Painting Help - What to mask when repainting Steel Frame?
 

I've finally stripped all the paint off of my 1993 Ritchey Road Logic for my personal restoration project, and I'm about ready to paint. I'm having a hard time finding resources online to help me understand exactly what areas are masked off to avoid being painted (aside from any obvious threaded areas like the BB and bolt locations) so was curious if anyone could help!

• I'd like to have the dropouts unpainted to avoid the inevitable paint cracking, is it okay to just sand these areas raw and polish them? What should I do to prevent rust in these areas?

• Do you entirely mask off the steerer tube including crown seat? Is protecting from rust an issue here as well?

• Should I mask off my downtube shifter mounts?

Cheers, thanks for any help!

I assume you mean wet paint. Hopefully if you take it to a powder coater they know enough about bikes to mask.
Bosses are a bit annoying to clean up after paint. I would mask the part of the shift lever bosses that the shifter rides on. Anything that can be cleaned up with a tap is okay left alone.
You are going to need 5, 6, and 10mm taps. Or you could put bolts in the holes, but watch for runs.

What I do.

Mask inside of head tube, seat tube, bottom bracket. Put sacrificial bolts in the bottle cage threads. Mask off downtube shifter mounts if they're the thread-in kind. Mask steerer tube and where crown race sits. Don't need to worry about rust if you grease it.

I wouldn't mask steel dropouts, because those can rust, but you can spray just a layer of primer there, and then mask off for the top coat, so it's less likely to crack.

Would it make sense to put a little grease in the threads etc to help prevent the chance of paint getting into things if the mask fails?

additionally, when ready to remove the sacrificial bolts and tape, use a sharp razor/xacto knife and cut the paint where tape/bolt meets the frame/painted part, this will prevent cracking the paint.

Also, for resources, you could probably search youtube for how to paint a bike or at least frame prep for painting a bike. A quick search returned a few promising videos.

Thanks y'all, tons of helpful tips I hadn't come across! Found lots of good general painting videos but nobody went into much depth about masking and what can and can't be painted.

Bummed it sounds like going unpainted on the dropouts is risky - I wonder if there's any other good ways of rust proofing them short of plating (although I have come across good DIY at home plating kits).

Mask the faces of the bottom bracket (some bb's don't need this) and head tube. Unless you have access to the tools to clean them up post painting.

In addition to the above, mask the square area around the shifter boss. Paint buildup, especially hard powdercoat, will make it difficult to fit the square keyed washer over the square boss.

I wouldn't worry about rust on the dropout faces. Mask them before paint rather than trying to sand off the paint afterwards, and merely spray the area with a lube when you lube the bike.