Eric's paint taking shape...

Ok, a partial post tonight as I'm pretty tired and have got lots to do before I close down for the night, but I wanted to show some pics of Eric's frame in the paint process.

As a quick refresher, Eric's bike is a super duper all rounder, with all the accoutrement's to allow for around the world passage and continued function despite mechanicals or available parts...disc brakes, canti brakes, EBB, geared vertical drops, high bottle mount for a battery pack for lights, regular bottle mounts, custom rack, matching stem and fork, Ti bar, and a bottle opener for those warm nights in the coastal Mexican bar.

To provide a finish that was durable and worthy of all this potential action, I decided to lay down a powder primer and vanilla cream first coat and then layer on the wet paint from there.

Eric's tastes definitely lean toward the vintage /classics, but he also wanted some modern flair in the paint scheme. Worst of all, he gave me artistic license to come up with the final product...sometimes I feel like folks give me just enough rope to hang myself with if they don't like it ;)

So, I masked the frame up two times and ripped everything back off as the design just was not flowing for me. Third times a charm, right? I decided to run a parallel tapering panel design on the tops and bottoms of the tubes to give the lines a smooth balanced look while breaking up the color in a pleasing fashion. The dark green and vanilla cream color contrast gives that classic feel while the design is a bit of a modern take on the old school panel design.

To get started, the whole frame gets sanded down with 600 grit paper to allow for a smooth base and better mechanical adhesion. In the pic below, you can see the difference in the sanded area (the downtube) and the unsanded (bottom bracket).

Next, the masking goes on...lots of time and meticulous work.

All masked off and ready for paint, the frame get blown off and wiped down again.

Normally, I'd spray the frame in the original base color to seal down the mask and prevent any leakage under the tape onto the negative aspect panels. With powder, I can't do this, so there will be some areas that I'll need to go back over with the airbrush to clean up the edges.

The dark green is down...peeling off the masking. This is a nice tight edge, no clean up here :)

The aftermath...
A quick shot of the frame with the first coat of clear down.

The fork and the stem carry over the design, so that the entire bike will visually flow and look like a complete designed package rather than a group of assembled parts.

Next day I'll sand the clear, airbrush up the edges of the cream panels where there was some leakage, and then apply decals. The bike will look a lot different the next time you see it.

Hope you like it so far Eric...if not, we can always respray it once this one has traveled all over and is all beaten down ;)

cheers,

rody