Art Deco Road Bike...

Road bike builds are suppose to be quick and easy...no crazy geometry, easily fit tires, no crazy bending or fabrication.  So why do I make it so complicated by creating tiny masks and multiple colors for paint?  I guess I can't help myself.

I've wanted to use this color pallate on a titanium road bike but just have not had the right customer yet, so I adapted it a bit for this steel road frame.  Two colors that look so good together are deep red and pearl white, but you have to be so careful, as the red likes to bleed and even the smallest imperfection shows up like a hairy mole on your nose.  Add in a majority base of porcelain green, and you have a cool art deco color scheme that actually looks pretty sharp.

To go with the theme, I created some masks to dress up the frame a bit...

 

I about went crosseyed with the small details of drawing in Illustrator and weeding...

With the masks all designed, cut and weeded, it's time to get into the booth.  Sparing you the boring details of preparation and primer, we fast forward to a base layer of pearlized white...

After flashing it off in the bake box for 15 minutes, the paint is dry enough that I can begin to mask off the areas that are going to remain pearl white; the rear end, Groovy logos and bands, and the customer name.  Blue fine line tape, 3M green mask tape, and some spray mask paper are all in place...ready for the next color.

 

The masks are quickly hit with pearl white to seal the edges and prevent the next color from sneaking under the edges.  Porcelain Green is then loaded in the gun and sprayed for the main triangle color...

 

Before flashing off, I remove the majority of the masking to expose the surface for the next color, then it's through the bake box and then onto the deep Red...

 

Pulling off masking, setting up more, and covering it all up again...paint jobs like this take time...now to set up for the black accent details to give the tubes some pizazz.

 

Ok, I think that's all the little details and all four colors, so let's unwrap it all and see what she looks like...do you have an idea based on the steps so far?  This is the fun part, visualizing it in your head and then seeing it materialize step by step.  Cool.

 

After a gentle rub down with a tack cloth to break the masking edges, it's ready for a little clear...

I like how it came out, can't wait to see it built.

rody