Decals and Handlebar Tape

I think I am trying too hard to be a perfectionist. After wet sanding the gloss coat ready for the decals, I sanded a little to heavy, or in some places the gloss coat was too thin. The up shot was that I sanded back slightly too much and in two places you could see the metal shining through.

The consequence was, more sanding, more painting, hey ho. However, by the end of today I had flattened out the paint ready for the lacquer, but before I do that next week end, I was able to put the decals on. These are a replica of the ones on the original frame and I think they set the colour of really well...

In between odd jobs I also wrapped the handle bars with some nice leather look bar tape...

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And the bike is done...

The last few weeks have been a waiting game, the last few items ordered online have taken their time to arrive, the last being the brake cable end stops. So while I had everything else together, I had no way of using the brakes. Now that it's all together and the first shake down ride complete, I am very pleased with this project. What do you think? It's been a great project to do over the past three months, i've learnt a lot: Stripping the bike down and removing the paint took longer than I had imagined You use a lot more paint that you think, in fact I would say that I could have done more coats of paint, or been better at those that I applied Finding the right bottom bracket axle, front chainring combination is hard, in fact, I am not entirely satisfied with what I ended up with, but it works The single speed conversion hub is a genius pice of kit! Cyclecross in-line brake levers are no good if you want to have a front and bac...

Primmed and ready for the top coat

Spent the weekend spraying two coats of primer on the bike, I still have a tendency to either spray too quickly and end up covering the garage more than the metalwork, or, spray too slowly and end up with some runs in the paint. That was easy to resolve with a light wet sanding, but yet to find the balance between the two. I am hoping that for the top coat I won't have this issue, I have found a paint from spray.bike that sprays on like a powder coat, but dries like a traditional rattle can. The results I have seen across the internet are impressive, so hoping that this helps with the final finish. Anyway, here are the results from the primer coat:

Bike No. 2 Finished

That's it, all done. The original plan was to do the bike up and then sell it on, but that plan has gone to the side. It will be used by Sophie when she goes to University this September. It was a fun project, the best bit was actually rebuilding all the components with Sophie.

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