Bells Bike Shop is based in Philadelphia, PA, with a big presence on eBay, too. To corner their booth, they hung a custom made and custom “printed” camouflage Alchemy road bike.
The camo graphics are a water transfer process known as Hydro-Dip, which essentially coats the object in printed designs just like the stickers on model airplanes used to be, just bigger. Once dry, the frame was clear coated, which made any seams very hard to see and impossible to feel.
Slide past the break to heck it out close up, followed by an out of this world martian space scene on Groovy’s fat bike!
Even up close, it takes a second to notice any seams on this print, but you can’t feel them at all.
Check them out at BellsBikeShop.com.
Groovy builder Rody Walter built this fat bike in the week leading up to the show, likely pulling a couple late nights considering the amazingly detailed, layered paint scheme.
…keep on rollin’! In this case on a steel frame with titanium seatpost.
The base of the bike and the fork were painted white first, then paint was applied to plastic wrap. That was rubbed and wrapped around the tubes, then brushed lightly once the wrap was removed.
In this case, the fork was a little older, having already been used by the customer, so the fork was masked and painted. For new forks, Rody pulls them apart to make the paint job a little cleaner.
The bar and stem are made in house, too. The handlebars are their Luv Handles, which are sold separately (and not permanently attached to a stem).
Groovy’s stays are swerve and curvy, and on this one the chainstays get in on the action in multiple planes.
The lateral curves are plainly visible…
…but they’re also curved upward at the back. That’s a Shadow Conspiracy BMX chain.
Groovy makes the crank arms in house, too. These are custom beveled the inside edge of the pedal insert to clear the Paragon Machine Works chainstay yoke.
Back to the paint. It took about 14 hours and has 14 colors. The customer has about $7,500 in this bike.
Velocity Dually 45mm rims that were custom polished, masked to get the cosmo shapes and Cerakoted in matte black.
