It never ceases to amaze me that subjects come up here on the list that are both topical and relevant to what I'm doing. Sometimes it's sort of scary.
I think one of the main attractions to building one's own frame is the pride of saying "I built it". For me there was a real sense of pride and accomplishment the first time I built up a bike from a frame and a box of components. I had an even stronger sense after building my first rideable set of wheels. I can only imagine the sense of pride I'd have at being able to say "I brazed that frame".
About a month ago I decided to finally do something with the 84 Trek 770
that was languishing in my bike room (spare bedroom).
I received the frame and fork from an ebay seller who started to strip the
paint and stopped about 1/4 through the project.
I contacted David Cheakas of Southwest Frameworks here in Dallas and
mentioned that I wanted to respray the bike but I'd like to do the work
myself.
After stripping, sandblasting, sanding, priming, sanding, shooting base
coats, more sanding,
shooting clear and more sanding and buffing all I've got to say is painting
a bike is a whole
lot more involved than pointing a spray gun at a frame.
It took me a good 4 days work to get the frame/fork to a point that I would
call acceptable.
I've just received replacement decals from JR at Velocals ( and they are
excellent btw),
so I'll be sanding off some of the clear and applying them to the panels I
added to the bike.
Photos can be seen in my Wool Jersey Gallery
http://www.wooljersey.com/
One last thing, after undertaking this endeavor I have no idea how any of you painters don't charge twice what you do for a respray. And I'd like to thank JR for the decals (shameless plug) and David for the mentoring and use of his paint booth.
Marty Eison
Frisco, Texas USA