Bike Restoration

I took these photos a while back, over winter break, when I was restoring an old road bike that I found lying around my house. The bike was in great condition considering it was 30+ years old, but the paint had lots of chips in it that we filing with rust. The first picture captures one of my favorite parts of the restoration, when I used the paint stripper to remove all of the paint so I could sand the frame down. I had never used a paint stripper before, but learned that it was very toxic and very dangerous. You could see how the stripper ate away at the pain and made it easy to wipe right off. Despite the hazard, it worked wonders on the bike frame and made it very easy to remove the current paint which was old and was applied very thick. I think this photo of the bottom section of the frame is a really interesting photo, I was able to get a very neat angle with great focus on the frame. The lighting is a little on the dark side, but the light is visible where is counts and lets you see the stripper bubbling up the paint. After I stripped all of the paint off of the bike, I proceeded to sand it down until the metal was smooth and then I applied a primer coat, and then the green paint. With the new paint job, which can be seen in the second photo, the bike frame was now smooth and looked much sleeker. I really like the contrasts in the second photo of the bike frame; the bike frame stands out from the newspaper but also blends in, but you can tell the newspaper is not the focus of the picture, even though it is in focus and almost in the same depth of field as the bike. All together, the bike restoration took about a week, which included taking the bike apart completely, stripping, painting, applying all new parts and cables, and reassembling. I’m thinking about making it a side business of mine.