Last weekend was full of work, work, work! And no painting of the bicycle. I will admit, I was a little dissapointed that I haven’t been able to cruise around on her yet, but at least she is stripped and ready to go.

We arrive at the paint shop on Saturday morning at 9am. I chose a color very similar to the bicycle’s current teal color, although slightly lighter. I was keeping in mind that this is a restoration project, not just a refurbishment, so I would like it to be just a fresher version of the original.

Arriving back at my dad’s workshop, I spent an unexpected hour cleaning out massive piles of saw dust and scrap metal to make room for the work that was about to begin. I had already begun polishing out the rust of the chrome pieces (see the front braces above? It was pretty horrendous, yeah?), but Pop and I disassembled the bicycle so that we could tag team the stripping and polishing process.

The pedals were quite the little stinkers, as it took my dad about a half hour, a blow torch, creeping oil, massive vice grips, and eventually a saw to remove them. Needless to say, I will be replacing those.

The next part of the process involved stripping the pieces with chemicals, brushing off most of the paint from the sheet metal parts (fenders and gear shield) with a steel brush, and then finally sandblasting all of the painted parts. While Pop was sand blasting, I was hard and work polishing off the rusted out chrome and zinc plated pieces. Quite the workout for my fingers!

And so, I suppose this is the part where I say “To be continued.” :)