My mother prides herself on her ability to remember colors, and to pick things that match exactly when she gets them home.
I think I didn't did too badly when I selected Sally Hanson Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear in "Marine Scene" to match my Atlantic Blue Dawes bicycle. At $2.99 I was willing to risk it but it looks to me like it works!
In order to see what the polish would look like painted on my fenders, I tried different numbers of coats on a piece of aluminum foil. I will need to do three coats to get the right buildup of color and glitter. Yes, the nailpolish is prismatic like my original paint.
It occurred to me as I was riding in this morning that nailpolish is enamel formulated for a certain degree of flex without cracking. That's probably a very good thing for fenders since they do flex.
UPDATE: Photos of the painted fenders...
9 comments:
Brilliant!
Very cool, looking forward to seeing the result.
I love that gold-painted motif on the rear stays. I was in Old Roads a couple of days ago and they had a Dawes Warwick with that same design. Dawes are such excellent bicycles.
World's best kept secret for touch up paint ;-)
Been buying nail polish for years as touch up paint. How else are you going to match metallic?
Aaron
Filigree, I saw that bike - the deep Green one? Mine isn't a Warwick and it much older and in worse shape than that one... Isn't that one gorgeous? 25" frame though, meant for someone bigger than me (not that I'd give up my beloved Dawes).
2whls3spds - the metallic was a stroke of luck, I really didn't think I would even find aqua!
@Filigree,
I think the gold burst on the end of the stays might have been a Dawes "mark" I have a mid 70's Galaxy frame set (25.5" ;-)) with the same detail.
Aaron
How did the fender painting with nail polish turn out? How many bottles did you need? Any pics? I am thinking of painting some Honjo fenders with either Bianci celeste green touch up paint or trying to find a close enameled spray paint that is a close match.
Martin,
I'm very happy with how the fenders turned out. I get a lot of comments on them. If you click on the photos in that post they will get larger. Note that I was only interested in a pinstripe in the fluted part of the Honjo so the color was close enough and I only needed about a half a small bottle of nailpolish. If you're thinking of painting the whole fender you're taking on a much larger project!
Ah ha! That is what I can do, pinstriping! I love that idea and it looks great on your Honjos! Thanks for the quick reponse - Martin
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