Parts Bin Schwinn No. 2: 1958 Cantilever

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Black was always the new black
 
Took a little longer to find the motivation to mock up this Schwinn than I anticipated, but I managed to fiddle around with it some more earlier this Sunday.

I tried seeing what it would look like with a pair of full fenders along with the flipped springer fork, but I still wasn't really feeling it.
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It's another rough mockup, but I feel like this is about the look I'd want to go for with this Schwinn. I had another Monark chainring that bolted directly to the mounting tab on the frame, which I think looks better than the other one I had on earlier. Plus, with the more "stock" springer fork, the line on the chain guard now points at the front axle. I'd want to bob the rear fender though. I haven't decided on all the parts, but the overall stance of this bike, as mild as it is, looks the best to me at this time.
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I'd like to find another fender to us on this bike though, as this fender is all dented and dinged to a point that I doubt I could repair it like I want. Unless I can find anybody with the tools I need, that is.
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The next step for this Schwinn is to trace over my last physical mockup in Photoshop and play around with some ideas for paint schemes. I may go with black and chrome, but I have a few more ideas I'd like to test out as well. Hopefully I'll have those ready to share sometime this week.
 
Knocked out my digital mockups for this Schwinn over the past week. Even after my last physical mockup of this bike, I was still rather ho-hum about building this Schwinn, but as soon as I traced over it in Photoshop and got everything "painted" one solid color, I was kind of knocked out by the newfound potential this Schwinn had! I ended up coming up with over 60 different paint schemes and color combos that I liked! I'm not going to show every one of them, as most of the differences are just down to colors, but I'll share some of my favorites.
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As much as I love all the other ideas I came up with for this Schwinn, there was one idea I came up with early on that I loved better than the rest.
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See, I have 2 cans of Rust-Oleum Hunter Green and 1 can of Rust-Oleum Almond spray paint I've been itching to use on a project. Not only that, but I had this idea for lightning bolt scallops for a while, and I figured it'd be fun to try it on this bike. And to top it off, that Hunter Green paint reminds me of the green Park Tool bearing grease I use on all my bikes. Add that all up, and you get... Greased Lightning!

...
And I'm not going to call it that. For starters, I've never seen any version of the movie or play that song's from, and more importantly, after looking up the song on YouTube and a summary of the story on Wikipedia, I really don't want to make any references to anything that raunchy. That's just not my style.

Still, I loved the initial concept and paint scheme, so I toyed around with it some more and came up with a better name that still had a bit of an edge: SHOCK THERAPY.
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Building these vintage bicycles has been some of the best therapy I've ever had to help me get through these last few years, and sometimes it's shocking how much potential some of these bikes have! I was almost ready to pull the plug on this project and just trade it at an upcoming swap meet, but after this last round of mockups, I've found the energy I need to bring this Schwinn back to life once more!
 

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