I like black. It’s a good color. I like my mostly-black bike. I have a black helmet, black shoes, black pants, and black jacket. I feel sleek and invisible. But that’s not always the feeling I want on my bike.
Sometimes I want to be bright, ✨flashy✨, bold. This covers the journey of my bike from “BRAND BRAND BRAND” to “BLUE”.
This is my bike a year ago after I had given it some love in the shower. Notice the 3 BRAND decals (there are actually 9 total on the bike).
This is my bike today
Pure smooth gradient blue
Over the year I talked with a number of friends about painting my bike and many people told me not to do this. They would say “it’s hard”, “it takes a level of detail [you don’t have]”, that I should sandblast and powder coat, blah blah blah. I wanted a blue bike and would not be dissuaded.
A local bike store and I negotiated a plan: I would drop off my bike for a service, they would strip the frame, I would paint the frame and return the frame, and they would reassemble it. I liked this plan because I hadn’t had my bike professionally serviced in years and I wouldn’t have to deal with reassembling parts of the bike I don’t yet know.
I got the frame back a week after I dropped it off and started sanding. I started with a 150 grit wet sanding on the flat parts. I did all the small nooks and crannies with 300 grit sand paper (not wet). I finished some spots with a 600 grit wet sanding. I sanded till the sheen from the manufacture’s top coat was gone, but tried to avoid sanding down to the frame (where I would need to do more work to get the spray paint to bond with the frame). One mistake I made with wet sanding was thinking that I still had more top coat (shiny) to go because the water was making the surface look wet. The best pattern I found was sanding, then cleaning the area with isopropyl alcohol, then waiting two minutes for the iso to evaporate to see my progress. In total I spent about 6 hours sanding.
The secret ace up my sleeve was that Ribbit had agreed to do the spray painting. They’re a highly competent painter and did a great job with a blue gradient on the frame.
After two hours and many coats of priming, spray painting, and top coating, the frame (and fork) were beautifully painted!
I returned the parts to my local bike store, via my backup bike, and they got on reassembling the bike.
I got my bike back just as spring was blossoming over Seattle and I took my bike to the park for a nice photoshoot.
I have some more blue accessories on the way (spoke covers, bike cage) and I hope to one day paint the rims!
Thanks for reading, and I hope you take away an inspiration to de-brand and customize your gear.
P.S. Ribbit and Kalesta previously painted part of Kalesta’s bike and it’s also great.
