Bicycle Mechanics - Sand Blasting Aluminum

Was at a shop with a sandblaster tonight. They were using very coarse black sand. I took the seat post off my OCR-3 and sprayed the bottom of it. It left a cool texture. I'd kinda like to do the whole bike like that, and then paint over it with a non-gloss paint.

What paint can I use that won't scratch that is flat as hell?

Sandblasting, with sand, can be dangerous to aluminum bicycles.
Instead they can/should blast it with plastic pellets.
Instead of painting it, why not have it anodized? Works better/nicer on alu.

Where does one find a place to sand blast their frame? I have a steel frame that I want to sand blast and repaint but don't know how to go about getting that done.

Anodizing such a large frame would be expensive. And it would be a pain in the ass to setup the kind of currents required to do it myself, would it not?

Sand blasting it will not be dangerous. The pressure/medium combo that I am using does not take much Aluminum away. So its not an issue.

Where does one find a place to sand blast their frame? I have a steel frame that I want to sand blast and repaint but don't know how to go about getting that done.

You don't have to sandblast it to repaint it. You could just scrape off any decals, and then sand it. I dunno where you get something sandblasted. This is all at my dad's amatuer shop.

I personally wouldn'y use sand, even on cromo steel; if you hesitate for a second, it'll go straight through the tubing. The 'boutique' frame builders that created and painted my cromo frame use bead blasting when repainting frames, much safer :).

Was at a shop with a sandblaster tonight. They were using very coarse black sand. I took the seat post off my OCR-3 and sprayed the bottom of it. It left a cool texture. I'd kinda like to do the whole bike like that, and then paint over it with a non-gloss paint.

What paint can I use that won't scratch that is flat as hell?


How about powdercoating???

Powdercoating will mess up the texture.

Anyway, to those that say it will go through the frame: have you ever actually sand blasted anything?

I had my house sand blasted, I saw how fast a large hole could be made in a housebrick!

Really you can chemically strip aluminium so easily it is a waste to blast it. But if you do make sure you use something like walnut shells or plastic. A true heavy sand will create a lot of heat in the metal and does some interesting things, it can distort smaller parts but a bikeframe I would be more worried about the shot peening of the surface then anything else which can effect weld's.

Now if you have a steel frame you can hot dip it, I use this for a lot of auto body resotration stuff, but aluminium cannot be hot dipped it will simply desolve in the tank.
Rememeber that while aluminium does not rust in the air there are elements that can make it dissipear almost overnight like mercury. Which is part of the reason you can't hot tank it. It will simply oxidize away.

AI am in the middle of striping my softride down right now and am doing it chemically, costs about 4 bucks for materials and about 30 bucks for the pads to polish the frame to a high luster.

Shot peening would increase the fatigue life. :)

Shot peening would increase the fatigue life. :)

Yes it woulod but if you go to heavy on the sand it can effect weld strenght, its all really silly to argue anyway as you really don't put enough stress on a bike frame for it to make a really big difference in my opinion.

Working with a aluminium is lots of fun some very strange properties that you can exploit.

Sand blasting does not add strength as a shot peen would.

What people don't seem to get is that you can adjust the kind of sand, the volume of air/pressure that drives it, and how much sand you shoot... so the idea that you would go "oops I went though the tubing" is rediculous. You'd have to try, and it would take a long time to go through.

I'm gonna blast my **** and clearcoat over it. It looks like raw mean metal and that goes with my horned helmet look.

How should I get the CF fork to match?

I'm gonna blast my **** and clearcoat over it. It looks like raw mean metal and that goes with my horned helmet look.

Funny thats just the look I am going for with my softride, giong to brush the crud of the aluminum, paint some carbon black flame's with red tips to match the fork and seat beam and then clear the thing.

Now I just have to anodize the rims's or use this as a excuse to buy a better set in black of course.

This is a lot of fun to modify and a heck of a lot cheaper then modifying the shelby.