Last year, I bought an Andy Hamel frameset from Eddie Albert. Even by my standards, it had heavy patina, but you could tell it had been red at one time. :-) It was an interesting frameset, all lugless 1-1/8", with a fork like a Paramount of the 30's - 50's. Takes a 27.2 mm seat post.
Figuring that thicker paint might help deal with the surface "detailing" of the patina, I decided to try powder coat. In part, there was a shop in the area doing some bike work, and interested in doing a good job. And it promised to be a bunch less expensive than the restorations we all love. the paint's done now, and I have high expectations for durability and chip resistance. I don't have pix posted, but can send some if anyone is very interested. The contact is Len McCreary, in Manassas Park, VA, and the firm is called Figure Engineering. There are a few pix of another bike at http://www.FigureEngineering.com, go to "finish" to see them, and maybe he'll post some of my Hamel. Len did a nice job of simulating what we think LIWA (Long Island Wheelmen Association (?) markings might have looked like, and did clearcoat. I intentionally tried this with a lugless bike, since powder has a reputation of going on pretty thick, and thus obscuring lug shorelines. I suspect that Len could show serious respect for them if needed, but I have no experience with that. I took my Weigle out to show what nice shoreline work looks like, and he didn't seem intimidated by the prospect.
He did some extras for me, as experiments, so I'm not able to talk rationally about price. But, I'd expect it to be much less than the beautiful spray work of a Bell, Bayliss, or Weigle.
BTW, the Hamel is an interesting bike on other grounds. Fairly large for a tracker of the 40s, at 60 cm, but almost short enough for me (59+). The BB is not threaded, but a bit oversized, and there is a separate threaded sleeve inside. The Baylis-Wiley cups seem to have been designed for such an assembly, but I've never seen the design before. The headset cups are not inset.
FWIW, I don't lightly do repaints of vintage bikes. This is only the second one I've done; the first was a '38 Paramount that had seen successive rounds of ratttlecan over the decades.
harvey sachs
mcLean VA