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

Amazing, thanks @veLLo
I might well be in touch : )

I would recommend you to use the polishing machine. Will save you a lot of time :) . Looking forward to this!

Late to the party but this looks amazing! Nice one so far dude.

Best I explain it's actually a jeweller's polishing machine I've bought years ago in a boot sale. The small spindle size means I'll limited in the wheel size I can fit in. But it's reasonably powerful. I had to remove/cut away the protective "fairing", which restricted access to the wheel to jewellery size items, not bike parts.

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I just use an old solid corded drill in a vice with various polishing wheels bought on eBay. Cheap and easy to setup and plenty access for bike parts.

Finished one!

Thought it would be nice to do a side by side photo for comparison. The main fucker was sanding off the shot-blasted texture... after that the process was relatively painless. I ended up doing 400 grit > 600 > 1000 > 1500 > 2000, then Autosol and kitchen towel.

This was probably 2 1/2 hours work doing it by hand / without machines.

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Impressive dedication to a boring task. Got an old pair of red FSA PowerPros I'd like to de-anodise - quite a lot has rubbed off in the last ~20 years anyway, but saving that job for some other time...

Is it controversial to say I think I prefer the shot blasted look? Both look good though and better than the original black!

very much worth the effort, silver ta rings to match?

This looks excellent. Have been considering something similar for an older pair of deore cranks, so thanks for sharing the process :)

Not at all! I should've taken a photo of them on the bike before polishing, the shot-blasted finished was way too bright. I'm much happier with them now they're polished.

It might look even better if I re-anodised silver over the shiny finish but that's for another day.

Keeping the chainrings and spider black. Going for a "poor man's White Industries" look.
Although to be fair Rotor is hardly a bargain.

Think the polished looks better with black rings, one thing putting me off the VO cranks is the lack of black chainrings in the 50.4 BCD, I'm quite content to use the Spa cycles (sugino made) td2 cranks for now.

Wow, I'm in admiration of your patience! It looks great. The fact it's not (or doesn't seem to be on the picture) a mirror polish is really cool.

Top job! Looks so much better than the original cyborg-grey, and you’ve got the warm & fuzzies from knowing you’ve done it yourself.

You're right, not a mirror polish.... The main silver bits are the rims and the bottle cages, neither of which are particularly shiny, so no need to go much beyond this point. `

Nothing to do with it being really really boring and hard work of course ; )

I have indeed! So glad I bothered.

Now I've discovered how simple it is to remove and reapply anodising I think it opens up a lot of possibilities: You could totally make black VO chainrings with a bottle of Oven Pride and £30.

RE-ANODISE ALL THE THINGS!

Thanks! Summat else to get monkey brain doing overtime.

We did some experiments with stripping and re-anodizing in material science, when I did my engineering degree. The only thing standing in the way of a good home anodizing setup is a good power supply - the amperage depends on the surface area and I think we did one stem, half a seat post and some other stuff at around 8-9 amps..

Also we used pure or concentrated hydrogen poroxide (I think?) and stripping the old anodizing took 2-3 minutes or less.

I think home anodising might be a little ambitious for me!
It would certainly be a lot of fun though.

I was surprised just how easy it was to get decent results, but a lot of other projets takes precedence in my workshop (budget really) as well.

I like the sound of your workshop... what kind of projects do you get up to these days?

We bought a house in April last year and had a baby in December, so mostly home improvement until now, but hopefully I can get it setup for miscellaneous wood and soft metal fabrication in the future.
Lastest addition is a Tormek T4 water sharpening system. No more dull knives and tools!

Busy year! Sounds like you're living the dream : )