The Old West

kingfish254 said:

Great base for your build. Can't go wrong with a star chainring. I think I've used one on 3 or 4 of my builds

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Thanks Kingfish! I'd love to build a space-themed bike around one of those star chainrings someday. They're just too cool!

kingfish254 said:

I have one of the Schwinn exercise bike 64T chainrings that I want to cut out the same star pattern on.

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That would be super cool!

I didn't get much sleep at all last night, and as a result, I had almost zero energy for the whole day. Figures that I'd come down with a bad case of insomnia the night before I planned to throw this bike together. Thankfully, I did make a little progress this evening. I spent a few hours manually cleaning up the frame with some rubbing compound, and I was surprised by how much of a difference it made! My phone camera didn't do the best job capturing it, but a lot of the duller parts of the frame managed to shine right up!


As nice as the frame looks now, I think there's still a lot of potential left in the old paint. I was going to try and get this bike reassembled before this weekend, but having given it some thought, I think I'll slow down and take some extra time cleaning up the paint on this bike before I reassemble it. I'm thinking about getting a couple attachments for my drill that might allow me to shine up this bike even better than I can by hand. Better to do this part right once before reassembly than to do it over another time.

Question for the more experienced bicycle buffers: is there a more effective way to buff out the paint on this old bike than using rubbing compound and a bunch of old socks to cut through the oxidization? I thought about getting some drill-mounted mini buffing wheels and cones, but I'm not sure if I'll get any better results than what I already have, or if what I'm doing now, combined with the condition of the paint is as good as I can expect it to get. Also, I'm worried about rubbing away the paint, as I've seen in a few spots that the harder I hit it, the more the paint "faded." What are your thoughts on it?

Jude Ephesus said:

I restored the paint on my Schwinn Varsity Party bike last year.

I used parts from a 3M headlight restoration kit that fit into a drill…. I also used a dish sponge with a scotch brite pad on one side.

Check out pages 6 and 7 of the build: I was doing a lot of crazy stuff to minimize time and elbow grease.

https://ratrodbikes.com/threads/schwinn-varsity-party-bike.115906/page-6

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You got some pretty good results on that Schwinn! Unfortunately, I don't think I can justify spending the extra money, not just on the tools but also the extra compounds/solutions you used on your bike. I may not have the most abundant supply of elbow grease, but I do have more than enough time to shine up this bike using what I have at my disposal. It's not how I want to go about it, but after thinking it over, it's the way I need to go about it.

Wildcat said:

Schwinn had better paint, so it could stand up to more scrubbing. I cleaned up a 64 American that looked new with just a scrubbing and a few coats of car wax.
With the AMF, you might just want to shine it with out scrubbing too much. I've found the third or fourth coat of paste car wax is about the best shine you will get. It's from the 60's, so it's old, they didn't expect people to still have these bikes when they were built.

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Yeah, my '52 Schwinn Hornet I built last year cleaned up really well with the same Turtle Wax rubbing compound I'm using now.


And yeah, I think if I try to scrub the paint any further than what I've done, I won't be attacking the rust, but instead will be rubbing off the paint. Maybe a coat or 2 of Johnson's Paste Wax will help to add that extra POP that I'm hoping to get out of the paint. Thanks.

Jude Ephesus said:

Yeah…. I actually had both the head light restoration set and the rain dance wax in my garage. the only cash out of pocket for me on the paint restoration was the turtle wax cutter and the sponge with scotch brite on one side.

you’ll do great. I look forward to seeing your progress!

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Thanks!

Time to get out of the "Page 2 Slacker" status!

Okay, so not much has happened with this bike lately, but I did spend some time shining up some parts with rubbing compound and #0000 steel wool last Thursday and earlier today. (It just turned to 12am as I typed this. You know what time it is? It's tomorrow!)

I'm more or less done cleaning the front fender and chain guard, and I made good progress on the rear fender today as well. Something I decided to try was using a mix of rubbing compound and steel wool to gently scrape this red paint that spilled on these parts. I found that rubbing compound and a sock could both remove the rust and some spilled paint off the pinstripes on the front fender, so I decided to test and see if fine steel wool could work too. Turns out, it works great as long as you're careful! I didn't get all the spilled paint off the parts, but I'm pretty happy with how much better they look now.

Sorry I didn't take more/better photos. I was just focused on making progress after stalling for a bit.


Truth be told, I've been a tad slower on the bike stuff this time around mostly because I'm spending more time working on my art and learning how to share it on social media. I haven't had the best luck finding work, so I'm working on my own designs to hopefully sell them and start earning some money. Progress has been slow, but I'm figuring out how to better manage my time, set deadlines, use Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator to ink and color my sketches, share stuff on social media, and just plain draw more often. Maybe I'll even share some of what I'm working on here, if for no other reason than to keep me from falling back onto Page 2 again when I don't have any bike progress to report.

My art's not the only thing I've been working on in the background though. Ever since I put my Class 2 build on the backburner, I've been itching to build something custom out of the parts I have in stock. As nice as this Western Flyer will be once it's all back together, it doesn't satisfy that creative urge I have to make something that's my own design. I need a wild custom bike project to help balance out this conservative restoration project. As luck would have it, I have everything (or most everything) I need to build 2 custom Schwinns!

First is this 1952 Schwinn straight bar I got at the Haysville, KS bicycle swap meet earlier this year. Odds are this'll just be a quick and easy build, as I just plan to wire-brush it down to bare metal, give it a satin clear coat, and throw on most if not all the parts I had on my previous 1952 Schwinn straight bar I built last year. I'll probably do a few other things to differentiate it from the last one, but overall, it'll be a near-identical build on a new frame.


Next, for a trip on the wilder side, I'm building this 1958 Schwinn cantilever frame I got from another bike friend up in Missouri. The main reason I'm throwing this bike together is because I want to learn how to spray paint a bike. I've done spray clear coats before, but not an actual paintjob. I want to practice masking off designs with tape and paper or whatever to achieve some fun effects, and this bike is the perfect guilt-free canvas for me to experiment with. The one real caveat I have for this build is that I can only use parts that I already have in stock. I can't afford to buy more parts right now other than maybe the odd tube and tire, but I'm willing to allow myself to buy a few cans of spray paint for this project. I've already decided on the stance and most of the parts I want to use for this build, but there are still a few things I need to figure out, especially the paint scheme.


As much as I'd like to swap out my Class 2 BMX build for one of these Schwinns, I'm just going to stick them in their own threads outside the Build Off.

Well, that's all the progress to report for now! With any luck, I'll be done shining up parts for this Western Flyer by the end of the week, but we'll see!

GeePig said:

So do we get to see any of the artwork you do

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Ask and you shall receive!

The biggest challenge I've been working on is just drawing more often, so I've been drawing whatever comes to mind; cars, robots, monsters, aliens, even just random doodles meant to fill a page. Here's what I drew in just the last month:


One other thing I've been working on recently is using Photoshop again. I first practiced tracing and coloring one of my earlier doodles with some basic, flat colors, just to get the ball rolling.


Then I practiced tracing and coloring one of my older sketches while adding the extra challenge of lighting and shading.


I'm hoping to get back into my art again this week after a bit of a dry spell this past week, so I'll hopefully have something new to share soon.

The Renaissance Man said:

Just catching up here.
The bike is progressing nicely and the side projects are very cool too! I really like the stance on the blue Schwinn!

I wasn't expecting to see anything other than bikes and then bam! Love all of your sketches! You've got some real talent. Good luck with getting your work out there and hopefully earning some money with it!

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Thanks! I still have a lot of build threads to catch up on myself.

Thank you! I'm happy to hear you love my art! Thanks, I'm looking forward to drawing and coloring more art and getting it all out there for everyone to see soon!

GeePig said:

Nice work, and it is really good to see how you develop some of your ideas.

I can hardly remember actually drawing with a pencil, most of my work has either been on a computer or made out of old cardboard.

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Thank you!

Yeah, I never stopped using pencils to draw out my ideas. I've tinkered with doodling or sketching my ideas in Photoshop with one of my Wacom tablets, but it just feels faster and more natural to sketch out my ideas on paper. That said, I'm trying to spend more time sketching on my computer, if for no other reason than to get more comfortable doing it.

The Renaissance Man said:

I've always loved pencil drawing the most but they have come a long way with drawing directly to a computer. My daughter (who is an art major in college) bought an inexpensive tablet called 'Wacom' with a wireless stylus that she uses with Adobe Photoshop.

Here's a portrait of me that she did with it a couple of years ago .

View attachment 236967

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Your daughter does great work!

Yeah, I've got 2 Wacom tablets that I use. One is a Wacom Cintiq 13HD, which allows me to draw directly on a screen like it was a piece of paper, but it requires external power and doesn't have touch features. The other Wacom tablet I use is an Intuos5 touch tablet, which doesn't have a screen, but it comes with full touch capabilities that are super useful, and it's portable. Both are a bit old now, like my computers and Adobe software, but they still work like a charm and are more than enough to help me flesh out my designs.