Yup, another glorious sunny day so onwards and upwards.... Time to get some paint on this thing....
Quick and simple Painting Frame
I wanted to be able to get to every part of the frame in one go, so I put this together using junk laid around the place and the frame I bought a while back to hold up a background sheet for when I was taking review photographs.
Rear Brake mounts masked off
Front Brake Mounts masked off
Almost, but not every bit of metal needs paint. The brake mounts were quickly masked off and the part of the forks which goes inside the frame too. There's be no real harm in any of this getting paint but every coat adds thickness and I need them to still work at the end of this.
Detail Spray Gun
My current weapon of choice. This is a cheap and cheerful mini gravity-fed HVLP spraygun. The only real difference between this and a full size gun is the pot capacity. The small pot is more than big enough for the kind of painting I do so I don't see the point buying a bigger gun yet. I actually have two of these - the other one, in silver, you may see later. I only use that for clearcoating. This blue one is the real worker lol.
On another point, I've been referred to as "The Gentleman Modder" in the past here on TBCS. This is mainly down to the fact that I used to do most of my Modding when I was at work on security, so white long sleeve shirt, tie etc.... Time to blow that name out of the water!!!
And off we go
Spraying spraying spraying
Um, yeah, still spraying
More like beachbum modder!!!
Full Etch-Primed Frame
Aaaaaaaaand we're done. The frame (and forks - photo came out crappy) are now well coated in a good coat of Etch Primer. The Primer I used is actually produced by Manor Coatings and requires equal parts of the Primer, and a specific thinner to be mixed. I probably used, at most, about 250ml when mixed, so about 125ml of each product, on the whole frame and forks. Where I work we sell this stuff for about £16 per litre, so I figure properly etch-priming the whole frame and forks, with a quality etch primer, has actually cost less than £2. Not too shabby.
Mongoose Pro engraving
On the very back of the rear forks, there are the works Mongoose Pro Stamped/etched/engraved. Jack wants to try to keep them so I made sure to go a little easier with the primer on those areas. So far so good - lets just hope the next coat of primer, the 2 or 3 coats of colour and the clear don't end up obscuring them...
More details on the frame
I have about an hour now before I can put the hi-build primer on. The etch requires 2 hours to be overpaintable and MUST be overpainted within 24 so there may be another update later today. Having said that, as I'm going to be covering Grey etch primer with Grey hi-build primer - it probably won't look a lot different after the next stage....