On 4/12/2020 4:36 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Sunday, April 12, 2020 at 11:15:54 AM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 4/12/2020 1:09 PM, jbeattie wrote:

Small shops haven't gotten my repair business since about 1975 or 1976, so I guess I've been putting them out of business for 44 years...

I think the last time I paid for a normal bike repair was about 1982.
And they said it couldn't be repaired. (Headset problem on a used bike
that had apparently suffered a crash.) I ended up shimming the lower
fork race on one side. It's not perfect, but it's good enough.

I did pay for a repaint plus some braze-ons once.

Well, that was kind of the whole point of this NG. It wasn't rec.takeyourbiketoashop.tech. I did my own brazing (ham-handed, but adequate) and rattle can paint jobs and paid for a powder-coat on one bike. Insurance companies paid for steel repair and repainting back in the '80s after getting whacked by cars. Ruckus did an amazing carbon repair and paint-matching on my Norco Search after my son had a nasty chain-suck incident. Those guys are artistes.

I really wanted to take the UBC frame-building class here in Portland and TIG weld a Ti bike, but they shut-down the Portland location and moved everything back to the Ashland location (Portland rent too high). I also wanted to do a real compressor or HVLP paint job with some PPG or DuPont product, but that stuff is ridiculously expensive, and I would end up with 50 times more than I needed to spray a bike -- but I would still like to do that. Maybe get a super air-brush. I have a compressor. I don't have Lou's machining talents or access to machines and never really wanted to make arcane doo-dads, but that would be fun. Some super-machined ringy-bell.

Most everything else on a bike is plug-and-play these days -- or buy proprietary tool and plug-and-play-and-pay. Arcane knowledge is not grease/no grease on the tapers but is programming Di2 on the E-tube or setting trim on ETap.

-- Jay Beattie.


I have painted out of doors, no booth[1]. Plan for a dry
warm calm day (do you have any in PDX?) just after dawn when
there's no wind, shoot as soon as you have 65 degrees. Move
it to a garage out of the dust etc after spraying.

You need a regulator for your compressor but a basic siphon
gun is under $30 and you can buy primo PPG or DuPont product
by the pint for color and 1/2 pints for activator so, yes,
it's a project but not ridiculously expensive.

[1]The occasional car for friends

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971