Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Turned out good........

Wow, that paint job turned out better then I thought.....
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I painted the cranks while I had them off, I am going to have to cover the faces with helicopter tape to preverve the finish on them. Probably slap a few pieces on the top of the top tube and the bottom side of the down tube as well.

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You can sorta see the color shift in this pic..........

I almost hate to hang all my old parts back on it. It will be a week or so until I get it all put back together-I want to wait until the paint is fully cured before I start handling it very much. I did color sand it and compound it-I have to give it the final polish and some wax yet. Not bad for a quickie rattle can paint job. I never use Krylon for bikes -it chips to easy- I always use some sort of lacquer like Dupli-Color. And always use at least 4 coats of clear so you can sand one or two away to get the finish smooth.

I did have to get my rear wheel fixed. Thing about having wheels made with freeride rims is that they are so strong-I didn't even notice I had broke one spoke and bent another-the wheel was barely out of true.

.............................Been reading this guys blog for some time. I really like this entry. I used to have a brother-in-law that ate like he was never gonna get a chance to ever eat again. It was like watching one of those front load washing machines run. You could watch individual pieces of food spinning around and around. The sucking and slurping noises he made were an additional bonus.

.............................My mother-in-law has been over quite a bit helping clean up our daughters room. If there was anyone that gets a free pass to heaven-she should be first in line. She has more energy then people 20 years younger then her and is always doing nice things for other people. I couldn't ask for a better mother-in-law and if my wife ends up like her when she is that age-I'll be a lucky man.

Like I'm not already.

Most normal guys don't own a fleet of expensive bicycles and have a wife that doesn't bat an eye about it. You might have the bikes but not many guys also have the understanding wife....................

My Test-It-Thursday item this week is the paint I used to refinish my hardtail.........
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As you can see this stuff comes with 3 cans of paint and I used 2 kits to paint my frame. Each kit was 20 bucks. The first is a black primer like paint. The second paint you apply is the color coat and the more coats you can apply-the more the color will shift. The third can is the clear coat-this clear coat is a pearl type clear-it has tiny beads of plastic in it, so it's not entirely clear, it's very luminous when it goes on. Here again-the more coats-the more of a color shift.

Very trick stuff for a rattle can paint job. This type of paint is very sensitive to the angle at which you hold the can to the object you are painting-90 degrees is best, they don't tell you this on the box, I just knew it from reading about it previously.

Couple things about painting with rattle cans of automotive paint. Lacquer paint will dry to the touch (flash) in a couple of minutes if you do thin coats. When it's hot and humid-it will flash almost instantly. You can do numerous coats in one sitting if you time this flashing process correctly.

With the humidity we have been having-I did all my coats in the space of 2 hours. That was about a dozen coats of paint spaced out at roughly ten minute intervals. It also helps if the paint is warm. I placed the paint in a pail of hot water so the paint went on as thin as possible even though it was close to 100 degrees outside when I painted. Thin is good. You are never gonna get professional results with spray cans but if you prep correctly and have a steady hand (long even passes with the spray can) you can get pretty nice results.

My repaint went really well, I managed to get 6 coats of clear on before I ran out of paint-this is important because if you color sand-you'll be taking off 1 or 2 coats with 2000 grit sandpaper wetted down with soapy water. This takes all the surface imperfections off and leaves the surface somewhat dull. You then use a mild rubbing compound to buff the paint until it's shiny again and then use a fine polish to remove the scratches from the rubbing compound..................

Ya'll see this? Now I ain't a rocket scientist like the folks at NASA.......but why the hell are they using foam for insulation on something that goes 27,000 mph? Doesn't seem to smart to me. Whadda I know, I make donuts for a living.

This place has "awesome" written all over it. Damn. Check out the pics of those wall rides. If only I had a set of pads, a full face helmet, a freeride bike, several spare thousand dollars to rent one of those spiffy houses and a set of balls to ride some of that stuff-I'd be set.

Till later kids.

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