The final step in bringing a bike to NAHBS is to give it a nice coat of paint, put it together, and get it to the show. For our project Matter BeneFat, form followed function so we covered it in a nice coat of matte black with some nice accent stickers. Plenty of the gorgeous bikes to be show there are covered in thousand dollar paint jobs, but in the case of this project bike, it has to look good, but also look OK when covered in a bit of dirt.
Owner Collin Schaafsma took the finished frame down to Spectrum Powder Works for the cosmetic coating. Take a look inside to see the progression…
The raw frame will always start out with some prep work to cover parts of the frame that don’t need paint, such as the stainless Paragon Machine Works dropouts. Oliver Cleveland puts his vast experience painting bike frames to work here keeping everything looking perfect.
After painting, the masking is removed, and a nice smooth, stealth frame is just waiting to be converted into something better.
Collin has his decals cut from vinyl, for ease of application, and also ease of replacement as they wear over time. I chose to go wtih orange graphics on the frame and blue anodized accent parts on the bike.
Here it is – the Matter BeneFat that is built custom, one step at a time, with all choices intentionally pointed towards a specific use.
NAHBS opens tomorrow morning at 9am Eastern time, so keep tuned to see the complete build of this, and so many other great bikes.
