21 gears to 1 gear - Part Duex

After about two hours of masking and watching Storm Chasers on Discovery, the singlespeed conversion was ready for some metallic purple paint. It's always amazing how long it takes to mask and how little it takes to spray. Labor of love this one is.

After the tape came off I did a bit more wetsanding to knock the edge down on the paint, then sprayed the whole thing with clear. Like on my friend's bike, I left the nicks and scratches in the original paint so the bike would still be weathered. Then added some sublime green stripes around the metallic purple. This was really hard as the tubing is just so darn small. Even with a Mack brush cut down to about 000 it was still hard to hold a consistent line. I tried my scrolling brushes too, and it seemed to work ok. This was again, another great learning experience.

Time to ship it out!!!

First real ride of the season.......

Got the Duc out with two other boys today. Matt on his Triumph T-Bird Sport (fresh fork rework and carb tune - she moves now and sounds like a P-51 Mustang) and Scott on this new Yamaha R6s. It was a bit cold, Chuckanut was PACKED, but we still have a great time just being able to ride. Hoping the weather finally breaks for us. 40 degrees and raining just isn't cutting it anymore. The Duc is running great, but I need to get her down to Ducati Seattle and have Marty tune her up on the dyno. Just ordered some high compression pistons and am anxious to get those installed. I think I'm ready to pull the trigger for a set of lighter wheels and front rotors. Once "Angelina" (named after the Louis Prima song - not Brads wife) she'll be the hottest thing on two wheels.

Man I just love this bike.

Birdbath Stand and candy panels - update

One of the birdbath stands is finished and ready for delivery. The semigloss paint helps bring out the backtwisting to the square steel, but should detract from the rhubarb leaf 'bath'. I think it came out nearly as good as powdercoating, but powdercoating adds a softness to the pieces because of the baked on layer.

Those red panels are 'testers' for a sign idea for a new brewery coming online. I followed an idea in one of my striping books about texturing aluminum and clearing over it with candy paint. I bought some Testors model paint in candy red and sprayed it over the freshly ground aluminum panels I had laying around. The texturing is pretty cool. I'll be adding some white pinstripe designs to this soon.

Striped a panel the other day with polar white, have one in gold too, but no pictures yet. The second birdbath is done too, and delivered.

21 gears to 1 gear

So, first shots of a mountain bike conversion from gears to singlespeed. Found this old KONA mountain bike frame with a busted rear dropout at a local pawn shop. It was ....... CCCCHHHEEEAAAPPPP. Ordered some singlespeed dropouts from Paragon Machine Works. I little heat to burn out the brass from the original frame build, shaved down the tabs on the new dropouts, used the MIG welder and right back to a rideable frame. I ground down the welds (I'm still a little sloppy, but MIGing these weren't exactly easy. A TIG welder wouuld have been the better choice, but I haven't built those skills...yet. Girls like guys with skills, nunchuk skills, internet hacking skills, TIG welding skills...........

I also shaved the cable eyes off on the chainstay and downtube, relocating an eye near the seat tube so the lucky recipient can use V - Brakes as this was a frame for canti-brakes. Old School.

Anyway, I wetsanded it down, added some primer and will paint certain areas a metallic purple and then add some "Sublime Green" stripes to it. Stay tuned..........

Fun at the 2nd Annual VooDoo Ball!!!

Good Times last weekend in Vancouver, BC with friends and Big John Bates and the VooDoo Dollz. Lil Miss Rick, Lil Miss LuvRoc, Camero Luv Roc and Cherry on Top gave a great show. Big John Bates, sCaroline and JT Massacre had yet another great show. The burlesque girls are always such a fun time to watch.

Can't wait for Round 3 next year!!!

Redline

Some thin red lines on the white panel for (shocker!!) Persnickety Design bags. This will end up being one of their smaller Cabio bags. I trimmed down a Mack 00 brush to probably 000 and tried that out. Seems to work pretty good for such a small area.

Twisted Steel birdbath stand

So, one of the few posts about the steel work I do. Another friend commissioned me to make two birdbath stands for her and her mother-in-law. I used some cold rolled square steel and backtwisted (a la Indian Larry on the Wild Child bike) to form the legs. Those were welded onto a small piece of round pipe, then heated and bent out. Then I heated the ends for the bath to sit and beat those down to round them out, leaving the opposite sharp to help hold it in place in the ground. She made the bath out of qwikcrete and a rhubarb leaf. They are just about done, but I want to add a bit more twisted accent pieces to it before it's ready for the powdercoater.

New striping work

Lightly striped a bottle of Captain Morgan "Voodoo" rhum for a friend of a friends belated Christmas present. I wanted to make sure the tall ship embossed on the back was highlighted so I surrounded it with some light stripes. The dark rhum really helps accent the white and red. Figured those were good pirate colors. Then got another black panel from Persnickety Designs for their 'cabrio' bag. Thinking (and hoping) that spring is almost here I decided to use the new One-Shot "Sublime Green" and white for the butterfly.