I recently picked up a Masi GC I had at Joe Bell's place for restoration. Joe did his usual flawless job. What I like about Joe is that he's willing to work with you on a project to make it exactly right, and his laid-back style perfectly counters my occasionally torqued-up state!
In the case of this frame, I knew I wanted something that could be plausibly original, not obviously restored. The most important part of achieving that is very thin paint. Current two-part epoxy-style paints tend to go on a lot thicker than the old high VOC paints did, so it takes special attention if you want to duplicate the look and feel of the old paints.
It was a Faema paint-scheme, and white is notoriously difficult to apply very thin (for some reason), but Joe managed it beautifully. The interesting part was with the clear-coat, always a challenge in a plausible period restoration. I asked Joe to put it on VERY thin, so that the graphics underneath would be proud of the surface, just as they would have been on an original. Those 70s italian frames had a very thin clear applied, when they had any at all--numerous De Rosas, for instance, seem to have left the shop with no clear whatsoever!
and I didn't want the clear to be super-shiny, but, rather, to have more of a semi-gloss, which was often typical of frames from that time, esp. frames that had very thin clear sprayed on. Joe obliged with a matte clear that was too matte: the final effect was completely flat. Joe and I looked it over--Joe is the kind of painter who confers with the customer over a thing like this--and I wondered if we couldn't polish it out, as I did something similar on another restoration I'd had done many years ago. We tried it, and viola! Perfection! Joe polished out the frame, and I have to tell you that this is the closest I've ever seen a modern paint restoration come to the look and feel of old paint. The gloss on the frame is somewhat variable, which is very period, and of course if I want it shinier, that's easily done, which is also often the case with period paint: you can polish it gently and get more shine.
I should also point out that CyclArt has been doing this kind of thing on their Velo-tique jobs for many years--the key is being able to polish out the clear to whatever level of shine you prefer. But I'm not aware that it's much known as a technique to get a period-look.
I'm really impressed with this technique, and I suspect it would work well on any frame if done properly. Joe managed to get enough clear on to allow for polishing, not so little it wore through to the graphics, or so much that it obscured any frame detail. It was a very pro piece of work, I thought.
So, for those of you considering a true period restoration, this might be one way to go at it.
Charles Andrews
Los Angeles