Mosshead

paint and the customizer aesthetic?

November 2nd, 2005

I have some stylistic ideas for fixing up the xs650 but don’t know a lot about the technical details of automotive painting so I did some research today.

Looking around on the web, I have to say that the average custom American bike strikes me as kinda average. The same low ride, 1 of 3 handlebar choices, 1 of 10 grips. 1 of 4 airbrushed themes (fantastical wizards, skulls, dragons and snakes, ye olde airbrushed girlies, the ubiquitous flames, and nostalgia-driven designs). 1 of 3 tank styles. I don’t know, something about it just makes me feel impatient.

Many of them don’t even look that fun to ride. They look to me like they might just fall over on a tight curve or bottom out on the 1-inch lipped cul-de-sac driveway.

What’s happened to the aesthetic of customizing one’s bike? I suppose I’ll leave that question to the academics to answer.

In the meantime, despite my own distaste for most of what I found online, I did collect some valuable information about what’s involved in customizing my own bike into something that I do like.

Powdercoating is an involved process that would be appropriate for parts that I want to be uniform. I’m not sure that’s what I want and I probably don’t want to invest too much $$ in a first-timers project.

I watched Mike Learn’s airbrush demos which are good. If I had any talent at all in that arena I’d sign up for his seminars. But I can barely sign my name let alone draw a consistent line. I don’t think I’ll be doing any airbrushing.

My design can be accomplished with a combination of pinstriping and masking. From what I can tell, the Beugler striping kit is a must-have. For masking, the easiest thing for me to do would be to create a design in Illustrator and “print” it to a cutter plotter. Mike Learn swears by his Roland Camm cutter plotter. Fortunately, my local sign making company will cut a design for me for about $25.

So, that’s what I learned today.

Entry Filed under: i like bikes