Old Glory

[The Renaissance Man]

I'm still very new to RRB and haven't scratched the surface of all of the interesting builds here. While sifting through some of the build-off threads, I decided that I should try posting one myself. So, here goes...

I was happily persuaded to buy this CWC bike by several people here. I've already been having some fun with it and tore it down last week to clean and grease all of the moving parts along with trying to get the coaster brake to perform a bit better. That was where this was going to stop but then it started to speak to me!

A lot of the paint was peeling off, so I started knocking-off some of the loose stuff. I've counted seven different colors hiding under the red. There are two reds, two blues, black, white and silver!

After looking at the red white and blue colors starting to emerge, I got busy and decided to do an 'Old Glory' theme just for fun.

There are no big plans, just make something interesting out of what is already there.

The first thing to do is make these layers of paint look naturally weathered.

Here's what I started with...

After some strategic scraping...

Time to sweep...

 

[deven_science]

I like the paint scheme! Love the weathered look.

 

[scott brownsey]

weathered look is awsum

 

[Rebelboybowman]

Thats a cool Bike, where in alabama did u find that becuase i think that was one i allmost bought

 

[LukeTheJoker]

Are these the tires for the bike? Get a little more white on board?

Luke.

 

[The Renaissance Man]

Thats a cool Bike, where in alabama did u find that becuase i think that was one i allmost bought

Moulton, Alabama

 

[The Renaissance Man]

Are these the tires for the bike? Get a little more white on board?

Luke.

Yes, they are old Carlisle Lightning Darts!

 

[Will901]

Reminds me of the WF I'm building for my wife, red over blue over dark blue over... atleast 4 layers of fun! :lol:

I spy type 2!

 

[The Renaissance Man]

I spy type 2![/quote]

You are correct sir! :mrgreen:

Not much to report tonight. I replaced a chipped bearing in the rear hub and reassembled both front and rear. Not worth taking pictures. It's amazing how well the wheels spin now! I'm hopeful that the coaster brake will also be that noticeably improved.

 

[ThatVWkid]

Cool bike, and love the microbus! I have a baja bug

Subscribed for more progress

 

[The Renaissance Man]

Cool bike, and love the microbus! I have a baja bug

Subscribed for more progress

Thanks!

I've noticed that there seems to be a lot of VW folks here. I guess it has to do with expendable income. Bicycles and Volkswagens are far more affordable than Harleys and Street rods!

 

[The Renaissance Man]

I mounted the old Lightning Darts on the rims today. I'm liking the dirty white walls with the rest of the bike.

I discovered that the wheels need truing pretty bad (after mounting everything). I wish that I had noticed that before the tires went on. I prefer truing without the tires but I don't want to take them off and on any more than I have to.

The black saddle's not working for me. I'm thinking white would look better. Maybe white pedals too.

 

[IronDio]

Great bike!

I have to vent a little here... What the heck is up with people painting blue bikes red?? every time I find a bike or a part that's red, I start digging in and it's ALWAYS blue underneath! lol

 

[mastronaut]

Great bike!

I have to vent a little here... What the heck is up with people painting blue bikes red?? every time I find a bike or a part that's red, I start digging in and it's ALWAYS blue underneath! lol

You can have any color you want as long as it's blue... :lol:

 

[The Renaissance Man]

Great bike!

I have to vent a little here... What the heck is up with people painting blue bikes red?? every time I find a bike or a part that's red, I start digging in and it's ALWAYS blue underneath! lol

If it helps you feel better, this one looks like it may have started out red and then someone painted it blue! :|

 

[The Renaissance Man]

Today was to nice to be inside doing anything, so I didn't work much. Instead, my son and I got out and enjoyed the rare 72 degree January day with a bike ride! I dusted off the Monark Super Deluxe and added a couple of miles to it!

I did take the wheels back off to true them as best as possible. Unfortunately, that resulted in two broken spokes. They are pretty rusted and all need to be replaced eventually but for now I'm leaving them alone because they look perfect as is. I wrapped some duct tape around them to temporarily hold'em in place. :wink: I probably wont be riding much until spring anyway.

Tomorrow I will probably start painting the tank.

Here's my spoke repair

 

[The Renaissance Man]

Here's the first step of painting the tank.

There's plenty of red, a good amount of blue, but very little white showing. So I decided to rattle can paint the tank White to balance out the color scheme. I didn't prep the red at all. Just painted over what was there. My hope is that it will not bond very good and I will be able to pull some of it back off later with some tape and scraping so that it wont look like fresh paint. Also, you can't see it, but I first painted it with a sand color and then followed with white after it tacked up a little. This will give me a darker color to sand into later for more aging effects. The horn screws where left so that I can remove them later and further effect the patina. (I forgot to leave the left tank screws.) Now I wait for it to dry.

Stay tuned!

 

[The Renaissance Man]

Well the white paint dried enough to dive into the accelerated aging process! I'm pretty happy with the results so far. Later I'm going to paint the center section blue and didn't want to paint it over the white. I probably should've masked it off first. Now you can see the sand color under the white.

 

[LukeTheJoker]

looks really good! The sand colour was a great idea!

Luke.

 

[The Renaissance Man]

Thanks Luke. Hopefully the rest of the process will continue to work out.

I decided that it would be easier to just brush in the blue rather than go through all of the trouble of masking and spraying. I thinned the paint enough to make it flow out without showing brush marks. This only took a few minutes to do but now I'm back to waiting for paint to dry.

I used to be able to do this without reading glasses. :|