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[skloot]

Well hello there,

I've been thinking about making an Achewood themed bicycle for quite a while. Recently I started toying around with bike mechanics, and decided that building such a vehicle would be a fun way to learn. Thusly, I am sharing my attempt at an Achewood single speed road bike.

It's an old Gitane Gypsy Sport, late around 1978 I believe, stripped, painted white and with some of my favorite images from the comic glued on. The clear coat did not seal the paper as well as I had hoped. The only thing worth mentioning on the bike are the wheels, which are Mavic CXP22 rims on Formula hubs. Practically everything else is at least 20 years old. As such, it is incredibly heavy given it's simplicity.

I was happy about the head tube "badge" of Philippe standing on it, but the clear coat made the toner run a bit and the brake cable interferes. Alas. He is also coming off - most of the paper needs more sealant of some kind, maybe acrylic matte medium - which I have used on another similar project, a bicycle covered in red paper.

Anyhow. Photos.

(I am new here and it seems they are scaled down. To see a larger version right click and View Image, I suppose?)















I will post the.... montage? on the top tube soon. It consists of some of my favorite panels.



ps
hi touamb

[wombat]

Hi,
It is always a pleasure to see this kind of effort go into a first post. Welcome.

[Doc]

Yeah, we're kind of big on the newbies who put in effort around here. Props.

If the paper doesn't work out have you considered stenciling them on? It would be a lot more work for stuff like speech bubbles but phillipe and the rocket would probably work pretty well.

[Carlos del Vaca]

Yes, but is it a ghost bike?  and is it illegal?

[lprkn]

If you are using an inkjet, I would suggest trying a laser printer. Pretty cool, though. Welcome.

[skloot]

I did indeed use a laser printer for this. The resolution on it wasn't great, but the toner is, I think, more durable that inkjet ink. Stenciling or something like that would be way better for sure. Or maybe printing onto vinyl stickers. This project was more of an experiment than anything else, if I build another one in the future more effort will go into it. In fact, the original concept for this was to have the frame completely covered in images, a big crazy collage. Then after hours and hours and hours of stripping, sanding and painting, I got lazy and just did what you see above.

Ghost bike? It's reasonably corporeal. Though I was working on this in the down time I had after I broke my arm biking, so in a way the project is similar to the cyclist-fatality-ghost-bike-memorial thing (if that's what you're referring to).

Here's the montage you see on the down tube. I'm not totally happy with it, but it's good enough. Anyhow, it had to be printed so small to fit on the thin tube without wrapping too much that it's quite hard to read unless you are very close.

edit: To see the full size, right click on the image and hit View Image (in Firefox, that is)

Thanks for the kind words, everyone

[Carlos del Vaca]

Ghost bike? It's reasonably corporeal. Though I was working on this in the down time I had after I broke my arm biking, so in a way the project is similar to the cyclist-fatality-ghost-bike-memorial thing (if that's what you're referring to).

http://achewood.com/index.php?date=11192001

[skloot]

Nooooooo, my nerd ego! 

Should have remembered that one when I was putting it together.

[jaydub]

Props on including more recent stuff.  Some of our compatriots get all hung up on being older-skool-than-thou...

[AugustWest]

Props on including more recent stuff.  Some of our compatriots get all hung up on being older-skool-than-thou...

Whatever noob.

[jaydub]

Whatever noob.

Case in point - AW thinks the strip peaked at Phillipe's Standing On It, and its been downhill ever since.

[Ben-San]

I'm telling you, it's just not the same since Philippe ceased to stand on it.

[Golfhaus]

Well, I thought Achewood jumped the shark when it got its own domain name.

This is also an awesome idea for a bike. I like that you chose certain iconic representations than attempting to put whole strips on. That would have been silly, and Achewood offers plenty of single-panel gold.

[jough]

That is a serious bike.  Welcome to the board.

[AugustWest]

Welcome to the board.

That's kind of like getting welcomed to the Catholic Church by Jesus.

Hey Jough!