Made a little bit of progress this past week & weekend. Finished the fenders & fork with several coats of carnauba wax, they look great & are ready to go on the bike. Finally got the frame fully degreased & hand rubbed out. It is almost ready for a couple of coats of wax and reassembly. This bike had some kind of black crap (looked like a mixture of oil & coal) all over the fenders and top of the frame & took a lot more rubbing out than I had hoped it would take being careful not to go thru the original paint which was thin in spots. There was no choice if I wanted to bring back some of the brilliance of the original color and this decision cost me the original pinstripes or what little was left of them. I knew it would going in. I did have good pics of them and measured the distance they went out past the white darts. Since I started the fenders last year I had a year to make a difficult decision on the pinstripes, to leave it without them or reapply. I know purists hate any repainting but my choice was to reapply them, I look at them the same as many look at new decals. They were original to the bike & needed to be re-applied. They are handpainted & coming out great and I used a very light coat of black "1 Shot" sign painter's paint. They will be exactly as they were originally. I thought about distressing them to match the bike but hate fake stuff so they will be left alone. To the purists, please reserve judgement until you see the finished product as this bike is all original paint except those pinstripes.
The rear ducktail portion of the front fender was completely mangled with the left side being completely bent under. I got the section straightened losing a little paint in the progress but it looks pretty good using an auto body work hammer, my trusty section of railroad, some specialized vice grips, and some wood blocks some of which were shaped to mimic the fender form. I made a decision here when I got it fairly straight to leave it alone rather than lose more paint. I think it came out pretty good. Definitely a lot better than it was.
I started final polishing 3 metal parts this week. Got the 2 crank bearing cups out and polished today when I was working on the frame. I started on the Persons rear reflector last week & I'll detail that little project with some pics as I restore it. The glass was broken in the housing & needed to be addressed so I disassembled it & will completely restore it (or attempt to). All the glass is there, all the little balls that come through the housing are good except one, but the glass is broken into about a dozen different pieces. They will be puzzled & carefully glued back together & then polished. The housing is polishing up nicely.
The rain came this evening before I could get any pics so I'll try to take some of the progress this week.
