Be interested to see a video on powder coating frames. Shot blasting the frame could be part of that :-0 Good effort in the gold though. Probably looks amazing out in the sun.
I think gold spraybapint may have been a good deal more practical !!! Some of them mimic true gold colour impressively well! Much better finish as well!!
Sorry Alex, looks a bit rough and patchy. I think gold paint or vinyl wrap may have been better. Good effort, it may inspiré some people, not me though.
Guys I am so much ahead of you 😂 In 1990 or maybe the late 80s I thought my white BMX looks boring so I asked my dad to paint it gold. I was the coolest kid at my elementary school 😁😁😁
Hi Alex, You need to talk to Dr Ollie before you write your scripts, or maybe you did and he didn't know. Gold is awesome, or maybe AuSome, anyway it catalyses loads of cool chemical reactions, and can be used as a Lewis acid as well as a catalyst in many Organic chemistry processes. I was looking at some gold mediated reactions just the other day using AuCl3, but there are many other Gold compounds which you can use to do cool stuff. Just saying, and please Ollie, keeo on point with the chemistry.....
For a similar finish, I will probably wait until after Christmas and cover my bike in discarded sweet wrappers… I could even do it in the purple ones….
Gold is exceptional in both chemistry and physics. There are no electronics without gold, there is no spacecraft alive without it. It's very hard to call uninteresting
i think this could possibly look better if they added a nice thick coat of clear. something like spraymax 2k clear coat or any other automotive quality clear. one or 2 cans is enough for the whole bike and it'll look like a factory clear coat and the thicker clear will potentially make the flaws look less flaw like and maybe just add depth
Hmm, not sure about this. Aesthetics aside, the only real justification for gold-plating/ gilding a frame would be corrosion resistance, surely? So once you 'cheap out' and use 'imitation gold leaf' (whatever that actually is) you lose that advantage... and if you're not bothered about that and just want it to look pretty, gold paint must be a hell of a lot cheaper and easier to apply... I seem to remember a gold-plated Brompton being shown at the London Bike Expo (?) back around 2009, but then that was valued at something like £10k - and that was a lot of money for a bike back then :-)
I have a silver bike - a bike with a uncoated bare aluminum frame, without stickers or something on it. Some do this with nice (but unfortunately expensive) titanium frames, however it also works with aluminum.
I think that if you want more mirror like result you would have to use electroplating, not leaves. Maybe you could do tall bike next. Weld two (or more) bicycle frames on top of each other and try to learn to ride it 😅
Hmmm, not that sure about the finish, did you consider a gold anodise? It would require a pro level polish, but has the potential to look pretty. Otherwise plating could have a better result. I look forwards to seeing you playing with a home plating kit, some of the chemicals in these are delightful!
If you get the bike dirty on a ride and then power hose the bike clean, would the gold leaf come off? If you think about the way that metal surfaces are chrome plated then surely that technique (with yellow chrome) would be more robust and more even.
I would have tried to do hot brass laying. You basically take a torch to the steel frame and a brass wheel brush to the heated area and it lays brass down.
I did this with a couple of tube mech mods for vaping, they were aluminum. Sanded them to get the surface flatish then mounted one on a rod loosely so it could spin free and heated the whole thing approximately rocket hot. With the torch nearby to get the heat back up I let the brass wheel spin the tube. Turned out great
I would like to point out that actual gold leaf is not that expensive since it's very thin (~1 micron). I'm seeing 0.01 gram per square metre. At the rate of 60$ per gram of gold it means that if you're paying 10$ per square metre of gold leaf, the bulk of the cost is not the raw material. I think it would be hilarious if Alex didn't realise that he had actually covered the bike in actual gold leaf.
It’s valuable because it’s rare. Not just because people said it is. Also the only person who would own or ride a gold bike is a rapper, a Russian oligarch or a man with a tiny sausage.
Can you do this with holographic foil too? I want a holo bike but they don’t sell any so I have to make it myself and that’s the way I’m thinking of doing it. And I don know anyone I could commission to do it.
I always enjoy the Alex builds no matter how awesome or silly. Must say, even though the finish on that bike is not the best, I think the overall accomplishment of the task makes it a great bike. Keep up the great work.
I think you should have said earlier, that you aren't using real gold. This bronze alloy leaf looks ok on a video, but if you were to compare it in person to real gold leaf, you'd see it looks nothing like it in colour. Bronze leaf is much bigger and thicker than gold leaf. Gold leaf is truly only a few atoms thick and much harder to work with. Also because its bronze, even though you have lacquered it. I think it will tarnish quite quickly if you use the bike.
Wow imitation gold leaf actually exist!So this mean people are being scammed into decadently eating fake gold leaf while getting scammed into spending insane amount of money for it.
Excuse me - gold is stupid. I think, that using real red and yellow autumn leaves under hard laquer coating, can be perfect finish for gravel/adventure bike.
Not my cup of tea, but I love customization projects. Nothing more boring than a peloton with only maybe 3 or 4 different bikes across everyone... As for the next project: carbon fork with disc brake up front, but keep the rim brake on the rear! Please don't butcher *another* frame!!
Sorry mate, but I don’t think this one would even get a “nice” in the bike vault. This seems like a project that would have been tackled by someone REALLY bored during covid lockdown. Spray paint or vinyl wrap would both have looked an awful lot better.
