New guy
- Thread starter Lbush
- Start date
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Right now I’m thinking just the patina looks,cleaning everything up and having to re-spoke both rims.none in either one
Great plan. Add some cream or red tires and grips and that will be a pretty cool bike. Start a build thread in the 'builds' section when you get started. It will be a fun build!
My 42 Hawthorne looks very similar, frame wise. The chain wheel is Hawthorne so I think you have a Hawthorne, same bike as a Rollfast, made by Snyder. The curve in the downtube suggests early 40s. I can't see the headbadge that well, but it doesn't look like the usual round Rollfast badge.
The serial number will give the date probably. On the bottom bracket will be letters and numbers. Snyder used a reverse number system for the date. 14 would be 1941, 34 would be 1943, etc. The EH or SN is the code for which factory it came from and the 5 digits are the sequence number from that year.
Mine was advertised as a 1941, but was actually early 1942 right before they halted bike production for WW2.
Your bike looks like a deluxe model and shows no bad rust or damage. The rims are the only part I would suspect might be in need of replacement.
Welcome. That Hawthorne tooks like it could be a really special bike. I like the idea of just a clean up and preservation on the really rusty ones. I think you should even try your best to use those rims. But I'm weird and poor, so I get into rusty specials when they can be done well.
They didn't sand it down, that's good. It may make the paint easier to remove without damaging the original. Mine was sandblasted with nothing left.
Here's some info I found at the CABE, a 41 Hawthorne Comet. It came in gray or red:
The bike in the photo is gray with red trim. Yours was probably red with gray trim, it looks like that in the advertisement but in black and white is hard to tell. Gray would show up as a lighter color as in the ad.
If you want to paint it in original colors, Check to see if there is any color left where the gray trim would have been. Mainly the chain guard and fenders. If all you see is the moroon color, then it was maybe a solid vermilion red, as the ad only listed gray with red on the one speed with springer, but yours is definitely originally red.
It's going to look good no matter what color it is.
If you want to paint it in original colors, Check to see if there is any color left where the gray trim would have been. Mainly the chain guard and fenders. If all you see is the moroon color, then it was maybe a solid vermilion red, as the ad only listed gray with red on the one speed with springer, but yours is definitely originally red.
It's going to look good no matter what color it is.
