taking part in the # CHEAP BIKE BUILD OFF #CHEAPBIKEBUILDOFF by mull3tmechanic and promoted by 2ND LIFE BIKES I am building a bike along the build-off parameters (total expenditure 150,- £, finish by Feb 28th, etc.)
Base is a severely challenged 70-ties Atala Touring bike frame
Okay next step I want to work on the frame a little bit and um here is what I want to do I want to put the the fork races the head um the fork the fork races headset races back in place and uh that means I need to polish
This area and since I don’t want to stop in the middle of a part at least where I can then move to the next step I will actually do all of it so there’s only this part this tube this tube and that tube and then the rest of this kind of
Like follows a different process but I want the races in so I don’t want this surface to be damaged so what I’m going to do is to sand it down I have prepared a smallish selection so the main job here is actually done with a nice and
Fresh 1200 paper and I’m now looking at this process to be done dry and I’m just looking at the problems that are stillw so I’m starting with the head tube and I’m careful not to go into the edges too much and I’m doing the worst just the worst problems
Now because again I want to be efficient with my time yes I want a good result but you know this is not from a process to become perfect this is just me lifting the potential with a reasonable amount of effort being made so do one tube at the time
I’m afraid that they can’t really do this dry because it sits too too quickly so I add some water what’s far more important in my books when you’re sending than focusing on any particular kind of problem areas is to get an overall quality of surface that means you need to
Apply your hand that is the tool to make your sandpaper smooth together with the Sandpaper you need to move it flat on the item like so to create a an as even a surface as possible in order to let the highlights be beautiful that’s obviously not very easy Once you
Have a lot of little nukes and crannies sticking out like you do on a bicycle frame so bicycle frames are rather intensive if you don’t want to compromise the result and with result since I’m obviously polishing this paint afterwards is the Highlight result here of this process is
The Highlight the Highlight is the reflection and the more straight this will be the better it looks so that was the top tube now we’re going to go with the Small Tube sorry what am I talking about was the was this tube here and there was a particular issue that I caught on
Is here don’t really know what has caused this but this is rather threedimensional and in order to fix that I need something flat so that I’m sanding on the just think if it has a flat surface and then there is a little hump so you
Only want the hump so if you go over this you catch to help okay now let me deal with the connection here to my remembrance I have done already a round of rather coarse sandpaper maybe 600 and 800 already so now I’m on a th000 which is basically the next
Step on getting this highlights to line up and the whole thing looking smooth the look here that we’re going for is patina not Rusty patina but um well cared for patina if that’s making sense to you it makes sense to me maybe you just check out the result and
Then tell me what you think now here’s a particularly nasty area again for where the packaging material seems to have pressed into the paint sweety weird can’t really explain it other than that and there we go so this is as much as I will
Do and now we have this one but that I need to get a 800 first let me check because on the last video you saw a whole lot of nothing because I was working in an area that wasn’t in the window of the camera so I apologize again for that
While I match it the chill be the 800 now here’s something that you should remember when you sand with different with different grades of paper and the paper sheds little sand corns while you’re working with this and then you might be thinking you’re moving forward to a slightly less coarse
Sandpaper and then again you’re actually not because you’re like pushing you’re pushing around the old pieces the old pieces of sand corn from the more coarse paper and that then shows eventually when you’re trying to polish so that’s what you should be doing and in between before you move to the next
Paper you should wash it so that concludes the th000 and we’re going to the next one sorry that could 12200 and we’re now moving to 1500 the washing has a second effect you’re getting obviously a very nice matte surface that you can see very well and that gives
You the opportunity to see where you might have threedimensional issues so always look carefully at your result and I’m finding this is just magnificent all this massive stock should have come out I love that so it becomes easier and easier now I would like to see if you can see
The top of the frame now yeah you cannot is this actually moving slowly down and down wow so this is so totally out of the picture it does help to work on your bike while you are looking at it in his uh natural position so that means we’re
Looking at the top view and that’s where we see most of it that’s what we see because that’s that’s the way the bike’s going to stand afterwards so I’m going to do that first so that I know that this is given Special Love from this perspective so I’m going down the
Grade or sorry I should say up the grade the less coarser sandpaper uh it becomes easier and easier to do obviously the paper this less and less and less okay going to lay it down probably should adjust okay now here’s that moment again where my phone doesn’t show me what it’s
Doing here we are back okay there we go do not think for a moment that you can skip on any of the part of the process because you’re just not doing yourself a favor there’s something that a certain tool can do and you think
You’re going to do the job of a 240 job 240 sandpaper job with a 1500 sandp paper you’re wrong it’s just not going to happen it’s like 10 times more hard if you do want to do that and you’re just not going to get the result so don’t try even do it
Right be patient each part of the process needs to be done in peace so this concludes the top now I’m going to do the other side which is the one that I don’t see too much he wonder about my logic here I’m finding it difficult to be systematic I’m not forgetting any
Pieces all right cardboard and paper don’t like each other uh water so now we’re on the side cly important to top tube most important of course so we’re on one side let’s go to the other one in a minute that’s the other side for for and then we go for 2,000
I think you’ve seen it the way I’m doing this so I’m going to cut this and call the sanding for polishing for the front half of the frame quits and I will get back to you when I’m polishing