I love all of my bicycles. Every single one of them. But with my long-time friend, a 1982 German Schauff city bike, I have a very special connection. My dad gave this bicycle to my mum before I was born and ever since it's in our family.
Over the years the frame and everything got a bit rusty and also I had to change parts here and there. But the 30 year old Brooks saddle and white frame always remained the same.
Back in march I was at Berliner Fahrradschau and spoke with the guys from Brick Lane Bikes about their new project. Spray.Bike. I really wanted to give it a try, so I took two bottles of Spray Bike with me. A few weekends I had a DIY-pimp-my-bike-make-over-session with my old Schauff Bike.
How it works & my experience with Spray.Bike
In the instructions it says the frame doesn't need major pre-prep. And in fairness I was also too lazy, so I just cleaned the frame, removed all the parts and stickers and started spraying.
For best results apply Spray.Bike from a distance of 5-12 centimetres, because then the paint is semi-wet and the pigment is perfectly primed to do its job properly. Under 5 centimetres, faults can occur. After 12 or 14 centimeters the paint will have turned into a dry powder dust with little adhesion at all. Application is really easy and the colors turned out great and covered the scratches on my old frame very well.
Available colors: You can choose from 24 solid matte Spray.Bike shades. I used Primrose Hill and Plumstead. Here's the list of available colors .
Durability: I didn't use any finish product and like mentioned didn't prepare the frame beforehand. But the results are great and even though the paint has a few scratches, which I think is mostly because I ride this bike everyday and don't always treat it very carefully
Summary: It's such a fun product and I really enjoyed the DIY afternoon giving my bike a new look. I'm totally happy with my “new bike” definitely get lots of comments on the color. Not sure if I would spray my 1500€ road bike frame with it, but mainly because I'm probably not the most patient and talented spray painter.
All Photos by Allthatiwant
