Do you like boutique-and-unique bike parts, but just can’t seem to find your favorite shade of anodized brown? You can take your conspiracy hat off, because it’s not just you – it’s just a very difficult color to anodize. Paul Component and SimWorks teamed up on a project to solve your woes, but warns that just like a box of chocolates – you never know quite what you’re going to get.
Paul Component & SimWorks brown anodized collaboration (and chocolate)
You probably saw that Paul Component Engineering just turned 30, and celebrated by offering some beautiful green parts. They’re up to their custom color ways again, this time turning to brown, at the special request of SimWorks. We can’t tell the story better than they can, so check out the scoop below.
From Paul Component Engineering:
Brown is a notoriously difficult color to anodize, and the risk of botching it and scrapping a run of parts we spent so much time machining is very scary. Most component manufacturers (including us) steer waaay clear of such a difficult color, so when our friends at Simworks asked us to make a special edition engraved and brown-anodized run of parts, we were hesitant. You never know what shade of brown you’ll get back from ano. It could be a super light and shiny whisky brown, or a sandy reddish clay brown or dark dirt flat brown. Not only can it vary from batch to batch, and from part to part, but even within the same part. We warned Simworks about the “get-what-you-get” nature of brown, and they still wanted it, and we love them, so we decided to give it a shot.
When the parts came back from anodizing, some of the parts matched pretty good, but as we feared, some of the parts didn’t match each other. We built a couple up, and ….wait a minute…. this looks super unique and RAD! It looked like when you open a box of assorted chocolates on valentine’s day, and with the Simworks “heart-with-an-arrow-through-it” logo, this couldn’t have turned out cooler looking! Simworks asked us if we could make them a video of Paul with a box of Chocolates saying a line from Forest Gump, and that sounded fun, so we got silly and made that too.
In the end a super unique limited run of parts are now available (from Simworks ONLY, not us!), and we got to make Paul run down the road with a fake beard and wig on, so we’re gonna call this a win!
Technical Information:
• Material: American 6061 Aluminum, Heat Treated 12L14 Steel, Stainless Steel, and 7075 Aluminum
• Surface Finish: Anodized Brown (we also made them some Black/Red and Black/Green parts)
• Made in Chico, California by a bunch of machinist bike nerds.
• Available: Now!
