PAINT Part 2 Moulding and priming.

Now I had the frame and other parts back from blasting, it was time for a really tedious job….preparation for paint. There is tons of moulding on this bike, a lot of it underneath, so I cut up the old frame jig, after unscrewing all the wood supports, and made a simple jig that allowed me to turn the frame completely upside down. It was on wheels so it could be moved around.
The trick with moulding, is to build the filler up in stages, roughing out with 40-grit production paper between each layer, until it’s almost perfect, after which a thin skim is applied.
Then you start again with 80-grit, after getting the finish good with 80, normally you go on to 600 wet & dry, used wet. As I was using a heavy “flake” on it, I only wet-flatted the parts that were to receive artwork. A good tip when moulding, is to put on a thin guidecoat. I used an aerosol of satin black. This immediately shows up any low spots and makes life much easier. Two large cans of filler were applied in the end (2.5 litres) and I guess 90% ended up as dust on the floor. Moulding took nearly a week, and I’m talking 14 hour days here.
Altogether, there were about 20 items to be painted, so these were all prepared too, hung on wires, and screws put anywhere out-of-the-way to hang them once painted. Now painting could begin. At the time, we were having hot days and cool nights, so my woodburner was stoked up. My workshop is in two sections, and one has a clear roof. Ideal for spraying in as it gets like an oven. All the painting would be done in there, and, still wet, hung on wires in the main workshop. Two reasons. All the fumes, dust and overspray would stay in the end, and freshly painted parts would be hung safely out of the way and be in a hot workshop overnight, so there would be no chance of the paint “Blooming” as it dried. Even the frame could be moved, as it was now on the wheeled jig.
 The first material to go on was 2 coats of etch-primer. It then had to be left for a day. Next day, everything got 4 thick coats of “Spray Putty”, basically an extremely thick yellow primer. Each coat was given two hours to dry, so it took a full day to get it primed, but now it’s nearly ready for some colour. Start counting the number of coats of paint about to go on. The original £250 worth of materials finally went up by £80, and this bloody thing was going well over budget. Also, everything was starting to take 3 times longer than I expected!