Well I put in quite a few hours this weekend but seemed like I did more of a 3 steps forward 2 steps back type deal...
Saturday morning at a reasonable hour I started in with all the right supplies.
I tried a test piece as you can see. The media they used was very harsh and left a fairly textured surface on the steel ... which left a slightly textured surface on the part. I can deal with that.
Well that was annoying...
Both sides.
Round 1. First major problem is the light inside the "booth" isn't great. Hard to see if you've missed a spot. Which I did.
Problem two... spraying in a confined space creates a lot of dust! I don't knot if this is particular bad with this Duplicolor paint but the dust caused me all kinds of havoc. The dust was *very* fine and so it went EVERYWHERE! It also would land itself in the freshly wetted paint and cause a very textured finish.
But I forged on. Round 2.
OMG THE MESS!!! The dust was so fine that it went right through a drop cloth I had down over the bit of carpet that was exposed... left some nice marks on the carpet. Arg.
I had the drop cloth down here before until I realized the dust was fine enough to work its way through it! This is day 2 and after a couple hours of cleaning everything with my dyson. EVERYTHING!
Well after seeing that I had missed spots, had a few runs, had some dust in the finish ... I took the scotchbrite to it and varsol and it's ready for attempt #2.
More failed parts.
The parts that I think worked out well and am not redoing. A fairly small pile....
And the bits awaiting "Cast Coat Aluminum" to match the motor.
Conclusion: Spray painting a bike in a condo is very tough to do in any kind of a clean way. Some of the paint inevitably dries instantly as it hits the air and falls to the ground as dust. This dust is SUPER fine and gets everywhere! Trying to spray many parts at once in close proximity just makes this issue worse since the dust then settles into the other pieces freshly wetted paint coats.
Should have just paid for the powder coat.... I'm not turning back now though.
IW