How To Custom Paint A Bike Like A Pro With Some Help From Fatcreations

I've always wanted to spray

paint

my own

bike

, it's a great way to personalize it and give it new life but I've always been a bit afraid, it's a big job to spray

paint

a

bike

but during lockdown you guys have sent out

some

great upgrades. of bikes you've sprayed and inspired me, so I'm going to give it a try. I've never done this before and I'm going to need professional guidance and who better than Ali and Bex from Fatta Creations, now you. You may already follow them on Instagram, it's definitely one of my favorite Instagram accounts, so let's meet them at their workshop and I think I'm in the right place, look how beautiful they are.

Hello, thanks for inviting us. Alright. Very welcome, great, I guess we'd better show you Ali and Bex's workshop which is a treasure trove of stunning

custom

frames. As you know, I'm spray painting one of my old bikes and obviously I have to do it myself and do it yourself. I won't have any of these fancy gadgets. Just wondering if you have any tips for me on how to make it half as good as your bike. Yes, of course, what painting is it? Let's take a look and see what you have. So this is the bike I want to transform.

Where do I begin? I guess I'll have to sand it all down and remove the paint if you have a steel or aluminum frame like this and it's not corroded. a local blaster, you know, they use fine sand so as not to damage the aluminum too much, will literally give you the perfect key to get the paint to stick and trust me if you've ever spent a day trying. To remove paint from a bike, the cost of £30 to £35 to make this look raw when it leaves the factory is a cost you'll be very happy to have spent, although there are a few things we need to do, um, when you blow up.

some

thing, the paint will come off in a fairly uniform manner, but if there are any of these stickers here, any of these fairly thick stickers, yeah, the blast doesn't go through it very well, this absorbs the energy of the fine particles and then, What You're going to end up with this, but you're going to end up with a ridge over here where this part of the aluminum sticks out, so what we're going to do is scrape any of these stickers off the surface before we bring them down. the blaster and you'll be left with a much smoother finish when you cool it down again, so since my forks were carbon I couldn't ruin them so I'll have to sand them myself. normally we strip it down to bare carbon but for this project it will be fine to just remove the gloss and logos to soften it and then we'll go over it with a 320 before priming it, after prep the frame was ready to Screw it we're here at Penfold Metallizing Company where I'm going to sand my frame ready for painting so let's go find Jed and see what sanding is all about.

Here's my beautiful frame, so the whole frame is knocked down and stuff. It took me about 15 minutes and was a much better job than I would have done sanding it myself, so I'm really happy I did it and now it's time for the fun part, so the frame is all set. Now it's time for the hard part of choosing. the color, that's all I know, I want something a little different, a little bright, maybe that's ok, well I have some colors, take a look and see what you think, some of them are changing and they're pretty awful.

It will be possible with one spray, these two can do both with one spray, that is not a problem, so eliminate those two, yes, make these two difficult decisions, so this is a two color change, so many Bicycle manufacturers are using this paint. Now and then, this is a change from blue to purple, while this one has five shades of color, so it's a little more dramatic than this. Yeah, I think I'm heading towards this one. I think I'm going to go for this one. one that I really like, yes, so I chose my color, but what am I going to need to make this happen?

For around £100 you can get everything you need, so the first thing you need is a foundation you can get your hands on. Get all of this in spray form and then with this color you first have to paint the bike black so this color is based on a nice black base coat so you have a can of black and then this color itself is a green chromatic coat that covers the black base coat and gives you that effect and then what I would recommend is a 2k clear coat so it's a lacquer but this one is 2k so you mix two different chemicals together it's a epoxy type lacquer, the only thing about a 2k lacquer is that it has some nasty ingredients so you really have to use a mask, at least a good charcoal mask and do it outside.

You can do it in a garage, but unless you have a really good fan that absorbs the fumes, it's not worth waiting until the time comes. Good day, do it outdoors in a well-ventilated area. You can get 1k hairspray. The health risks are much lower, with that there's nothing to worry about, but for longevity, 2k is the way to go while you're here. We'll have Becky show you. I will teach you how to paint and she will give you an idea of ​​what to expect when she uses the sprays. It won't be exactly the same, but she'll give you a good idea.

Yes, it will be amazing. Please, I've never done it. sprayed anything there and saw before so make it interesting so to avoid applying primer on areas that we don't want we want to mask it off so I have some masking tape here and I'm going to do the seat head tube. tube and the bottom bracket, but we have some plugs in the bottom bracket, but you can cover them up if you don't have plugs, so when it comes to painting the frame, what do you want to do with a gun and with a spray can is when you come to do it, You have in mind which parts you are going to paint first and they will always come off the end unless you have good control of the trigger, which is very difficult with a spray can, so I suggest you come. from the end so you don't get some concentrated paint that could then cause a run since today we are working with a 2k primer.

I suggest you use this mask, it has air feeding and it will feed you cool. air instead of breathing the steam and having those things in your lungs is not, it is not very pleasant I started practicing on a paper to really feel it, now it's time for the real thing, I'll try to prepare my forks, come on Wow, turn them over and over time after the forks were finished without any major errors. I moved on to the frame, applying two coats of primer each, so my bike is now primed and ready for the next stage.

Thank you all very much for

help

ing me. today, and having us in your amazing workshop, you're welcome, I have more advice, be patient, yes, definitely, patience is a huge thing and it's well done, very good, yes, that's promising for painting, so yes, good good luck, thank you very much. Now you leave me alone and I'm going to start by wet sanding the frame with 600 grit sandpaper, a little warm water and soap. I'm just going to go over the entire frame and the forks will remove any imperfections, but it's pretty perfect anyway, if you're not looking to do anything crazy with this, just focus on getting a nice smooth surface and if there are any little bumps due to the dry primer just focus on them so I sanded the frame completely and as you can see there's a lot of paint residue left on the frame so we're going to have to clean that up so first I'm going to grab some water and a cloth and wipe it all down , then I'm going to go in with this pre paint wipe just to get it cleaner and then it's time for the base coat.

Ali also gave me these stickers and these stickers will be placed on the head tube, bottom bracket, seat stays, brake caliper. and some on the forks as well to go everywhere I don't want to paint so the stickers are all on and it's ready for the black base coat and when you use sprays like this it's very important to wear a mask. So I have a very modern mask here, but once I put the mask on, you won't be able to hear me, so I'm going to move on, so wish me luck and I hope I don't mess it up. up so the base layer is ready, I think I managed to get it pretty much everywhere on the frame and now we're just going to bring it inside because it's pretty cold outside so it's a little bit warmer for it to dry.

After the first black base coat yesterday, I did a second coat and then took it somewhere warm and let it dry overnight and it came out pretty well. I'm really happy with it, so today I'm going to start with a pre-clean with paint, clean it up and then I'm going to stick these stencils onto the Becca Fat creations that she kindly made for me. I have some Welsh dragons and my initials that I am Welsh. I'm going to stick two on the forks and then two on the seat tube and then maybe my initials on the down tube.

I'm not quite sure I haven't made up my mind yet, but I hope it's okay in a minute, so yeah, let's get to it, so my stickers are on. I just bought it outside my little DIY paint booth and now it's time for the main attraction. The color is pretty nervous about this but we'll see, oh my gosh look at it beautiful, oh my gosh I love it but this is exactly the color I wanted. so I put two coats of color on the by channel and let it dry for about 20 minutes and it looks fabulous now for the very tricky part of trying to remove the stickers without splintering or damaging the frame so I have this little tool with the that I'm going to cut the sticker and then hopefully peel it off to remove the stickers but the paint is dry and now it's time to apply the clear coat and this is actually the hardest part. um Ali said it, I hope I don't spoil this, but I'm very happy with it, it looks very beautiful, I have to say it looks beautiful, elegant, it looks delicious, delicious, so three layers are already done.

Now I'm going to take it inside to dry for about 24 hours and here it is pretty impressive. I must say it. At the beginning of this

custom

painting project I never thought I would be left with something like this but many thanks to Bex and Ali for chatting with me there were quite a few phone calls when I was painting it myself just to check I was doing it correctly but it took me It took about three days to do it, but it wasn't three full days of work. Lots of waiting around for the paint to dry and overall I think all the sprays cost me around £80 so not too expensive.

If you have an old frame lying around I would definitely recommend doing a little custom paint job because it's a really fun thing to do if you want some advice from the experts themselves and not this hobbyist then head over to Bex and Ali's YouTube channel. They just created Fat Creations custom paint where they go into a lot more detail about customization. paint, but if you enjoyed this video and you like my bike, give this video a big thumbs up and let me know what you thought in the comments section below.