# How could this possibly have ever worked? (frame stencils)



## bloo (Dec 9, 2020)

These are currently for sale in the for sale section (not mine). I imagine some of you have painted frames. I have. Before the advent of modern special masking tapes, it was almost impossible to paint a different head tube color without bleeding at the join line. It didn't matter if you sprayed it or brushed it would bleed into the other color.

This is not the first example I have seen of stencils like this. There have been some on Ebay, but not recently as far as I know. I think I have seen other patterns (BFGoodrich?) too, and also one set that had dried paint all over it.

So here's my question: How could this thing have possibly worked? No way could it have hugged the frame as tightly as tape. I guess maybe Schwinn could have shot some lacquer with really fast thinner, and hoped it would dry before it bled, but even then it would have lacquer all over it ready to make a giant mess of the next frame.

Does anyone have insight on how the factory used these?

















						Sold - Schwinn 40's-50's DX/Hornet factory paint stencils... | Archive (sold)
					

Two original factory paint stencils for DX/Hornet style scallops. One fits the smaller straight bar on later Hornets, the second fits the bottom curved bar on all DX/Hornet frames.  $325.00 OBO




					thecabe.com


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## coasterbrakejunkie1969 (Dec 9, 2020)

My guess is that the paint used by schwinn was far different then auto paint today. For one I do not believe they used more then one coating of paint. Meaning they did not hang all day in a booth to be sprayed multipul times. One and done  with all 3 coats  red preimer, alumiinium undercoating, and finish coat. So there for I would think it was a much thicker heavier paint then used today. Also the paint process is a baked on finish so perhaps the heating process allowed the paint to adhear with out bleeding. IMO hopefully someone will know for sure.  Cool item either way


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## Superman1984 (Dec 9, 2020)

Less thinner, more hardener & hotter temps I think would flash cure quick ?  Maybe as stated 1 spray of the final details & done.


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## bloo (Dec 9, 2020)

There wouldn't have been any hardener when Schwinn was doing that, and my guess only lacquer or some sort of Alkyd based enamel for paint. I doubt anything else was available.


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## coasterbrakejunkie1969 (Dec 9, 2020)

is it possible the paint was more like powder coat and went on almost dry seeing as though it was being baked on? One of the real old times will know exactly. They are all dreaming of original paint phantoms and real black '65 stingrays. Hopefully they will chime in at some point everybody still sleeping in CA. Freqman1 is always awake and most often has the answer.


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## bloo (Dec 9, 2020)

After the war electrostatic painting wouldn't surprise me. That works like powder coating except with paint. The static charge draws the paint droplets to the workpiece, making it easier to get even coverage, and also to get in the nooks and crannies. It also sounds like a good way to blow yourself up. I have experimented with it, but long enough ago I don't remember much.

It would really surprise me a lot if they were doing it in the 30s.


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## Freqman1 (Dec 9, 2020)

The reason it seems I’m always awake is I’m 9 1/2 hours ahead of EST over here (Afghanistan). Schwinn used an enamel with no hardner or catalyst. If you ever used  any rubbing compound on the secondary color you will find it disappears fast! That’s because it’s shot pretty thin to avoid the bleeding that would occur if the tried to load it up. I’m sure one of the Schwinn gurus can elaborate. V/r Shawn


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## bloo (Dec 9, 2020)

Shooting thin to avoid bleeding is almost impossible, and you still have to cover, and not wind up with a step..... It is possible, and more or less what I did back in the days we only had masking tape. I had a few strip and redos lol. I am trying to imagine how they pulled it off in a production environment, and with THAT stencil, and in enamel too! Shoot one frame and your stencils (3 of them!) are covered in paint. Now what. Wash them off in lacquer thinner and blow them dry for every frame? Dry enough not to attack the paint on the next frame when you put it on?


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## coasterbrakejunkie1969 (Dec 9, 2020)

Is it possible those were used to make the stensils thast were used. Shawn thank you for your service. You seem to be one of the wheels that really keeps things rolling on this site .Thank you


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## Rivnut (Dec 9, 2020)

On the original paint job, which is the secondary color?  Is this a guide for cutting?  Could this device been bolted on over a mask then someone cut the mask using the device as a template then removed the device and the part of the mask that would have left only the mask for the design?  Or vice versa?


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## Archie Sturmer (Dec 9, 2020)

If manufacturers could stamp chain ring sprockets out of boiler plate steel, I believe that they might also come up with a simpler paper cutting die-tool for making masks or stencils?


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## kreika (Dec 9, 2020)

Another one of the many mysteries lost too time...


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## Superman1984 (Dec 9, 2020)

coasterbrakejunkie1969 said:


> Is it possible those were used to make the stensils thast were used. Shawn thank you for your service. You seem to be one of the wheels that really keeps things rolling on






Rivnut said:


> On the original paint job, which is the secondary color?  Is this a guide for cutting?  Could this device been bolted on over a mask then someone cut the mask using the device as a template then removed the device and the part of the mask that would have left only the mask for the design?  Or vice versa?



I would think the secondary color would be the least amount used. So if blue and white then white would be the minimal sprayed 1st and then lay the primary over it. I am sure the bikes were fully painted all at once or at least I would think in a production factory.


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## 49autocycledeluxe (Dec 9, 2020)

being made of brass I could see them clamping hard enough on a steel frame to keep paint bleed down. I'm sure they also had someone there with a rag with thinner or something to attack the bleed before it becomes permanent. 

too bad no one ever brought their phone to work and took a video of the process.


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## Cooper S. (Dec 9, 2020)

I bet if someone were to use one of those and experiment with a couple different methods it’d be easy enough to figure out


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## 49autocycledeluxe (Dec 9, 2020)

they are painting the white on the green in the example above. the white was most likely a much thicker paint, just look at any rusty bike with total rust over the main color and still pretty good on the scallop color. (see avatar) look at the mechanism to clamp it, you sure wouldn't want someone clamping that on your

... finger. I bet it is pretty snug.

those things are so cool.


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## Superman1984 (Dec 9, 2020)

49autocycledeluxe said:


> they are painting the white on the green in the example above. the white was most likely a much thicker paint, just look at any rusty bike with total rust over the main color and still pretty good on the scallop color. (see avatar) look at the mechanism to clamp it, you sure wouldn't want someone clamping that on your
> 
> ... finger. I bet it is pretty snug.
> 
> those things are so cool.



The secondary color (usually) white is always less affected by rust like you say. It's usually just barely oxidized rust on most of the 50's bikes I have seen. Some are jus' shades of dark brown though they're so bad. Usually seem to be red bikes mostly too


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## GTs58 (Dec 9, 2020)

I shoot a fast dry Acrylic Enamel oil base at work on industrial machines and there are a few tricks that might make this possible. Use Toluene as the thinning solvent or any fast drying solvent of your choice, turn down your paint volume and fan size, then shoot a quick tack coat or two. This keeps the final coat from running/bleeding under the masking. Warm temps are also needed. I do this when repainting panels that had some small sections of repair work before shooting the whole panel. By the time I readjust the gun for shooing the whole panel those tacked spots are pretty much dry to the touch. If this method was used by Schwinn then the process might have been done in two steps with two painters, one doing a tack coat and one doing the final wet coat assembly line style. I call it the piss coat/wet coat method. lol 
My Little Lady owned a painting company and she couldn't find a painter that could brush an alkyd paint on a metal panel door. The builders were getting pissed so I started spraying all the front doors on those production tract homes. I sprayed one quick tack coat, then smoked a cigarette if it was cold that day, and then shot the wet coat. Using an airless would have been ideal, but every door was a different color so that would have cost bucks cleaning out and changing colors so I used a cup gun which required the paint to be thinned out quite a bit. Doing a piss coat/wet coat kept the thinned out paint from running. The doors were painted standing up, not flat.


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## Goldenrod (Dec 10, 2020)

Great discussion!  Since I live in the Chicago area, I volunteer to dig up the whole Schwinn shift and ask them how they did it.


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## Superman1984 (Dec 10, 2020)

Goldenrod said:


> Great discussion!  Since I live in the Chicago area, I volunteer to dig up the whole Schwinn shift and ask them how they did it.



If you find any buried Schwinns give me 1. Lol


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## Jeff54 (Dec 10, 2020)

I imagine they glued cork or rubber on, left the outer area to catch over spray and trimmed the inner form. As to the brass, it may be because, it provided more flexibility than steel would. I've noticed that there's quite a few where the edges of paint are not all clean and smooth, but surly they couldn't rush through and not get some overspray which, I've never seen. And adding another person or step to wipe off the overspray while something simple as 'bib' saves da $$$ Ka-Ching! seems a no-brainer to me.


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## Tom Hand (Dec 10, 2020)

If anyone can find the top one and the men's lower one, I'd like to buy them!  I think the curved one in the image is a lady's versions since the scallop/eagle part is shorter than the long one used on men's bikes. 
And, now I know why my center straight bar cream paint was so far back. The straight "mask" could be put on farther back but the curved ones likely could not be.  I repainted my frame exactly as it was before.


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## gkeep (Dec 10, 2020)

Jeff54 said:


> I imagine they glued cork or rubber on, left the outer area to catch over spray and trimmed the inner form. As to the brass, it may be because, it provided more flexibility than steel would. I've noticed that there's quite a few where the edges of paint are not all clean and smooth, but surly they couldn't rush through and not get some overspray which, I've never seen. And adding another person or step to wipe off the overspray while something simple as 'bib' saves da $$$ Ka-Ching! seems a no-brainer to me.



I was thinking the same thing, maybe some type of gasket was attached to the stencils to prevent bleed. I've noticed on some of these designs you can sometimes see speckling along an edge as if it was sprayed quickly and the absolute minimum of paint to get a solid coat.

Now I want to go down in the basement and look at the two frames i have with this design.


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## Tom Hand (Dec 10, 2020)

You can even se some "not sharp" lines when you look closely.


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## Tom Hand (Dec 10, 2020)

I am fortunate to live close to a professional pin striper and he helped with the fork spears and the chain guard striping.


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## Astroyama (Dec 11, 2020)

bloo said:


> View attachment 1315439
> 
> These are currently for sale in the for sale section (not mine). I imagine some of you have painted frames. I have. Before the advent of modern special masking tapes, it was almost impossible to paint a different head tube color without bleeding at the join line. It didn't matter if you sprayed it or brushed it would bleed into the other color.
> 
> ...



My wild guess is...stencils were used as a Stencil to hand trace with a marking pen unto frame.  Whereas the stencil outline could then be utilized for free handing 1shot enamel-type paint.  I was under the impression that Schwinn factorys had numerous hand-painters and strippers on duty.    Hence the imperfect edges.    Only a guess.


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## bobcycles (Dec 11, 2020)

the distance in the 'depth' of those metal stencils that have sort of a "wall" area in each cut out
would inhale the paint that would normally build up on an 'edge' like tape etc...  I'm sure
they had the air and paint mixture dialed in as well so that one "Whoooosh" and on to the next one...


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## the tinker (Dec 11, 2020)

Women did all the detail paint at Schwinn. Schwinn found that women were much faster, more patient and neater than the men. I did have a friend that worked alone in the repair and paint touch-up area at the "end of the line."  He was a guy.


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## AndyA (Dec 11, 2020)

A couple of other, possible theories come to mind relative to prevention of paint bleeding; not backed up with any evidence. 1) Coat the inside of the stencil with something like vaseline or 2) line the inside of the stencil with something like gasket material. As Brother Goldenrod suggests, we need to track down someone who worked in the factory.


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## Jeff54 (Dec 11, 2020)

the tinker said:


> Women did all the detail paint at Schwinn. Schwinn found that women were much faster, more patient and neater than the men. I did have a friend that worked alone in the repair and paint touch-up area at the "end of the line."  He was a guy.



Indeed there's a notable ladies team doing the pin-stripes but that's not the same paint as the cream and other two tone verities.

Ya can not miss the variance between Fender and chain guards white pin strips that eventually turns into a powdery dry weak paint. It's simply not the same. Perhaps, not baked as the cream was IDK but it's crap compared to this baked cream.

Just like the the silk screen white that's well known on chain guards 50's 60's 70's to 80's that  same white, in the long run, is crap. Which also goes for most other pin-stripes on other manufactures. Moreover, they seem to be, not be baked on. And in Schwinn's none white pin stripes, like blue and green two tone, the frame is baked, but fender's
 pin stripes dry out and if not very, very careful, you'll wash it off.


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## 56 Vette (Dec 11, 2020)

Pretty cool discussion here, and a very neat tool Schwinn employed to give a uniform paint job on these bikes. I've never seen what Schwinn's lay out was for their paint department, but in my mind it was no doubt massive, with many steps until finish painted frame and other metal parts were sent to the assembly area. I work in the paint booth at the Jeep Wrangler plant and just from what I've seen, and I'm in no way comparing Jeep to Schwinn, is that there may have been upwards of 50 to 75 bikes at a time wearing these tools. A color coated bike gets to this part of the line, tooling goes on, several light coats of ivory get sprayed as the bike goes down the line, and before the bike goes into the final oven bake, tooling is removed, placed into a tote to be "washed" before being sent back to be reused, quite possible the tooling stayed on for the oven bake, but tool cleanup would have more difficult. Just my opinion, and what makes sense to me, I could be completely off base though! Joe


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## Archie Sturmer (Dec 11, 2020)

> Mr. Schwinn found that women were fast...
> He was a guy.



Makes sense to me.


> I am fortunate to live close to a professional stripper.



Wow.


Tom Hand said:


> You can even seee some "not sharp" lines when you look closely.



Is that 6" scale from Products Engineering Corp. (PEC) of Torrance, Calif. (was Azusa)?


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## mrg (Dec 11, 2020)

Well in my 40+ years of painting I've done about every type of painting ( with every type of paint ) working for the Railroad, school districts, city's & new construction and used many types stencils, with the right combination of paint, viscosity, thinner/reducers type of spray equipment, pressure ( or lack of ) and angle of gun & tip, tack/dry/finish coats ( also sprayed/brushed different stuff on the stencils ), it's not hard to get a nice line, believe me in a production setting they made it as quick/easy as possible, it was just a toy! man when I painted bridges over the water ( ocean ) I had to measure how thick I put the paint on with a gauge, ( while hanging over the water ) that was a long time ago but I think 5-6 mils thick because of the saltwater. oh as far as the pin strips not all was hand, I even seen a pics/footage of a just rotating a fender with a fixed paint brush/wheel/applicator. think I've seen a 3 prong striper for the fork/frame. even a painting wheel like the one shot striping kits.


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## GTs58 (Dec 12, 2020)

Yup, easier than making an apple pie. As close as the gun is to the object I say the paint volume was low and the tip was small. No face masks for these tough guys!     1959 print.


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## Tom Hand (Dec 12, 2020)

_Archie, it is a Mark Reiss from USA but not sure the state. And my pin striping pal's name is Bob Bond._ https://www.bobbondart.com.
He is a former Californian and knew and worked with many of the big names before he moved to our town of Lee's Summit.  He made the forks and guard look dead nuts on.


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## bikejunk (Dec 14, 2020)

GTs58 said:


> Yup, easier than making an apple pie. As close as the gun is to the object I say the paint volume was low and the tip was small. No face masks for these tough guys!     1959 print.
> 
> View attachment 1317541



Yikes those are some ugly women LOL


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## Jeff54 (Dec 22, 2020)

GTs58 said:


> Yup, easier than making an apple pie. As close as the gun is to the object I say the paint volume was low and the tip was small. No face masks for these tough guys!     1959 print.
> 
> View attachment 1317541



Yeah, that's a good find but don't think the photo is clear enough to see, key word in this report: " Close-fitting *Mask*"

Yet spraying appears begin in rear and wraps around the head post, about 6" away. You're going to shoot straight over the head post with over spray while doing it @ 6-7".

This photo below is such an excellent representation while considering the sprayers range and angles in the reporter's photo. . Especially that there's so many imperfections on it all. It's nice original preserved condition but certainly not Schwinn's show piece and that makes it so much better in this subject  . Moreover imperfections are due to the speed of movement in the production line.  You can almost imagine how fast or the the movement frozen in the process. . 

The Bronze or brass stencils are too narrow to resist over spray. I think they would need to be attached to a "Mask" of leather, cork or rubber that hangs, saddles  or clips on the bars. Otherwise, not a chance anybody is not going to over spray into the field with out coverage from over spraying the base color. .









This fender is so clean 3 stages, Base red Enamel, then pin striped in a semi flat or semi gloss white, then Masked for the Ivory enamel and finally baked to finish.

Scweet>>> on rear fender, where Ivory covers the pin stripe. you can see that the pin stripe's color, white is so bright it reflects right through ivory as if the ivory is transparent. 







Sold - Unrestored orig 1949 Schwinn DX "Creampuff!" of a survivor, near mint!---F/S | Sell - Trade: Complete Bicycles | The Classic and Antique Bicycle Exchange (thecabe.com)


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