A couple of days ago I decided to try my luck at painting one of my own frames. Sounds easy enough huh? Painting is like working with carbon fiber, its really easy to make a mess. Anyway, the epoxy primer went on pretty well and after sanding it and smoothing out all the fillets I was stoked to do some painting.
First I sprayed the frame with epoxy primer straight out of a can. Its pretty cool because now they put all the good stuff in a rattle can but its not your everyday $5 can of paint. They're charging like $15-20. Not cheap but it did turn out to be some good stuff. Also, after starting this little project I realized that this way is much better than just running out and buying a compressor and all the painting accessories only to find out you can't paint after all. The way I see it, if you can get a frame looking good with a rattle can and you plan on continuing to paint, then buying all that stuff will be justified. After the epoxy primer is cured I hit all the joints with a filler primer that is sandable and its supposed to help clean up any imperfections, but it actually just shows you if you didn't clean them up enough beforehand. The letters in this text are looking bigger than normal. The other day the power went off and my computer got all screwed up somehow. I was trying everything to get the settings right and now I've changed everything when apparently, according to my wife, all I needed to do was right click. Pffff! I'll work on it but if it goes anything like all the other projects I'm working on its probably gonna be a while.
Ah, this looks much better. The text not the painting. The painting is jacked up. I actually have the base coat looking pretty good but working with these stencils is proving more difficult than what I thought. I did two things wrong that I know of. First, and I knew not to do this, but I put the first coat on too thick. Light, thin coats, one on top of the other. I knew to do that but I didn't realize how thick I laid it on in the first section. Second mistake, I didn't let it dry long enough before pulling the stencil off. I just wanted to see how good it was. Can you blame me? Too thick of paint means the paint is actually as thick as the stencil and when you peel the stencil off the paint comes with it, and if the paint isn't dry its even worse. Accept it, embrace it, fix it! Its all educational. 
Parts of it don't look too bad. Whats with the font on this thing? Every time I scroll down it changes the size of the letters. The painting is more predictable. The "MOTO" looks pretty good, although its not the hot pink that I normally use. I didn't have any of that, its at Paul's shop. Paul has been building a house these last couple of months and probably will be for a few more, hence me attempting to paint my own frames. Its just something I always wanted to do and this is the perfect time for it. Wait till you see whats under the taped off section of the chain stay. I tried to get creative but I probably just screwed up. I had so many ideas in my head for the paint scheme that I forgot it was the first time ever that I was gonna paint a frame. "Hey hotshot, might want to keep the first one a bit simple since you don't have a clue as to what you're doing." No way man, I want it to be so complicated that I pull my hair so hard that my feet come off the ground. Pain and anguish is what I'm in search of.
At least the seat cap turned out ok. It should look even better with the clear coat. Apparently that part can be a little tricky as well. Oh well, I'm on a mission now. This font changing size has my head all screwed up. Isn't there enough crap to do without your computer playing mind games with you. So anyway, I've already sanded all the mistakes and reshot the base coat where needed and I'm gonna give it another shot tomorrow but for now I'm going to bed. Chao.
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