Originally Posted by
jPrichard10
Probably not worth the time and cost, but I have some smaller components that have lost their branding due to wear.
One of my favorite brake levers of all time, the NGC 202, has a nice looking "GC" on the front of the levers. Unfortunately, hands touch the brake levers fairly often! So this has worn away on a number of lever sets I have had.
Other common victims are Cyclone II derailleurs.
I'm currently selling a Trek 710 with all of the components listed above, and most of them have worn off.
Does anyone sell waterslide decals for smaller components like these?
Most of the simple black-on-aluminum graphics that started appearing on components in the 1980s were screen printed directly onto the metal. Before that, they were typically self-stick decals, and many of these are readily available from people who have reproduced them. Here's a pic of a first-generation Shimano 600 lever, created while Shimano's designers were still trying to get a handle on how to effectively copy the established European look, but still retained some of that unique Japanese flair. Of course, they were soon to demonstrate how to go Baroque-One-Better with the infamous and much-loved 600EX 'Arabesque' group from the "Giant Step Backwards School of Graphic Design!"
Many years ago, I bought several pairs of Modolo brake levers that were surplus product from the Scott Mathauser brake days. I didn't like the name SCOTT screened onto the levers, so I scraped it off with a fingernail. Equally diking the now blank space, on a whim I cut a couple of Cs out of leftover bar wrap finishing tape and stuck them on to fill the void. To my surprise, they stayed on and looked good for most of the 15+ years, tens of thousands of miles, and multiple bike frames I rode with them on my foul-weather commuter. I felt I had really scored when a biking co-worker once commented "I didn't know Cinelli made brake levers."
Cinolo Brake Lever
When I had access to a laser engraver, I found that one could spray a piece of polished or plated metal with molybdenum disulfide dry lube, let it dry, then run it through the engraver. Then the moly can be easily cleaned off the areas not hit by the laser but will remain on the target areas. The resulting graphic is a bit on the brownish side, not true black, but it shows up nicely and wears about as well as most screen printed stuff. You might check if there's a maker space nearby that has one of these. They will probably call it a "laser cutter" but anything under a couple hundred watts is really an engraver. The trick would be sticking to flat surfaces kept perpendicular to the laser.