The frame was the only part I had sandblasted by someone else. The sandblaster and the powdercoater were near each other but about an hour from my house, so I thought I'd save some time by bringing the frame to the blaster, have him strip it while I waited, and then bring it straight to the powdercoater.

Big mistake.

What I should have done was bring the frame home and spend some time looking it over. It turns out there were some areas with weld slag or something on them. I didn't notice the bumps when the frame was dirty and rusty, but once the frame had a nice shiny powdercoated finish, they stood out like a sore thumb.

You may be thinking "The powdercoater should have seen them". Well, he did. The problem was, when I brought the frame to him, I mentioned that I knew there were a couple rough areas, but I wasn't concerned about it since this wasn't going to be a show bike. I was talking about the battery tray and the welds, he thought I was talking about the tubes. When I made that comment I had just checked out some recent work of his; a frame that looked spotless, with smoothed welds and no pits from old leaky batteries. I knew mine wasn't going to look like THAT...

At first I thought the bumps were the coater's fault, but then I took a file to one of the bumps that was in a hidden area. Oops. There be metal under that there bump. So I hit another one. Same thing. Luckily, all but one of the bumps are in areas that are well hidden by the body work. I still wasn't convinced that the problem bump was metal though. After all, wouldn't I have seen it there before?

I started searching all the digital pictures I had taken of the bike to prove my point, since I didn't want to file the finish off such a visible area. I finally found a couple pics that showed the area, and there it was. A spot on the frame that simply looked a little discolored. But the discoloration was in the same spot, and was the same shape, as the bump in the frame. Damn.

The moral of the story is, give the frame a close examination before you put the final finish on it. There are bumps on the frame in areas I'd never imagine a welder would go near. Had I seen them before the powdercoating, a little time with a file would have cleaned them up just fine. As it is now, I'll live with most of them, and I have an idea on how to hide the main one.

Had this been a serious restoration, I'd be very bummed about this. But, if it was a restoration, I wouldn't have powdercoated the frame in the first place and I could fix it more easily.