Sweet....looking forward to the updates.

Cheers.

Update as promised,

I have trouble with the welds especially around the bottom bracket.



As you can see it also still needs some work on the tubes, but I am getting there.....slowly.



I've bould the rear wheel saturday, Ambrosio Crono F20, Circus Monkey, CX-Ray, 32 spokes, 3 cross, 730 gram.
Unfortunitly my LBS didn't had the spokes for the front wheel on stock, so need a little wait for that.

Are you gonna polish it until it's chrome?

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Storck Fenomalist 6.3kg.
BMC Teammachine SLR01

I thought i was, but now I'm thinking of a raw finish as Cannondale used on the Six13 and System6.
Think I like the more industrial look better than a smooth finish (and it saves me from a lot of work).

Sorry, but in my opinion i don't think the raw finish gives the frame credit. You should throw in the hours and polish it.

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Storck Fenomalist 6.3kg.
BMC Teammachine SLR01

polishing (and sanding/buffing) of the big surfaces of the tubes goes pretty fast. I polished some ultegra cranks, seatpost, stems, handlebars,… all prety simple geometries.
When i started polishing a Shimano deore hub by hand, it was a real PITA. Untill i used my dremel polishing kit. Buffing wasn't even necessary to make it shiny as hell. You could us the dremel bit for the weldings and some elbow grease for the tubes

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I Will make the leap

I think most of us are hoping for a full polish, otherwise your frame will end up looking a lot like the 2012 raw minus the grey on the seat and chain stays


IMGP0337 by dissemination47, on Flickr

Lol, where was that frame color available?
Never seen that before, would have saved me a lot of time!

But oke, I have not decided on the finish jet...
So if you guys can confince me, maybe I will polish it

North America it seems. It was the caad10-4 Rival group.

There are actually structual reasons to polish and/or anodize an aluminum frame. It closes the surface pores in the aluminum, making the material stronger. On a super thin walled frame like this, it may matter. Raw, untreated aluminum is simply weaker and more prone to cracks...

This is not just hypothetical mumbo-jumbo, at the very least not with such thin tubes... Food for thought.

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Roadbike
Kinesis RaceLight T2

Mountainbike
Van Nicholas Zion Ti

I'm really curious about this thread, since I've been thinking about stripping my CAAD 9. There's so much contradictory info re: what's best after stripping, though. Here's thread which says that leaving 6000 series alu raw is perfectly fine.

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=99123&start=15

If there is a definitive best answer, it'd be nice to know.

Any updates?

Give it a nice even satin finish. Use some 400 grit.

What did you end up doing??