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Repaints

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Tankbike59

'Lil Knee Scuffer
Hello, I know that keeping the original paint is optimum, but a couple of my bikes are pretty rough and I don't think they have much monetary value.(60's boys Ross, girls J.C. Higgins, etc.) I would like to possibly repaint them. My question is, is there some way of copying and reproducing the silk screening on the chain guards, tanks, racks and so on? Also, I'm fairly new to this and have not laced any wheels. just cleaned them up and overhauled the hubs. Are old wheels(balloon tire and middleweights) considered safe for occasional riding?
 
To have the silk screens produced would probably be pretty expensive. You may look into haveing mylar/vinyl decals made which would be a lot cheaper. Not only are teh safe for occasional riding they are safe for everyday riding! Many of us put a lot of miles on our vintage bikes. Generally speaking these are well built bikes and when serviced should last your lifetime. V/r Shawn
 
You can also make your own masks from frisket paper or masking tape. One good tip is to shoot a light coat of the main color over them before spraying the trim color to help seal the edges. Old wheels are usually safe.
 
Thanks. Always in the back of my mind when I'm riding is my wheels failing. Always try tighten loose spokes and true them as best I can. Would a sign shop be the best place to reproduce graphics or decals instead of silk screening? I'm not all that computer savvy to try to do it myself.Thanks in advance
 
if you’re going for even spoke tension you might run into a locked nipple, you’re going to have to replace those. Otherwise you’ll ride down the road and eventually develop a wobble because there’s uneven spoke tension

:(
my local bike shop told me not to ride old bikes because they’re fragile. I asked them for a tube that had a rubber valve stem and they looked at me like I was a dinosaur
 
I’ve had those vinyl sticker guys copy a template I made. I used that sticker for painting basic graphics but no lettering
 
In my opinion, the most important thing is to have fun w/ this hobby. Bringing an old wreck back to life is satisfying, at least to me. There are a lot of options, and as stated, good advice for the graphics. As far as the wheels go, they were extremely well made, especially by todays standards. You can visually inspect them, especially the spokes for excessive rust. I put a lot of hard miles on some of my bikes w/ no problems. Here's a photo of one that I'm using the metal clad wood wheels. It's also a repaint w/ somewhat suspect graphics. Good luck & have fun with them.

fullsizeoutput_b8a.jpeg
 
If you can trace the graphics onto paper, you can scan them at Staples or some place as a pdf file and email it to yourself. From there, you can send them to a graphics company and tell them the size and color you want, though they might have to charge you to modify the drawing so they can use it. You want the traced lines as crisp as possible, so use straight edges and French curves if you can. If you want to learn a new skill, GIMP is a free drawing program a lot like Photoshop (though less user friendly) and would be great for getting the graphics ready to send out as you could clean up any line issues and forego the French curve retrace by retracing them with more accurate drawing tools in the program. I haven't used a graphics program or drawn very much at all in over 20 years, but I'm writing a series of kid-friendly books (but not for wussy or young kids) and dental bills have eaten money to pay an illustrator, so I've had to sharpen some pencils and teach myself this program to do the book cover. A little bit of a learning curve, but there are tons of video tutorials online and I liked the results enough to do about an illustration per chapter. Since the paper scans in as an uneven gray color, after scanning the drawing, I played with the contrast and brightness to get it strictly black and white, then modified it. You would want to do about the same thing to make it ready for the graphics people as the less they have to do, the less they charge you.
 
You can always ask the sign shop to cut the vinyl in reverse and use it as a stencil and spray it the colour you want.
 
if you’re going for even spoke tension you might run into a locked nipple, you’re going to have to replace those. Otherwise you’ll ride down the road and eventually develop a wobble because there’s uneven spoke tension

:(
my local bike shop told me not to ride old bikes because they’re fragile. I asked them for a tube that had a rubber valve stem and they looked at me like I was a dinosaur

Same here, rode a 38 henderson to a bike shop and they saw one of the spokes had a light coating of rust and acted like 1 more mile on it would send me to my death. They didn’t like the 80 year old tires either!
 
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