Varonha Frameworks winter bike / FW Evans 650b conversion rat bike fun

Nice, where did you get them done?

Star Anodising in Erith, near Dartford

Cheers!

Stem: sorted
Saddle: sorted
Chainset: sorted
Wheels: sorted
Frameset: ?

You won't see the small marks. You can barely even see them in the photos.

True, it will look great once installed and these tiny spots will be insignificant to the scale of the whole bike...
Plus I don't think you can / should try polishing or applying compound like autosol on anodized surface, or am I missing something?

Still waiting! Popped in to see Mario on Wed (and give him the xmas gift of Frog Tape)... he said it might be finished by the end of the week. Guessing Winston will want a few days to tidy it up but it should be with me soon enough.

I also still have to get a seatpost. The CAD drawing was done with a Flite but I'm using an Antares instead - probably negligible difference but I'm keen to get the layback right (with the clamp in the middle of the rails) so am waiting until after my follow-up appointment with Scherrit to choose something.... but I just had to postpone Scherrit until after xmas so I can isolate ahead of seeing vulnerable family members. Hopefully he can see me soon-ish but I know he's extremely busy.

You have to sand off the anodising first, then you can polish it up with Autosol etc.
I'll probably leave it as it is for now though... if it really bugs me I can always paint them black.

I don't make a habit of it but I have used a tiny bit of autosol on anodised silver bits in the past. I guess if you use too much the anodise will wear off. I assumed @.gaz 's cranks were "raw", if they have just been anodised silver then yes it's probably best to leave them alone.

@Hulsroy was talking about this idea

Yeah but I'll polish mine

Lot of work! Which reminds me I still have a lot of polishing to do on cranks!

Slow afternoon here in Hither Green and getting a little overexcited...

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Not far from finishing that jigsaw. What headset have you gone with?

It's a black CK Gripnut in the photo.
Not sure if I'll use that one or the pewter / purple one yet.

The black one is a Gripnut and the pewter one is a 2nut.... The main advantage of using the Gripnut is that it frees up the 2nut for the Dawes, which will finally allow me to run a proper cable-hanger on there, which isn't possible with a Gripnut.

The front canti set-up is one of the few things that still bugs me about the Dawes build.... at the moment, the front light, mudguard and cable hanger are all attached to the fork crown and it's impossible to get the cable to run straight like it should.

During the slightly insane buying splurge for the Varonha I also bought a mudguard light mount from Isen that turned out to be too big for the slimmer PDW guards... I'm planning to use it on the Dawes, and (probably) the pewter headset so I can finally neaten everything up.

Sorry, that was a very long answer for a short question!

Don't apologise, reasoning behind component choices is always welcomed in a reply.
I was wondering if it was a CK, you and @veLLo are setting the standard quite high, whereas mines going to be a bit more workman like (initially).

CK was second hand and I was bullied into buying one by forum pressure.

When we're destitute you'll be winning!

As far as I know Chris King's are a pretty solid investment - the black one is brand new and comes with a lifetime guarantee. I think it's the most decadent purchase of my life so far.

I also really like that they're made by people who are treated well and paid a fair wage. I doubt you could say that about many of the more reasonably priced options.

Happy to help!

Having serviced it I appreciate it's good stuff.
But yeah as you say there's something decadent about it!

Love the silver rotors!

: )

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Excellent! That headtube really looks rather special. Crack on, finished build pic by Sat pm?

More tomorrow, I'm currently busy throwing a few bits on to see how it looks / works. Will probably take it down to Seabass tomorrow and get them to put it all together properly as I'm not much of a mechanic.