I'll second Dale's comment about the frame painting business being a big hole in which to throw money. We at Davidson Cycles do it because we like it (we being me as I am the only one who has a lot of personal bikes to paint). We have built and painted our bikes in our current location for a little over 20 years now, and at one point in the late 80s when we were making something like 700 frames per year, we had two complete paint booths up and running full time. Now since we no longer make stock frames, and most of our custom frames are titanium that get no paint, we are able to get by with only one painter and one booth. For a couple years we had no painter and sent them all to Acme Painting Specialties, a one-man shop in Portland. He does a great job too by the way. Then a former employee who had worked for us for about ten years was laid off from his job painting Boeing airplanes and wanted to come back to work for us at quite a pay cut rather than go on unemployment (an honorable thing if I ever heard one) and we gladly welcomed him back. So we are painting away these days and encouraging restoration work. I would say we are not the highest priced but far from cheap either. It is expensive to run a paint shop, and restorations can be very labor intensive especially if they need a lot of frame repair or rust correction. Paint is getting gawdawful expensive too. Recently we have done a couple Cinellis, Paramounts, a Flying Scot, Eddy Merckx, Claud Butler, FH Grubb, Jan Heine's Herse tandem, Frejus, Miyata Pro, Raleigh Pro, Italvega, and of course a lot of old Davidsons, to name a few. We do everything in house except plating which we send out to a very good shop, and can do any kind of frame repair too. I work with a guy who can do very nice and reasonable one-off decals for the ones I can't get already, and he has done some great work for us. He is currently making some for my pre-war Cambio-Corsa equipped Dalcerri that I will bring to the Cirque if I can make it. Making them from pictures taken of the incomplete ones on the frame, I might add. I had him do that for a Bertin recently too, where he turned a picture of a 3-dimensional head badge with an eagle on it into a very nice looking decal. I don't have much of a price list as we prefer to quote per job, but repaints start at $300 for a single color, and include stripping, epoxy primer, color coat(s), application of decals but not the decals themselves, and clear coat. Contact me at my business address ebbikes1@aol.com if interested in our services.
Cheers
Bob Freeman
Seattle
Too many bikes too little time.