About Me

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Back in my hometown of Jonesboro., Arkansas, United States
My name is Dimitri Harris and I have been building frames for over 9 years now. I learned the basics after spending two weeks with Koichi Yamaguchi. He is one of the most interesting people I have ever met and I am thankful to have worked with him. Since then I have just been building one frame after another and learning as much as possible along the way. I build steel fillet-brazed frames that go by the name of MEECH, which is an old nickname that I have had since I was a kid. I build mostly cyclocross frames because I love their versatility however I also do road,single-speed, and mountain bikes as well. Custom frames start around $1400. All the frames are handmade by me here in Jonesboro, Arkansas. I am insured and guarantee all of my work so if you are in the market for a custom steel frame I would be glad to build it for you. I am also building frames from carbon fiber so if you would like to ride a prototype frame give me a shout. Thanks for stopping by. You can email me at meech151@hotmail.com or call (870)897-6703 or visit www.meechcustombicycles.com Thanks.

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Wet Paint


Here is a quick pic of Jonathan's frame as the clear is drying.  It turned out very nice and I'm happy with it.  This is the first frame that I have painted myself for a customer so i was a little nervous, you know wanting it to look as good as possible for both of us.  Black and white seems simple enough but it was a little difficult as well because the contrast are so sharp. Any thing white shows on the black and a little black can destroy white real quick but I got through it fairly well.  There was a small fingerprint like mark on the inside of one of the dropouts, which I truly don't know how it got there because I never touch it around there, but I guess I did.  A quick touch-up should put us on par.
I don't have the full blown pro paint setup yet.  I've been waiting and practicing to see if its something I would like to invest in or if I was just gonna give it a try and then take things back to Paul.  I'm truly enjoying it right now and I want to get better so I'll probably invest a little at a time as I get the money.  Up until this frame, i was using a professional grade clear from a rattle can that I buy at a local auto paint store but on this one I tried out this little aerosol sprayer that they sell.  Just pour in your clearcoat or paint and screw the aerosol sprayer on and you're painting.  It worked pretty good.  It doesn't have a lot of pressure so its kinda slow going but the advantage to this is that there is not a ton of excess wasted and floating around in the air.  You can pinpoint it a little better.  The canisters are small and I was worried they would run out quickly but one of them lasted me for the entire frame with plenty left over.  Just keep an extra canister around if you run out and it only takes about a minute to be shooting again.  I'm gonna try painting the next frame with it.  Check back for photos of the complete frameset in a bit after I wet sand it and clean it up a little.

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