[Closed] Raw bike? Show me and tips please

I can't help with advice but good luck giving up

I rawed my old Giant Reign.
Took it to a powder coaters in bits, they dipped it, I gave them £25...... job done.
Went over it with a kitchen scourer pad after.
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Nitromores, wire wool and a shed load of elbow grease for this.

[url= http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6188/6082188422_82ac0ce14a_b.jp g" target="_blank">http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6188/6082188422_82ac0ce14a_b.jp g"/> [/img][/url]
[url= http://www.flickr.com/photos/29930426@N04/6082188422/ ]P1000890[/url] by [url= http://www.flickr.com/people/29930426@N04/ ]i_ache[/url], on Flickr

This frame was degreased and powdercoated clear.
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These two frames started black. I nitromorsed them and cleaned them off with degreaser. Then applied around 6 layers of clearcoat to them. Really easy, quick and the finish was great.
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Cheers Partyboy.

Looking good lads. I guess it comes down to what's underneath the paint as to what kind of finish you can achieve (ally or steel)

How was the Mors for getting into the nooks and crannies?

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That looks steel (and is very lovely), and it the kind of finish i'm hoping to get, not to shiny, not too dull.

Mine looks like this now. Keeping the old man's saddle and maybe go for some gumwall tyres to match as a reward for stopping.

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Getting a bit excited now. Keep'em coming.

relevant hijack - I want to clearcoat some forks of mine I've stripped back, what's the durability of the above coatings like? I've asked local powdercoaters and they've all tried to steer me away from clear powdercoat. Plus I'd like to do a pattern on the steel, and then clearcoat over it (a bit like over stickers) so a hand applied product would be better as powdercoating would destroy any paint underneath. Any recommendations?

I sort of cheated and just asked Orange to send me it already raw (they clear coated it and put the stickers on so it was ready to go). But raw with white forks looks good (I used to have black forks and thought white would look rubbish, but when they blew up these were cheap and I think work nicely)

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The white forks look better than i thought. Mine are a bit grubby, if they clean up, i might just desticker them.

Just been browsing (slow day at work) for new chainrings. Don't think my budget is at all realistic 😀

Here it is with black forks. In the flesh the white ones look better.

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Euro- Nitromorse works really well.
Just do it in stages. I smothered the whole thing and left it for a while, then used wire wool to rub it off. Repeat until its all gone. It only took one can and about 1hr labour in total. Well worth it though. Be aware that the raw steel has some oil marks burnt onto it. I'm sure you could remove it with some wire wool but I think it looks nice and rustic.

Motivforz- the coating is not very durable. I left the clearcoat to harden for a few weeks but the rust starts creeping under the lacquer after about 6 months. The rust starts wherever the frame has been chipped. It never became an issue though and was never more than a couple cm long. Again, I think it adds character.

Euro- Nitromorse works really well.
Just do it in stages. I smothered the whole thing and left it for a while, then used wire wool to rub it off. Repeat until its all gone. It only took one can and about 1hr labour in total. Well worth it though. Be aware that the raw steel has some oil marks burnt onto it. I'm sure you could remove it with some wire wool but I think it looks nice and rustic.

Cheers Ska. What did you use to degrease it (generic degreaser?) I'm gonna pop into homebase on the way home from work and get started this evening.

Going for a classy homebrew© look, so the oil marks will add a bit a interest.

I just popped into Halfords and picked up a huge container of just generic degreaser (not sure what it was called). I've managed 3 frames and still plenty left. It was under £10 too.

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just pop down to your local alloy wheel refurb place for a soft media blast. Much better for a frame than a shotblast. Mine cost a tenner to get done, then just finish with a hand sand and polish until you get to the finish you want. Saves sooooo much hassle!

I Ache, wher did you get your decals from?

I have an SX Trail that I want to repaint because the original poo brown finish is looking a bit tired now.

I embrace the hassle Tazzy. If my hands are busy, i'll not be smoking 😀

Ska, seems homebase have everything I need and i've just borrowed a handful of rubber gloves from work and several big cardboard boxes. Very tempted to leave early and get started.

I got them from a bloke I found on eBay. I took pics and measurements of the old stickers and he cut them out of vinyl for me. They were a very reasonable price and have lasted really well. If you mail me I will send you his email address.

My enduro was poo brown, looked horrible and was a bitch to remove.

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I used nitromors and a wire brush. If I was doing it again I'd definitely pay to have it blasted or dipped, too much aggro.

Cheers I Ache. Will drop you a line in a sec. My SX isn't too bad because the head tube is black with lightning bolts down the top and down tube, then it becomes poo brown.

Back on topic, the hardest part I found was removing paint from the welds. Here is a Chameleon frame that has been polished (my other half's bike).

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Can't find a pic of it finished.

Very tempted to leave early and get started.

Make sure you let the nitromorse do its thing. I just left it for a couple hours per layer. I really had no issue removing from Charge frames, not even round the welds. Just take it easy.

Is it possible to only strip part of a frame, as in mask off half of a top tube and strip the other half?

Recently finished an Old Boardman frame. The Nitromorse did not touch the paint ! The welds on the Boardman are all smoothed using the hardest material in the universe. It took a while to pick all this off.

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All in all I reckon at least £50 worth of materials to strip, ( had to use fibre brushes on a drill) All for a bike I lend out to mates who are not that into MTB. Kept me busy for a while when I could not ride though.

Double Post Aaaaarg

I'm gonna bore you all with pics of my progress...

Bike stripped
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Did a little test and the headset cups are mors proof. Result. Though my split link pinged off into the stone covered garden. My eldest got a magnet set from santa, so his mission when he comes home is to locate it.

First lick is on and hopefully doing it's thing. Cuppa time 😀

Good luck, I hope the paint is easier to remove thasn Specialized paint. Mine took over a week bat 3 hours a night. I wanted to start smoking it was that much hard work.

Following with interest!

I once saw an olde worlde lugged road frame done with a raw finish. Where the brazes were done, it turned golden over time. Looked absolutely gorgeous. Any blemishes it accumulates over time will only add to it's character.

I found (the new version of) nitromors painfully slow. I would advise getting it bead blasted, then nitromors the remaining bits with wire wool. see how it goes, never too late to find a bead blaster mid week and finish for riding next weekend 🙂

Nitromors 0 - DMR paint 1

Second coat on for over an hour now and it's hardly made an impression. No surface bubbling to speak of but it is slightly easier to scrape with a blade. I'll leave it a bit longer (while I bath the kids) and wash it oof and start scraping.

I've got a few weeks until this lot is finished 😀

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and finally 😯

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I'd bin off the nitromors. IIRC to conform with EU nonsense they actually removed the active ingredient that striped the paint off. Now it's just green sludge. Nail varnish remover will probably do a better job.

I had the same thing with rawing an old steel bike frame.

A day scrubbing and a whole bottle of nitromors later it barely made a difference.

Took it to a blasters the next day. Best 15 quid I've spent.

Those jumps look sick...
I expect you're not going to reveal the location... 🙂

I've started so i'll finish...

Washed down, scraped and a quick once over with the wool. On areas that had about 4mm of gunk it seemed to do what is was supposed to, a third thick layer is on and will stay on for a hour or two.

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kayak23 - Member
Those jumps look sick...
I expect you're not going to reveal the location...

They sure do, and i sure will. But first a little story. A few guys (i helped a bit with digging and jump guinea pigging) built these a few years back

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Then Daffyd Davies was shown them along with some local councillors and this happened

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Now the council are paying for these new beauties (a considerable amount of tax payers money, no less) in the exact same spot, along with 8k of trails.

They're beside the Mary Peters running track in Belfast.

Modern nitromores is poo...the last stuffing bought struggled to deal with decals, let alone paint.

The old stuff was ace.

Those jumps look ace, shame the council flattened the original ones. At least you're getting some sanctioned replacements.

I'm not so sure its the nitromores being useless, I even tried brake fluid to strip mine and it did nothing. I am guessing my frame was powder coated as new and isn't PC a plastic? The dmr may well be the same.

I think it might be a bit of both. Nitromors isn't the product i remember and the primer/paint/lacquer on the dmr is fairly stubborn. Looks like there's a bit of overspray on the inside of the seat tube, so i don't think it's PC.

A lot of daubing, scraping and rubbing for not much reward. Enjoying it though.

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Frame got another glooping and put to bed 'til tomorrow night.

Well, it's getting there! Considering that's one evening. Good stuff.
I guess charge bikes use some rubbish paint or maybe I was using the old stuff.

Cheers ska, i think if it was applied to a flat surface it might work ok, but you really need to lather it on and just gets heavy and it runs round the tubes. I'm using a 70p brush which might not be helping much.

umop3pisdn, i did really look at your bike in all my excitement, it's a cracker. Very tasteful. Glad i started this but I think if I do it again i'll blast it too. It's a once every 20 years type project 😀

I'm pretty tempted to do my bmx forks now 😈

Leave it like that, it looks propah ghetto

Hehe, cheers, I loved it but unfortunately it's no longer with me 🙁

There is a certain ghetto-camo charm about it now. What about one of these to help with the removal? Wap it in your drill and keep the settings gentle, it could make the last step a lot easier:

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Blowtorch for the stubborn bits?

I used a blowtorch to remove a stuck seat post a while ago and it did a pretty good job of burning the paint off!

I'm watching this thread with interest as I'll be stripping a frame soon for a fixie.

Whilst refurbishing my Trailstar I soon realized that the original coating (powdercoat) was unbelievably tough.

I ended up just flatting it back and overspraying 😳

Looking forward to more pics though.

I used Nitromors on my inbred a few years back. Funnily enough, On-One paint comes off a treat! (often before you want it to!).

After a bit of wire brushing, I used 3M polishing pads to finish it (from Homebase). Only a few quid and worked a treat.

A good 18 hour soaking and a fair bit of scraping revealed...

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Seeing this, I decided not to expect nitromors to do all the work on my behalf. It really is hit and miss with this stuff - it's a little gift when a piece curls off without any effort but it mostly just weakens the paint ever so slightlty to allow easier scraping. Rubbing with wire wool or a steel brush seems to work on the softened under coat, but doesn't do much damage to the top coat. A bit more effort shows the potential...

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I've decided to change tactics and i'm playing my joker. This means the smoking is back (and marys joined the party), but also means i'll happily rub and scrape for hours in a cold shed in a theraputic half-trance 😀

Ion-st in Raw

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Looks good! That was some fast progress.
Can you see many oil marks? Look forward to seeing this finished.

I did my trance a while back. Nitromors is rubbish now, I took mine back to the shop for a refund as it didn't do what it said on the tin. That was after night after night of trying and only lifting the lacquer.

In the end I went to my local car paint supplier and bought some car paint stripper and wow what a difference! Bubbled instantly and I got more done in a hour than what I'd done in 3 nights with mors.

Here's mine, finished with wire wool:
[url= http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8196/8115440394_b1c531f61f_z.jp g" target="_blank">http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8196/8115440394_b1c531f61f_z.jp g"/> [/img][/url]
[url= http://www.flickr.com/photos/10818473@N07/8115440394/ ]IMG_0058[/url] by [url= http://www.flickr.com/people/10818473@N07/ ]Jackass123456789[/url], on Flickr

[url= http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7142/6412931369_f31339e3c4_z.jp g" target="_blank">http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7142/6412931369_f31339e3c4_z.jp g"/> [/img][/url]
[url= http://www.flickr.com/photos/10818473@N07/6412931369/ ]Giant[/url] by [url= http://www.flickr.com/people/10818473@N07/ ]Jackass123456789[/url], on Flickr

Jackass, is that finish without a lacquer? This thread is making me think about having the tatty paint off my Anthem.

I cheated and just bought a frame that came in a raw finish. I do think it looks smashing though:

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Keep it up, and your bike could be as pretty as mine!

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took around an hour (paint on the rocklobsters aren't the thickest tho)!

quick buff with some metal polish brought the Easton tubing up a treat

Yeah no lacquer, every time it got a bit faded (which wasn't very often) I just whipped over it with the wire wool!

I will also say, with the grey giant graphic on the down tube it looked awesome, ah miss my trance.....

Polish it up with brasso, did that on my raw bullit and it looked amazing 🙂

No oily marks of note ska.

Nitromors is rubbish now, I took mine back to the shop for a refund as it didn't do what it said on the tin.

Mine is empty so i don't think i'd qualify for a refund. But you're correct, it is a shadow of it's former self. I got a tin of Blackfriar pro and have just put a coat on. I'm quietly confident it will do a better job because is smells really strong and unlike mors, you can't just pour it down the drain which is generally a good sign.

I'm off work today, and now that all the police stuff and anti theft devices are taken care of (some shits stole my heating oil on sunday night) i'm gonna get stuck in.

Can't wait to start the buffing 😀

Awesome thread this one! Just bought a new house with 5...yes 5 sheds in the garden...apparently the previous owner liked trainsets! Anyway that leaves me with lots of workshop space and seeing as I have a spare frame or two lying about I will get to work on stripping down to make a nice little DJ singlespeed!

Theres a difference in paints too, nitromors always worked better on oil based paints, it just softened water based paints. The new stuff is woefull though. Still better than Focus's own brand which I'm unlucky enough to have a bottle of in the garrage.

Done it twice now, next bike I do it'll get blasted.

Starting to see results now. If you are thinking of doing this type of thing, i'd try this stuff [img] [/img]

Noticeably better than mors.

Still a few snottery bits to get at...

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A big thank you the Olly at DMR. I fired off an email, wondering if they had any old head badges lying about they could sell me as i'm aiming for a retro look. They didn't but he's sending me a big envelope of old skool DMR stickers FOC. 😀

Right, my hands have warmed up a bit. Back to the grindstone...

Do you have an email address for DMR? I tried their generic info@ email to see about where I could demo ride a bike and never got a reply or even acknowledgement of my emails 🙁

This is coming along nicely! Keen to see how you finish it all to keep rust at bay under British weather conditions.

Tom, i just selected the random question option from their contact page.

More wire pads then a little white spirit to clear the gunk and give a better picture of what's still do do.

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Final blobs (hopefully) of stripper on now. Once the paint is completely off, i'm [i]might [/i]be allowed to finish the rest in the warmth of the kitchen 🙂

good progress being made, and good updating too!

Have you been hitting that with sand paper? It looks pretty scratched up.

I did mine with wire wool and that gave a nice matte finish.

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Took my Dixon to a local powder coater who stripped it to bare aluminum by shot blasting. That left it looking just weird so I went to work with autosol and a rag and it came up with a really industrial looking dull metal look. I really liked it as I was trying to get somewhere near the intense raw finish, so rough looking and one that will not look bad as it tarnishes. It has held up really well with no obvious corrosion and as with each ride it get's an interesting new patina that I rather like. However a quick rub with autosol returns it to perfect finish whenever you like.

you need to speak to midlandtrailquestgraham from this 'ere parish..

I say that cos I remember as a kid at weekends, fixing up the dents and dings in my old man's knackered old bus.. Before I could fill the dents, I had to strip a LOT of paint..

The stuff we used came in big drums, and could literally make your skin blister in seconds.. It could also remove the serious paint finish on the coach work in short order..

I think MTG works in that field IRRC and might know of a similar product

Have you been hitting that with sand paper? It looks pretty scratched up.

I was trying to persuade the nitromors to work by attacking it with a steel brush. Polished out ok with wire pads. Started at the back and got as far as the seatpost. Plenty to do yet, but me and this frame are becoming good friends 😀

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I wish i'd had some of that military grade stripper, but thankfully that part is mostly over. Mostly.

Now that looks nice!

Okay, I am now really thinking of stripping my fixie, may I ask how you are polishing the frame, to achieve the look you have got in the last pictures?

Looks nice. Emery paper would have been a good thing to use as you an wrap it around the tubes and polish / sand off the paint really easily.

My Canny, stripped with Nitromors.
Cannondale make it a tad easier by smoothing the welds for you, but if I was doing it again I'd have it dipped or blasted I reckon.
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[img] http://homebase.scene7.com/is/image/homebase/662873_R_Z001?$TMB$&wid=312&hei=312 [/img]

Using these pads (grade 2) from homebase and just rubbing perpendicular to the length of the tube. A firm rub to get an even colour then lightly flossing in the same direction to take out any scrapes.

I was originally hoping for that lush, dark grey like wot ska had, but the only dark bits appeared under the odd paint flake that came off without any labour. Happy enough with the pseudo ti look though.

Thoughts have already moved to the forks. Not sure all white will work and rawing them might not work either as they're ally and might look a bit off. Black/white/red??? I'll see what decals turn up before committing.

Here's my Kona Stuff jump bike.
Stripped it with B&Q paint stripper, then polished with wire wool and Autosol.

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Fishcake

See, now white forks look good again.

Lots of lovely bikes 😀

Done for the night.

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Looks alright, that 8)

I think silver/grey forks looks good but I'm biased cos I always loved how my Bullit looked with em!

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Before I got those 55s I had some old Boxxers in a browny-grey finish that also looked great. Don't think you can go wrong with many colours on raw, it goes with most things.

Good job. Doing it yourself is certainly a labour of love...the Chameleon took ages, but it dulls really quickly. Apparently certain aluminium types don't like being left without lacquer.

Going to start on my kona today, get it stripped down with B&Q stuff as mentioned earlier...the previous owner covered it in stickers - best to use the paint stripper on these two on scrape them off?

Get stuck in timbo! Let us know how you're getting on.

Tom, you're right, raw does seem to work with anything. I've had an idea for my forks (and frame in places) but i'll need to test it to see if it works.

I've had a two day break from mine, time to get stuck in again.

Arghhhh

Why do you guys do this to me, just finished the service and rebuild on my commuter/fixie, and now want to go and just take it all apart again and strip the frame as I love the way the polished raw stuff looks.....

I [s]hate[/s] [s]love[/s] [s]hate[/s] [s]love[/s] this place

I was debating getting it re sprayed but decided now that polished aluminium and black is the way to go

Why do you guys do this to me,

Yep, got me too. Raw fixie project begins this weekend....

Glad to say my frame is now as paint free as it's getting. All semi shiny and looking lovely. I've a few days to wait for the decals, so the other bits will be getting a good cleaning. Operation [i]could look good - could be rubbish[/i] will begin on the frame and forks tonight.

My raw Morewood.... raw finish with clearcoat over it is a great thing, bought the frame without seeing the finish in person, was delighted when I saw it.

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