And the finished photo, with Greta the kitten doing a final check-over inspection deciding that Specialized's 26mm Turbo tyres aren't 26mm at all but more like 22mm:
Calico Cats are Clever with Computation!
Ours knows whether her allocation of '
Dreamies' has been reduced to four instead of the expected five and lets us know in no uncertain terms...
Anyhow...
Fettling over the last few days hasn't achieved anything of note since post #18554 in the 'completion' sense nor much in the overall visual stakes as it has been mainly concerning the touching-up of the worst of countless dozens of paint-chips on the '76 Holdsworth frame accrued simply through hard use (and, unfortunately, some
'not my fault' abuse) this past half-century.
Not helping matters was that although the paint bought for the task is a very close match to (and possibly exactly the same as) the original H-Campag. team colour its '
opacity' hardly merits the use of the word. The paint also has the viscosity of water which hardly helps the process and so a greater number of coats than expected need to be built-up all of which means that,
for me, it has been (so far!) an almost impossible task to end up with an opaque yet smooth top-coat surface-finish even after the T-Cut stage. On close inspection areas of the stays appear to have experienced a mild outbreak of orange measles...
Heigh-Ho. I'll sleep on the problem overnight and see if I can find a solution that works (no pun intended).
Anyhow; as the preliminary stage of the rebuild - merely re-grease headset & install forks / attach saddle - began just a few minutes before stumps-up this evening I'm looking forward to getting stuck in tomorrow and hope to get the bike back on the road as soon as is possible.
I'm still in two minds as to what to do with the finish of the saddle. For the model-and-colour-identical saddle of the 'Green Bike' (mentioned hereabouts) a jar of leather pigment / dye / conditioner worked
wonders lovely things in terms of renovating / renewing / nourishing the leather but I suspect that the 'very worn' areas of the saddle here are a bit too far 'gone home' for Salvation.
Adding to the visual awkwardness is that with the NOS (white) Campag. hood rubbers, the incoming new (white) brake cable outers and the way in which the rather old (white) 'bar-tape cleaned up all of a sudden the (no longer quite white) saddle looks - and, to be honest,
is! - rather shabby.
Hmmmm....Another thing on which to cogitate...
Where we are now;
Philip.
