The reason I've been quiet lately

Is that I'm going through a phase of the business where I've got a ton of stuff going on and making some changes.

I have ordered 30 gallons of stripper and a barrel to put it into.



This is going to change things in that I won't be blasting as much anymore. The stripper will do the removal of the old finish and all I'll need to blast for is to give the surface a bit of uniform profile. The stripper is very expensive (basically 15 dollars per gallon when you buy 30 gallons) but it's infinitely reusable. Over time, you might add some to account for evaporation or drippage, but as long as you keep it covered tightly when not in use it should stay put.

I'm also changing powder suppliers on some of my jobs. I've got the account set up and the color rings here.

Vinyl sign work

We do it now. All the local shops are so backed up that they can't turn out the work quick enough for me so we got the tools and now can do them ourselves. I use vinyl as masks in my powdercoat jobs and having the ability to create it on the spot is going to be a big help.

This is Valerie's first job, a little mobile advertising on the back of my car. And yes, I drive a silver toaster. I know, you don't have to point it out to me.

Flat black bicycle

Honda parts

Wheel halves and hubs in Honda Cloud Silver match powdercoat.






Kitchen gadget. It's a potato slicer that turns a spud into french fries.

Tank finished

If you'll remember, I started with sandblasting this old tank and finding a bunch of dents and holes. So I welded up the holes and filled the dents then did a lot of block sanding and filler powder work to slick up all the dents and bruises.

Then, basecoat, candy coat, mask stripes and shoot, mask logos on side and shoot, then a clear topcoat over the whole mess. There's 7 coats of powder on most of the tank, more in other places.

Finally some color on the tank

Still to come is black stripes and clear topcoat.

Cafe racer tank

I'm doing a trick repair and coating job on an old Honda cafe racer project tank.




Once I got it stripped I found 9 holes that I had to weld up and a ton of dents to repair before I can powdercoat it.





Good news is that I was able to get all the holes welded up and not blow myself sky high from the old gas fumes.

Ready to go home

The next candy red job is complete and ready to go back to Minnesota. I'll ship it out tomorrow.

I found some nasty cracking on the head tube so I blasted it clean, welded it up and smoothed it out.




I've finally figured out a process to fill dents under powdercoat kind of like Bondo under paint. There was a pretty good sized dent here I had to repair.


All finished, hand sanded, and two stage powder finish.

Next !

The candy red Honda CT70 has been crated up and shipped back to Colorado to be reassembled by it's proud owner.

The next one is laying in the shop floor in a very big box waiting to get coated. This one is from Minnesota.



The air conditioning in the shop finally died. It's 130 degrees in there right now. I really don't want to spend the money to replace it right now though. I'm hoping to get through to the end of season and try and buy a big window unit from Home Depot on fall close out special to save some money. Until the spell of 105 degree days breaks, I'll just have to keep working early in the morning and late at night.

It looks like this Saturday we will break the record for consecutive 100 degree days (42 straight) set in 1980. The meteorologists say it's gonna happen for sure.

Candy red job

In a fit of Energy drink induced work

After drinking Monster Energy drinks all day and working 13 hours in the heat, I got a bug to do some work on my daily driver truck. It had an awful set of 10 inch wide aftermarket wheels on it and drove pretty bad due to them. So, I plucked a set of 8 inch rally wheels out of my wheel stack and powdercoated them in Kruzin aluminum powder with glass clear topcoat.

The truck drives much better now and looks better too. The truck isn't much, but lack of debt payments makes me a free man so driving it isn't a hardship.

Old Chevy truck door hinges. I had to heat them with a torch and press the old pivot pins out, then remove the remainder of the old bushings. After that, media blast and powdercoat then reassemble with new pivot pins and bronze bushings (and not scratching the new powdercoat finish).

The originals lasted way over 40 years. This go around they should last even longer with bronze bushings in place of the original plastic ones.





A small project, a pair of wiper arms done in Super Durable Wet Black. Check out the reflections. Slick stuff...

Engine project completed

Lots of masking time here. There is no tolerance for stray powder overspray inside of an engine casing. It's got to be right.