Day 5
It was a beautiful high 60's temp and a dry wind blowing through the BACK40 yesterday. Perfect weather for some patina painting!
As stated in my video update, the original stem and bars for this motobike are cool, but the stem is bent, and they were made for a growing adolescent, not a full grown man. The width between grips on the originals is 17.5". My replacements are 24.5" wide, right on the cusp of being perfect. But the replacement bars needed some RaT-ification to fit in with the aged patina of the bike. And, I wanted to add the cross bar to simulate the original bars as well. Here is the play by play, photo / text style.
Bought a piece of aluminum tubing, 1/2" x 39" long. Measured and cut to length. Flattened the ends like the original bar brace.
Used my angle grinder to start the slots in the bars, and then drilled a series of holes to ream out the rest.
I was able to get the brace started on one side, and then pushed and tapped with a rubber mallet and the brace slid right in. Next step was to move out to the 'paint booth' and put the bars in my old 1988 Park Tool stand, converted a few years back to my painting 'holder'.
Here are the 'Four Cans of the Rust-pocalypse'. First application is the wall texture spray.
After that dried, it was on to the base color. I noticed that the chrome on the original bars, and cranks and such, had turned a golden hue from age, no longer a silver chrome. So I used these two in combination, first the Duplicolor Metalcast smoke and then a light coat of the Champagne Metallic Bronze, both cans left over from previous builds.
When those dried, I added mustard to the spots where I wanted the base bar color to show through. This is the opposite of the way I had done it before, usually I apply the rust-ification mix and then mustard where I want the rust-ina to show through. But since I wanted these mostly rust, I flipped the process.
So after I apply my Four Rust-pocalypse colors, where the mustard is now, is where the smoke chrome / bronze will show through. Next I sprayed the combo of Black, Multi-texture Autumn, and Satin Cinnamon to varying degrees over the bars.
Left this to dry for about 15 minutes, and then hosed off the bars and the mustard covered spots.
Here is the result, original bars in back, rust-ified bars in the front.
Then a quick mock up on the bike. These might not be in the final form yet, but they're close.
