, but I picked up a 120mm Deda Zero 2 for £19 and RHM 02 bars for similar. Gonna swap them out for Zero 100s as the drops are a bit too short on the RHM 02s.
So, prepping the frame.
I went cheap and got wet/dry sandpaper ranging from 80-400 from Poundland, so £1 outlay. Getting the orange peel off the frame just required elbow grease, and there were a few chips here and there to buff out. Started off with coarse grit to get through the top layer, then moved to smoother paper wetted; 6 or 7 passes and it was gone. Note to self: this sandpaper is shit. The 80 grit lasted about 30 seconds wet before it turned into mush, but it was a quid.
Wiped down frame with isopropyl alcohol spray, some WD-40 for any glue residue. Began initial coat, shaking can for the requisite 3 mins then spraying in short strokes, about 10cm away from the parts to be painted.
Experimented with powder coating bars, stem, seat clamp and top cap. Bit of a learning process, but here’s what I’ve found.
Expect overspray. A lot of overspray. I started off in my kitchen and got in trouble with the missus for getting paint on the lino. A lot of it can be just brushed away but for the stubborn stuff I used bio WD-40 substitute to get it off. Work in ONE direction if possible.
Take your time. Paint is touch-dry within 20 minutes, 2 hours for adequate drying, but the lacquering phase should really take place 24 hours of first coat otherwise you’ll get dripping/egg shell. Lacquering is by far the hardest part for fiddly components; I found I got a lot of drips where gravity took hold, but that may have been over-exuberance with the can.
Wear gloves. Wear clothes you don’t mind getting wrecked: overspray again. And, preferably, wear a mask. For the stem etc I stuck the extractor fan on for first coat, but knew I’d need somewhere airier for spraying the frame. Even in a well-aired room I felt my lungs getting weird. Also, In my haste, I started the coat of white and orange way too soon after the initial grey/blue coats, and got a fair amount of drips.
Right, tomorrow I’ll tackle the frame proper, and stick up some decals. Here's a few images from work so far.
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