Restoring an old frame.

[Big Fat Fatty]

I want to strip the paint off of an old steel frame and I'm after a good chemical stripper you can buy over the counter, are there any around nowadays that work as well as 'old' Nitromors?

[anonymous-user]

For best results, I'd stick to sandpaper to be honest, just use good quality stuff and a fine grade. Using chemicals like nitromors could have an effect on the quality of the paint finish and I'd be worried I hadnt removed all trace of it prior to painting.

[47p2]

If it's top of the range steel then get it soda blasted, if a beater anything from sandpaper to Nitromors will do

[anonymous-user]

You could also try to find a place that uses plastic media stripping, which is essentially sand blsting but using plastic balls not sand, and how we strip paint off aircraft...

[julianm]

If you go to a trade paint warehouse like a Leyland or Dulux one you`ll be able to get stripper with the methyl chloride in it, which gave Nitromors it`s bite. It`ll be marked `for professional use only`.
To reduce the pain & suffering involved I`d take it straight to a powder coating firm. Local to me in Castleford it`s £35 tops for the blasting & refinishing in a wide range of colours - the finish is a high shine & tough as old boots. A decent place will protect the bottom bracket threads & inside of tubes but I always put some scrap screws into any brazed on fittings.
Good luck with it, I`m sure it`ll be worth it.

[wildoliver]

If you can get someone to do it for you for £35 its a bargain, I do a couple of bikes a year and they cost me more in materials to strip and paint. Granted you can do more with wet paint but powder is much harder wearing. Just make sure they aren't animals using sand to blast the old finish off and thick powder to cover the pitting up.

Nitromors is useless by the way I use fibrous abrasive discs which just strip paint and don't touch metal.

[Big Fat Fatty]

Cheers all for your suggestions. Unfortunately I couldn't find a powder coating firm locally willing to take such a small job on so just got busy with the sand paper instead. It's not worth anything and will just be used for tooling around on anyway.

I'm nearly there with the frame, got a coat of primer on the forks and I'm collecting parts ready for the rebuild. I've not tinkered with a bike for 15 years, I'd forgotten how much fun it is!

[Celtic Dragon]

If your in Bedfordshire or close there is a company in sandy that will do it. The did mine, shot blasted and coated for £60

[crashS2K]

@Celtic Dragon - what's the place called in Sandy? Need to get a frame stripped and don't fancy sandpaper or paint stripper.

[shouldbworking]

I've just stripped an 80s frame made of 531 steel back to bare metal using a product called paint panther of the same ilk as nitromors - it was still a fair bit of graft with the scraper, but a lot easier than just using sandpaper!

It took a few coats - I found one coat would be enough to take off the topcoat and lacquer, but not the primer, and stubborn spots of primer required another round again. I can also highly recommend removing any decals first! as they proved rather more resistant

[Celtic Dragon]

crashS2K said:

@Celtic Dragon - what's the place called in Sandy? Need to get a frame stripped and don't fancy sandpaper or paint stripper.

I used these guys
http://www.qpf.biz/index.html

[Theoldfm]

julianm said:

If you go to a trade paint warehouse like a Leyland or Dulux one you`ll be able to get stripper with the methyl chloride in it, which gave Nitromors it`s bite. It`ll be marked `for professional use only`.
To reduce the pain & suffering involved I`d take it straight to a powder coating firm. Local to me in Castleford it`s £35 tops for the blasting & refinishing in a wide range of colours - the finish is a high shine & tough as old boots. A decent place will protect the bottom bracket threads & inside of tubes but I always put some scrap screws into any brazed on fittings.
Good luck with it, I`m sure it`ll be worth it.

What was the name of the company in Castleford that you used?

[julianm]

http://www.lsn-coatings.co.uk/ are very good but there are also http://www.midastouchgb.co.uk/coating.htm & http://www.yell.com/biz/colour-magic-custom-coatin...


so spoilt for choice really. LSN do loads of valuable motorcycle frames & have done 3 bike frames for my son so I can vouch for them. Worth a phone call rather than using the web. Good luck with it.