Frame Painting

[adeyb]

Afternoon,

What the concensus on painting steel frames?

Powder or Spray/ Aerosol?

I know there's no heat-treatment issues with steel so once it's blasted clean and etch-primed I could spray it, then laquer over the decals.

Or am I completely wrong? (It's a nice metallic blue btw)

Adey

 

[Farmfield]

It's an internet forum, there are no such thing as concensus, hehe...

Powder coating:

If done right, nice glassy finish, especially with one coat of color and one coat clear - but check if your decals can take the owen, vinyls normaly does, though...

Spraying:

DIY á la rattlecan - extremely small amount of paint per can equals a very thin coat and with that an extremely sensitive finish. The liquid contents of a can is 80% liquid gas, not paint.

Spraying with your own paintgun, quality & cost is all about wich paint you use - if you know how to do it... 2-component vehicle- or industrial paint is usually expensive enough to make it as cheap letting a professional painter do it, as they blend their own paints in the amount they need where as you'll need to buy the smallest container available for mixing + hardener + solvent + other things you'll need...

Brush & rollers:

There are 5-year coach-painting university classes, and you can get wicked results with enamels.

2-component industrial paints are very tough, so paint it, watersand it & you can get very HQ results. Poisonus stuff though, cyanic nastyness in the hardeners, toulen in the thinners a.s.o...

Combo's

Powdercoat, ad decals & spraypaint the clear. Use a roller and 2-component, ad decals and powdercoat the clear - it's mostly possible to combine methods... You can't use powder- or 'professional' clearcoats over rattlecan work though, the solvents (or heat, if you powdercoat) dissolve the tiny amount of paint in seconds...

So what to chose?

It's all down to economy... I'd say powdercoating gives the best results for the money & simplicity as other people does the job. I'd excpect to pay £50/€750 for a powdercoating incl. clear here in Sweden... About the same for a professional spraying (paint + clear) at a vehicle's painter...

 

[adeyb]

Cheers for the reply.

I am leaning towards "rattle-can" at present as I'm concerned about the decals surviving the oven bake!

Plus I can sort it out in my own time.

Thanks again

Ade

btw: I can't think of a better place to gauge a concensus of opinion than a WWW open forum!

 

[Farmfield]

btw: I can't think of a better place to gauge a concensus of opinion than a WWW open forum!

Due to reality, concensus and rationality are the first things banned in a forum... I used to be chairman of the Swedish Ubuntu-LoCo council, so I know one or two things about this... ;^)

 

[jimihendrix]

Never had a frame powdercoated but i've rattle can painted a few, here's the Clockwork i recently done

Dont know what cans Farmfield has found to contain extremely small amounts but i've found the standard Halfords rattle cans to contain enough to give a frame a couple of coats, the Clockwork pictured was done with one can of primer, one can of orange, two cans of white and a can of laquer (the two cans of white were only because i kept chainging my mind on the colour scheme).

You can get a decent finish fairly easily with a rattle can but because the paint is intended for cars and not bikes it tends to stone chip easily, another point is rattle cans are'nt cheap these days and if you have to buy sandpaper, Nitromorse, Scotchbrite pads etc you may not be much cheaper than getting the frame blasted and powder coated.

I find stripping and painting a frame myself very satisfying though, it's swings and roundabouts really.

 

[adeyb]

Cheer Jimi,

Nice work: looks spot on.

I like the idea of doing the work myself. Having done s few classic cars and built more bikes than I care to remember it's about time I had a go at restoring one!

Off to Halfords then,,,!

Cheers
Adey
(I'll let you know how it goes )

 

[Farmfield]

It's not that the amount in a can won't cover a frame, it's the total amount of paint we're talking about here - and what that amounts to: a very thin coat... And a thin coat equals a sensitive surface...

I'm only guesstimating here, someone with more paintgun experiance could fill in, but there's <100cl paint in a rattlecan and you'll use at least 200cl with a paintgun, so just that amounts to twice the thickness of a coat. Using 2-component paint the coat is also much more durable than 1-component paint - which a rattlecan uses...

So then you shouldn't use rattlecans?

Naeh, I use them from time to time, it's all about what you want - and/or are willing to pay... I don't think someone restoring a rare frame with NOS parts would paint it with rattlecans...

What I write here is only what I know from experiance mixed with my thoughts and opinions about this, as usual there are no absolutes concerning right and wrong ways to do things, but the more info you have the easier to make a choice about wich way to go in your current situation. =)