Archive for the ‘Bike Painting’ Category

Hard to believe, perhaps, but yes, it’s our first 29er. Our friend Bridge has a habit of pushing us to try new things – years ago he commissioned our first monostay track bike, and now here he is pushing the large & fat tires on us. Check it out:

  

Apparently Bridge rides in muck a lot, so he likes to run his shifter cables in housing, instead of using cable stops. I like these stainless housing guides from Kirk Pacenti, and welded them together so they could look all neat on his top tube:

  

Here are some shots of the construction. It’s all True Temper tubing, and required an extra-long 35mm down tube to reach up to the top of the Rock Shox fork Bridge has planned. I didn’t have to use super long chainstays as the Paragon disc dropouts are nice and long and help me stretch out the rear end. Bridge wanted some “just in case” braze-ons as well, including water bottle bosses, rack & fender mounts, and screw-in canti posts.

  

And here it is all painted up nice with oak leaves galore:

  

  

  

I also painted a Nash, from a Baltimore builder, and a Kawasaki-green Geekhouse for our friend Marty; look for that one at NAHBS this weekend!

 

Next, and I mean it this time: belt drive!

For local luminary Ron I’m building a sometime tourer/all around towner; he plans to build it up with only the rear derailleur as an 8 or 9 speed, not unlike Katie’s. He’s rocking the very hot Richard Sachs lugs, and is running cantilever brakes. Here’s some pictures of the frame under construction:

  

  

I also repainted a great old Fat City Buckshaver for our friend Brian:

 

 

And finally I painted a new frame from Dwight at Bowen Bicycle Works in CT:

 

Next: finishing ron’s! coming up: belt drive mania!

Yesterday we had a nice snow storm in Providence, about 8 inches starting promptly at 9:30 the morning of New Year’s eve. It’s the second real storm we’ve had, and it’s putting our snow bikes to the test. We’re used to riding thru the traffic gridlock when it snows, but what’s really satisfying is passing cars, plows and sanding trucks that are under way. It’s true folks, bikes are just better! Yesterday the conditions for snow riding were perfect, light fluffy snow that ‘cross tires can cut right thru, and not much ice. Here’s some shots of the snow outside the shop. I’ve got snow in my air horn.

  

The holidays means schwag, so I whipped up some bottle openers for friends and family:

Our great friend and customer Brian brought in an old Fat City frame for rehabilitation. We’re waiting on decals for it; here it is on the alignment table:

I also built up Nick’s track bike. It’s super hot! Here are some shots of the finished product. I built up a custom wheel set using Surly hubs and white Velocity rims, and I painted his stem white to match; Nick found the white bars and seatpost. Can you say bling?

  

  

  

  

I painted Nick’s monostay’d, Richard Sachs lugged, Paul dropout-ed, superhot fixie yesterday. This is another one of those bikes where I wasn’t sure how I’d feel with the colors but the customer was totally right and the shit is HOT. I mean khaki and white – it’s like the worlds most delicious cappucino.

  

  

Here’s the process for masking the head lugs. First I apply Spray Mask with a brush; after that dries you can trace the line of the lug with an x-acto, peel the mask off the tubes (it’s sort of like rubber cement), and then mask the rest of the bodies of the lugs with tape. Then we paint.

And here are some more pictures of Nick’s in process.

I also made a replacement fork for Jack’s Whitcomb, which we repainted a couple years ago. He tracked down a great new old stock twin-plate crown, and I used the original dropouts off the old fork.

And last but far from least, Stevil Kinevil of Swobo has been tearing it up on his Circle A cross bike. He seems like a nice guy, right, who looks something like this:

But that’s when he’s in costume. Here’s the real guy:

So last week I started on local yokel Nick’s lugged fixie with monostay. He’s using the very cool and ornate Richard Sachs lugs. Here’s some as the front end is getting brazed up:

  

And here are some shots of me getting the monostay jigged up. It’s a cast piece that we braze to three sections of seat stay. On the right you can see where I’ve brazed a piece of seat tube onto the top of the monostay so it can’t punch through the seat tube (I’ve seen it happen!):

  
  

Soon it’ll be time for paint. Speaking of which, I had the pleasure of painting one of Mike Flanigan’s fantastic ANT’s. Here it is, reminding us that nothing looks as hot as gloss black, until you get finger prints all over it…

  
 

We also did some work on Mike’s Kona – removed a horribly stuck seat post, updated the braze-ons, and repainted a lovely pearl, with the original decals from the UK:

  
  

And finally, Adrienne’s bike went out the door, kitted out with Sram Rival components and Shimano medium reach brakes:

  
  

Next – finishing Nick’s!

 

 

Sam’s lugged, S&S coupled touring bike is done. He picked the custom colors, and it’s gorgeous:

  

Here are some shots of construction. As on many of our touring bikes, I used Henry James dropouts because they have enough of a slot so you could cut the chain and run it as a single speed if your derailleur blows up in Timbuktu.

  

Note the low rider rack mounts on the fork. Sam will be using a Tubus rack, which I used to locate the mounting points:

  

  

So for the paint, Sam wanted these three colors, and a leaf he had drawn for the seat tube:

He sent us an EPS file of the image so we can cut it out of vinyl as a stencil. He also wanted the bands on the edge of the panels and the lettering to be in the same green; this meant painting on the logos, instead of using the decals we have printed. So first I painted orange on the head tube, and green for where the logos, bands and leaf would be; then I cut and weeded the vinyl for the logo stencil and leaf, and applied them over the green. The vinyl for the logos is yellow, for the bands, black. After spraying the orange for the panels, I peel off the vinyl, and there is the green lettering.

 

  

In that last one you can also see the Spray Mask that I’ve applied over the lug lines so I can mask those properly. Then I cover the head tube completely, cover the panels, and spray the final mint green.