Well, I’ve took my grand old time, and the fact that Spectrum was preparing for their move (of their shop) while my frame was in the queue didn’t bother me at all. At any rate, I’ve mentioned in the prior post about my deliberations. Liz at Spectrum was great, and I wish I remembered the guy’s name that actually painted the frame. He called me the day he was getting started, and we went over the whole thing again, along with some clarifying questions. I’m quite pleased that he did this.

The next 4 photos were shot by Spectrum in various stages of the painting process. Thanks to them for doing that.

This is a photo of the frame with the base coat. It’s a bit of a gloss, and one of the clarifying questions Spectrum asked me was if I wanted the matte finish on it, of if it should be left gloss.

Here’s a shot from the front drive side. You can see some of the tube near the paint where the titanium seems to be a bit of a different shade than the rest. I think this is the “taping” or masking, but I’ll clarify later. Since these were not straight taping jobs (you’ll notice on later photos that each panel is curved slightly), I generally thought this would be quite difficult. However, on further thinking about this, they probably have standard templates that allow them to do simple things like this frequently with good ability to repeat the results.

In this photo and the next, you can start to see the additional masking they did to get the gold highlights in at the end of each panel section. It’s just a small amount of paint that is airbrushed on. You can also see a significant difference in the gloss level ans these shots were taken after the matte clear coat was added. Here’s a second picture from the bottom bracket.

Not shown here is the process of airbrushing on several things. Spectrum airbrushed the Strong Decalson the down tubes, Strong Signature on the top tube, and the Strong hammer guy on the seat tubes.

Once the paint job was completed by Spectrum, they sent the frame back to Carl Strong for the final finishing touches. Carl added in the cast head tube badge and snapped the following 2 shots.

and this… Notice the head tube badge. You can also see the details of the gold highlights at the end of each panel and the fact that each panel does not end in a straight line but is “scalloped.” Personally, I thing the lighting in Carl’s quick shots isn’t great, so the colors feel just a bit off.

Unfortunately, I’ve had to ask Carl to let the frame sit in his shop for a couple of weeks (fully paid for of course). I’ll look forward to writing about the receipt of the frame and taking more pictures when I get the thing in late August.

This entry was posted on April 2, 2007 at 12:18 pm and is filed under Bicycle, Bicycling, Bike, Cycling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.