Ye Blacke Death is a sloowwwww project. I have a botlet now, and she gets 99.99% of my free time. I’m working on this bike in bits and pieces as I can. Unlike wrongBike(tm), where I assembled ALL the parts first, and then put the bike together, this time, I’m sort of using the Lung school, and piecing it together as i go. Partly, this is just for fun, and partly because I want to test my assumptions and plans and schemes as I go, so I can course correct when needed. Like all of my projects, this one will have details that will change before it’s done (and already has) but that’s the fun of bike builds… they’re kind of organic in a design sense.

I pulled the old wheels off the frame and test fitted the new ones, this time around. This was for two purposes: I wanted to absolutely verify that I hadn’t misremembered the spacing on the frame (I bought the wheels on my iPhone while at my in-laws, without the frame at hand to verify) and it did. Additionally, I wanted to see how the silver finish of the rims was going to look. I had originally planned a very dark build: gunmetal parts where possible. This may still happen, if I find a suitable means of shooting a ‘smoke’ finish that won’t peel off without primer (why can’t Tamiya build stuff for BIG kits?) But my research into building wheels in a gunmetal look from scratch proved that approach to be too expensive and ultimately imperfect. I could get the rims dark, and maybe the spokes, but not the nipples or hub. I also looked at anodizing, as I posted about separately, but again, the brass nipples get you there. So I decided to focus on technology more than aesthetics, and choose the wheels based on how they work, not how they look (as related to my original concept)… but until I mounted them, I wasn’t sure if the silver was going to distract.

Nope, it’ll work juuuuuuust fine.

What i DID learn from this quick test was crucial to the future of the bike, however: the rims are light, but I want to simplify the look of the wheels. That mean no gumwall or all-gum tyres as I originally planned. Now I’m going all black. And in the arena of non-racing-slick tubular tyres, that’s harder to come by. More next time…

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1. Bike Build Process Log: Ye Blacke Death – Wheels Down
2. Bike Build Process Log: Ye Blacke Death – Wheels Selected
3. Bike Build Process Log: Ye Blacke Death – Rubber Side Down