Spray Painting uni

I’ve spray painted my unicycle for a few times now,
but the paint always comes of after a short while.

Do I need to use a specific kind of paint?

powder Coating is very strong and durable, but can be as high as $75 for a frame. Try using a lot of clear coat, if you are already using it, an start if you havent.

i’m a complete newbie about this,
what is it and where can I get it :slight_smile:

Do you mean a powdercoat? look up Powdercoating shops in the yellow pages. I think and average powercoat costs a about $65, but you will never have to paint your uni again.
Or do you mean claercoat? You can get that in the spray paint isle. all it is is clear spraypaint, but when apllied in 3+ coats it makes a good barrier.

I can’t really look 'em up cause I have no idea what it is in dutch :slight_smile: Since I live in Belgium

Last time I put on 3 caots of spray paint, but alas, Didn’t last very long

I’ll never paint another unicycle after experiencing powdercoating. Darren Bedford had my beloved Summit powdercoated last year and after hours upon hours of abuse the finish is still near perfect! Powdercoating is BY-FAR the way to go!

Tommy

You cannot have any chrome or shiny surfaces on the frame. Slight sanding of the chrome will not work. The paint won’t stick to chrome. I sand blasted one of my frames to take off the chrome, put 1 base coat, 3 coats of red, and 2 coats of clear and it is holding up fine.

Powdercoat is awesome, but it’s expensive if someone else does it for you. Luckily, I have a powdercoating machine and oven :smiley:

Another thing to remember about painting your uni is that a few light coats of paint are better than one thick coat.

*Give your frame a light sanding,
*hang it up somewhere that is well ventelated and not too windy.
*spray many light coats of paint untill your happy with the way it looks. Then give it one more for good measure. (wait for each coat to dry before going with the next one.)
*Some people might do a wet sanding with really fine grain sand paper here, I don’t because I’m lazy.
*Go over the frame with a few layers of clear just like you did with the base color. Be sure not to touch the wet clear at all as you will have some nasty looking fingerprints.

Paint will not last as long as powder coating your frame but take your time and you should have a nice looking frame.

Also try to find enamal spray paint if you can, in my experences it holds up way better than the regular stuff.

Cheers
Mike

I can’t translate powder coating but a short explanation of the process might help you find a Belgium supplier.

It involves hanging the frame on a hook and spaying a very fine powder which is attracted to the frame by static electricity. the residue goes past and is caught in a water trap. The frame is then moved to a large oven which cures the paint leaving a tough finish.

I found a local company who coated my home built frame for ‘beer money’. I had to have a colour they were using for another (paying) customer but that wasn’t a problem.

Keith

Re: Spray Painting uni

On Sun, 30 Jan 2005 12:08:53 -0600, “Donaldini” wrote:

>I can’t really look 'em up cause I have no idea what it is in dutch :slight_smile:
>Since I live in Belgium

Powder coating =
Poedercoaten
(soms: Poeder applicatie d.m.v. electrostatisch spuiten.)

Typ poedercoaten in Google en je vindt vast een bedrijf dat het kan
doen.

Klaas Bil (Dutch)

Klaas Bil - Newsgroup Addict

It’s impossible to get old when you ride a unicycle - John (what’s in a name) Childs

Kicking around silly paint ideas with another guy. We wondered if anyone has ever coated a uni with Rhino liner- you know the spray-on truck bed liner? I did the inside of my Jeep, but I dunno how a uni would look done up all halloweeny like that.

Any thoughts?

Ben is looking to buy a Jeep next year. In our research, we ran across a picture of a Wrangler finished on the exterior with the Rhinoliner coating. Looks like a good choice for wheelin’ in the woods. I bet it would be neat on a Trials frame.

Ben had his bicycle stolen last year, which we found the next day when we pulled the remnents out of the bottom of the lake (we had an educated hunch). In order not to let the punks win, we decided to restore it. We had the frame sandblasted ($10) then used good quality spray paint. Mike is right, many light coats and lots of patience. I’m by no means a paint or painting expert. We found that if we sprayed from too far away, some of the paint droplets dried in the air before reaching the frame’s surface and gave the frame a rough looking finish up close. Fine wet sanding didn’t work for us because the paint film was so thin that it sanded away in spots. So we decided to put up with the not-so-perfect finish and keep spraying away. Sort of helped that the color was black, I think. Eventually, we ended up with 3 or 4 coats of color and 3 coats of clear lacquer finish. Then we gave it plenty of time to cure. So far, so good. It’s far from professional but it’s holding up fine.

Bruce

Along with prepping the frame, nobody mentioned the most important part, PRIMER!!!
Be sure to get at least a couple of good coats of primer on the sanded or blasted frame to get the paint to adhere :smiley:

I always wanted to paint my uni like this!

uni new colored.jpg

A really good walk through of how to get a good finish out of spray paint can be found here

The same rules apply to painting anything, it just so happens that a rounded uni is a bit harder and you have to be much more careful when sanding.

This guy doesnt put any clear on his project but the time to do that is after the finish is looking good and before you go to rubbing compound, I would recomend applying 2 coats of clear then sanding, and then depending on the surface do another coat of clear sand again or go straight to using rubbing compound to get that sweet finish.

A side note I havent painted my uni with this method but have done other stuff, it takes a long time but the finished product can look great if you take your time and do things right.