Current Projects chat and miscellany

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When i took out the fork the steerer was still painted black so I think it must have been stripped back to the chrome at some point rather than re chromed (strange that they would chrome the whole bike just to paint it?!)...

Not really strange. I think that it would be normal to chrome the entire frame (and first the other layers underneath, nickel then copper I believe it is), then polish it. Then paint over the top as desired, it is probably easier than specifying which bits specifically to be chromed as per customers' orders, for each frame. Then the only bit of variation for the finshers is which bits to paint, which bits to mask.

I am totally guessing all of that. And I think not the case when only ends/dropouts were chromed, rather than chroming tubes or parts of tubes.