Originally Posted by
ddeand
I finally hit the wall with my Ironman frame touch-up project. My initial goal was to get it looking OK from 10 feet - I told myself not to go totally anal on the project. Just get it ready to ride. Yeah . . . right! After about a month of mixing paint, I feel I got the color at about 98% - you can tell the spots when you’re at 2 feet. Every time I did a spot, my wet sanding (800 grit) would take it down to the primer. I tried airbrushing, but my skills were suspect, at best. Eventually, I returned to the airbrush and got a much better result. I haven’t been able to get out and find the appropriate color to mix for the yellow, yet, but that will be less of a hassle. I just needed to get this bike put together! Today, I installed the bottom bracket, the headset, the brakes, rear axle stops, and handlebars. The cables and housing should be here tomorrow (white braided). I’ll start out with the white saddle and maybe switch to the yellow one once I figure out how to get the leather to wrap around the difficult curves. Bar tape will be yellow/gold. I will likely go back and retouch a few spots, but for now, I just want to get out and ride!
If I am ever trying to do a touch-up of paint that has chipped off, I
never sand or feather the edges
first.
I clean the chip as best as I can first and then thin the paint as much as possible...just thin enough to leave a decent amount of color in the chipped area (going out to the edges of the chip) and let it dry before applying another coat of color. The lack of feathering leave and edge that the new paint can fill to....I never try to fill in with one complete coat but use several to
build up the paint so that it is just slightly above the "original" surface...then try to sand "only" the smallest amount of area where the touch-up is in order to get it level. use a 1200 wet dry to do this and follow with a fine polishing compound.
Another trick that I have found useful is to position the frame so that the chip is as
parallel to the ground as possible...this is done so that I don't get that blob or pooling of paint that always occurs when the paint flows downwards...you know what I mean, and I
never sand through to the primer unless I am going to use an airbrush or spray gun to paint with.
It would be nice to see how your method turned out..it looks good from 2 ft.
JM2C's
Ben