Brandon Ives wrote:
"I've seen a lot of crap powder jobs just as I have liquid and I can tell you it's all in the application not in the media. best, Brandon"monkeyman"Ives been there and done that in Vancouver, BC"
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I lived with a powder-coated Falcon (the top-line frame with all the chrome, 531, Prugnat lugs...nice frame best known in its baby-blue incarnation) for something like 25 years, rode it many thousands of miles through blizzards, mud, downpours, 3-feet-of-snow in Alaska getting to work one morning, you name it. I had it painted black when I first got it, used, by a company that specialized in painting outdoor furniture. I was a poor college student and that was all I could afford at the time.
When I first got it back from the painter all those years ago I was deeply disappointed by the paint. It looked bad. It was smooth enough, really, but there was something about the finish, a semi-gloss, that just looked crappy and cheap. Not long after that I had another frame painted dark metallic blue, in imron, by a friend of mine, a back-yard spray job, essentially, and that finish was much more appealing in every way.
I wish I could tell you what I disliked about that powder job. It just looked like a plastic coating on the frame, which, is, I suppose, what it was.
It held up reasonably well, all things considered, but I always hated the way it looked.
After living with that finish for so many years, and after having seen a number of other powder-jobs, from various sources...they all have the same problem: they just look bad, for reasons that are hard to articulate.
I don't doubt Brandon could do a better job than most with powder, but I'd argue, in general, that the *odds* of getting a less-than-lovable job in powder are greater than the odds for a good, professional job with modern liquids. You're more likely to get a nice job with high-quality modern paints in the hands of a master, than powder in the hands of people who are most likely to use it...with exceptions, I'm sure.
I know I'd never have another powder job done again.
And for those who want an *as-original* finish, it seems unlikely powder would be the right choice under any circumstances--the problems of color-matching, surface prep, proper application, quality of the final finish, all would have to be carefully specified and controlled by client and painter, and even then it probably won't look as close to original as a careful liquid job.
Did any makers use powder as an OEM finish back in the day?
I hope the Cinelli that started this thread doesn't get the powder treatment. Send it to Joe Bell, who will paint it a beautiful fine-grained Alfa silver (if he has any more of the stuff left--he painted my Rivendell that color and it's about the nicest silver I've ever seen), it's the closest you can get to the original old-Cinelli look.
Charles "in mourning for all that deadly high-VOC stuff that made the old frames look so great"
Andrews
SoCal