A Major Step Forward On The Velomobile Project

The past couple of weeks have been more than a little hectic with all the goings on here at the Tinker's Workshop.  The major event was the marriage of my son Eric!  A great day to be sure and one for the record books.  I have also completed a smaller project for my next door neighbor, made progress on a new project that I will post more about later and today I finally took the final paper covering off of the paint job for the velomobile project.  So here is how it turned out so far. 

Here I just started the process of removing the rear paper covering that was over the white stripe that I had previously painted.  A nerve racking task to see if I had done a good enough job on the paint to be happy with it.  

With all of the runs on the paint that you can see over top of the paper covering I was almost afraid to see if my taping had held back everything underneath the paper. 

I have to keep pinching myself when I look at this picture.  The paint is perfectly dry here and the shiny finish is near perfection.  It's hard to believe in this shot that the paint was brushed on with a foam paint brush. The paint is a polyurethane boat paint and after brushing it on it settles to a nice smooth finish.  Looks awesome if I do say so myself.

The front signal light housings will show up perfect when the signals are mounted and turned on.  Hours and hours of sanding to get the body this smooth looking.   There are at least four coats of paint on the body with 320 grit sanding between each coat.  On a scale of one to ten I would give it a good solid eight plus.  But then I am looking at the paint from three inches away and everyone else will see it from ten or twelve feet away.  Either way I am pleased with my efforts. 

In this shot you can see a couple of the flaws in the paint where I will have to do some touch up.  This was expected and luckily there is no major flaws that cannot be fixed with a small paint brush and a little more time and effort.

The next step once I have corrected the minor flaws in the paint is to put black pin striping tape down.  This will be laid over the mating edges of the red and white paint.  It will hide any imperfections on these lines and will make the two colors more detailed once completed.  This is the fun portion of the painting process for me.  

Here the front hood has been completed.  I will get photos of the hood remounted on to the velomobile once I get all the touch up painting done and the pin striping completed in the next week or so.  So for now this is a major step forward in the project and one that I am happy to say is nearing completion.  Enjoy the photos.