Originally Posted by ianpaschal

I happen to do a lot of painting sans fancy workshop, and here's what you must know:

1. Strip ALL of the paint. Anything left, even if it's a tenth of a millimeter thick, will show up as a bump in the final paint job. Luckily it's not that big an issue in tight grooves between lugs and such since the brazing is almost never perfectly smooth, but along the wide smooth surfaces of the tubes it will look like garbage.

2. Remove all rust with rust remover of choice. I've had disastrous experiments using house hold cleaning supplies and although it's not as fast and effective as an acid bath, a steel brush and generous amount of WD40 will make a steel frame shine.

3. Before you pull out a can, sterilize your environment. Clean the frame of all grease using some kind of degreaser. My preference is actually acetone on a soft cloth. It will dry quickly and plow through any finger prints or left over WD40.

4. From this point on, it's a good idea to work with clean rubber gloves. Very very lightly sand the frame to give it some grip. Although its tempting to sand with the length of the tube, you'll put long grooves into it, so go lightly with small circle motions. "Caress" is probably the right word here.

5. Put a primer on. I like to start with a self-etching primer that will galvanize the steel. You can't sand these though so the surface will start to get rough. After that, put your classic sand-able primer on.

6. Before putting paint on, smooth out the surface. We don't want to polished or the paint won't stick, but the primer will tend to give you a surface like very fine sandpaper. Using 600 grit sandpaper can help remove most of that, although I've actually found that Scotchbrite pads are my sanding tool of choice. Use clean soft cloth to remove any dust.

7. Put a coat of paint on. It's important to have good spray painting technique. Using the can too close will cause the propellant to blow on the paint and give it a rough finish. Worse, it could also lead to drips. With that in mind though, the best results are created using a "wet-painting" technique where you put the paint on heavy enough that it flows a little bit. This way rather than just being sprayed with colored dust, the surface looks like it was dipped in liquid paint, sans brush strokes. Experiment with a part of the frame that won't be seen (like the steerer) before going at it on the main frame. After it's totally dry, repeat step 6. Try not to remove too much paint, but it's not the end of the world if you do. We just want to ensure that any roughness doesn't slowly build up and amplify between layers.

8. Repeat step 6/7 twice more, so that you have 3 layers of color. On the third and final coat of color, move from Scotchbrite pad to steel wool and get very very gentle. Finally, take a clean cloth and scrub the paint until it shiiiiiineessss. Between 3 coats the paint should be thick enough that you're not going to expose anything. If you're pulling paint off with steel wool, then it didn't stick well enough and you need to go back to step 1 and re-strip and clean the frame, with extra caution given to step 3.

9. Apply decals. You can get a lot of high quality recreations of classic decals. Carefully apply them.

10. Clear coating time! This one is pretty simple. I don't sand the clear coat because it will cause it to get foggy so wet-painting is a must. I do 5 coats to ensure ain't nothing scratching my precious decals.

It's a TON of work, but it can look good, and I find the slow work of caressing with sandpaper and steel wool, and working over every inch of the frame very therapeutic.