DIY Painting a Bike Frame: Is it possible? I have painted a couple bike frames (think really cheap garage-find rebuilds) with varying degrees of failure. Can you help me correct/fill in the missing pieces of my frame painting process?


Breaking Down the Bike: Remove everything except the Bottom Bracket, which can be masked. (Removing BB is to easy for me to mess up) Fork can be removed and painted separately.
Stripping old paint off a bike frame: Easy enough using scraper, sandpaper, and even super-dangerous paint stripper.
Cleaning off Rust: Rust can be sanded off pretty easily, even using tinfoil on sensitive/chrome areas works really well.
Masking: Mask the BB, the Fork and Seatpost holes, and anything else that shouldn't be painted.
Priming: A few coats of primer is absolutely necessary to fight rust.
Painting: Here's where I am lost.  I have heard these options:


Spraypaint/Rattle-Can: Worst Method, use Engine-Coat Epoxy paints, many coats, need to cure for weeks before anywhere near scratch-resistant.  Even then a strong fingernail seems to be able to strip paint.
Powder-Coating at an AutoBody shop: Don't know much about the cost EDIT: Costs around $200, according to wdypdx22 below. or pros and cons. Probably not financially feasible on a garage-find bike build, or am I wrong?
Other Options?
I'm not an expert on this, but I do have a friend who immaculately restores vintage bicycles. I've helped him on a few projects and this is roughly what he does. (My friend started out 5 or 6 years ago with an old cruiser and cans of spray paint. Wound up becoming obsessed and ended up with a spray painting set-up that he found on Craigslist...)

Basically he starts with your steps 1 - 4 for paint removal, although more advanced. My friend has professional grade spray painting equipment and uses industrial grade coatings, so he's not using rattle cans of spray paint.


After the paint removal, he re-tapes with a finer grade of masking tape.
Usually 2 coats of epoxy based primer.
2 - 4 coats of color, which is an industrial grade polyurethane paint.
During the color phase, he deals with lug detailing and decals. This part is tedious and time consuming.
Finally, 3 coats of clearcoat. And then the frame hangs in the paint shed for 24 to 48 hours.


If you're serious about it, I can find out what brands, etc he uses.

And for powder-coating, another acquaintance recently spent ~ $200 USD on a frame.

Yeah, totally possible However, sending your bike frame off to the paint shop for powder-coating ceases to be DIY. ;~)