Originally Posted by
thumpism
The battered and forlorn Trek 620 frame and fork I got from
steine13 has been languishing in the garage because I have plenty of household projects to occupy me, but I brought home an antique door that needs to be stripped so while the bride was doing that I figured I'd tackle the old paint on the Trek. She is using Peel-Away on the door and it's great, but that stuff didn't faze the Imron on the frame. I tried some different stripper and it seems to be working but that's a messy and smelly task. Called around about sandblasting but that's way too costly for a cheap bike project, especially one that'll get a spray can rebuild.
Old paint does not look terrible but there's rust around the TT cable guides that needs to be sanded and there are plenty of chips that otherwise would not bother me but this will take care of them, too.
You can see surprise patches of rust that were under the old paint.
Spray paint will be a definite improvement and it need not look great. Don't know when I'll ever get it built up but this is the first step. Last time I used Rustoleum's Titanium color and will likely do the same on this one.
Looks like you are well on your way there so I'm late to the party as usual but I'll add this anyway.
Heat and sun speeds this process up immensely,
I scratch them up with a very rough sanding sponge than lay them out in the sun on a black garbage bag, slather on the stripper with a brush and wait, once starts to lift, I slather again and wait. At a certain point when the sun is right you can literally almost see it bubbling.
That's when I get out the stout welding slag style wire brush and saw the paint right off, repeat until just the nooks and crannies are left, slather them and dig in with smaller wire brushes like tubing brushes from Harbor Freight.
Its still pretty labor intensive but you can let it bake while you tend to other things and it is far less tedious than inch by inch scraping, that can be at the very end with picks and small scrapers.
You need good sun for heat so has to be warm outside to work well but I have warmed frames up in the house and used a heat gun to get it warmer as well.
I have a couple of old 1/2 glass storm doors that I'm going to build a hot box with that may speed the process up even more.
