Progress is finally happening - I may start building this week!!
First off, an update about restoring the frame - especially as this thread may help others who are doing a similar project:
DECALS - I obtained graphics from Gil_M - it took some to'ing and fro'ing but we eventually came up with correctly measured and approximately correctly coloured decals. If anyone needs them in future and Gil can't find them in his files I have all of the emails we sent re exact measurements and the proofs etc on file here.
FORK LEG CAPS - these, like many I see online, were missing on the Track 2 forks. After a LOT - and i mean a
helluva lot - of experimentation I found a set of plastic caps with a flat (non-textured) finish that fit the weird internal very thin wall thickness/ dimension and gave the right external size to match the fork legs. I am not exaggerating when I say I must have bought 20 sets before I found some that worked! They are these Round Plastic Black Blanking End Cap Caps Tube Pipe Inserts Plug Bung Steel Leg
http://r.ebay.com/FNCQAU
PAINT - My frame was mostly ok, but with a few deep gouges, and rusty chips in the top tube in particular. Iusd a fibreglass pen to clean these up, followed by kurust-type stuff and then generic black touch up to fill them back in. Lastly I bought lots of pots of paint and found that
Fiat 500 Pink and Porsche Riviera Blue are good matches for splattering!
SPLATTERING - I experimented with lots of ways of doing this with various brushes, but in the end I found that a largely succesful technique is to load up a broader brush (like a touch up brush) with a decent amount of paine, but not so much that it drips. I then held the brush in my right hand and slapped the underside of my wrist with my left hand which created vertical movement, so the paint splatters straight downwards rather than at an angle. I then used thin artists brushes to create specific directly applied "fake" splatters by hand to fll in gaps.
REMEMBER that these Konas the splatters go over the decals - they are real paint on the decals, not an effect - so getting it looking right means some careful work! Have some cotton wool with nail polish remover on stand by in case it goes wrong and you need to quickly erase a spill or rogue splat! Also Gil's decals are cut to exact size with no clear edge - teh original Kona decals have a small clear edge.. This means that the graphics that come off cover a slightly larger area than teh ones that go back on - so you will end up with a blank space around them. This takes some careful splatting to look right!
IMG_1489 by
Martin Hills, on Flickr
CLEAR COAT - So, I had my frame and fork all ready to go, but Gil recommends clear coating the decals, plus my touch-ins looked very visible on the top tube. The decals are quite thick, so I took the frame and fork to a local paintshop for a thicker-than-usual clear coat to make the graphics sit deper into the finish, adn also this helps hide the imperfections - it effectively blends my touch-ins into the finish very succesfully. Also, as the top caps are now plastic it gives them the same gloss finish as the rest of the fork, reducing their noticeability.
