A pumpkin spice single speed build with a mismatched fork and a rattle can spray paint finish
The thing about vintage bikes--and this is also true of so many American consumer products--is that the majority of them were never really used. Someone bought a bike in 1972 or 1988 or whatever, rode it a few times, and then leaned it in the corner of their garage for several decades.
Many of the bikes I restore come from older folks who are downsizing and removing the old ten speed from their rafters. These bikes are covered in grime and their tires are crumbling, but their cogs are hardly worn and their chains are barely stretched. Rebuilding these bikes is pretty straightforward.
But then there's the bikes that got ridden, perhaps thousands of miles. Their worn components are easily replaced, but their paint is often scratched, flaked, and chipped from hundreds of scrapes against bike racks, street signs, and everything else a bicycle bumps into. They may have damage from chain rub or some bolted on accessory like those terrible brackets that hold U-Locks. They may have been left out in the rain with little patches of treatable rust poking through the paint.
Many of the bikes I restore come from older folks who are downsizing and removing the old ten speed from their rafters. These bikes are covered in grime and their tires are crumbling, but their cogs are hardly worn and their chains are barely stretched. Rebuilding these bikes is pretty straightforward.
But then there's the bikes that got ridden, perhaps thousands of miles. Their worn components are easily replaced, but their paint is often scratched, flaked, and chipped from hundreds of scrapes against bike racks, street signs, and everything else a bicycle bumps into. They may have damage from chain rub or some bolted on accessory like those terrible brackets that hold U-Locks. They may have been left out in the rain with little patches of treatable rust poking through the paint.
A Fuji Supreme that needed a new fork and some new paint to seal its many scratches.
It's possible to powdercoat a distressed frame, but that costs about $200 and isn't practical for most projects. Or sometimes I'll strip the paint completely and repaint the whole frame with a rattle can. But that takes forever and still looks like a spraypainted bike.
So lately, I've begun to embrace the Japanese concept of Wabi-sabi, which celebrates imperfections and repairs instead of hiding them, often using gold. It's an approach that acknowledges a bike's age and experience, so to speak. Healing its suffering without hiding it.
So lately, I've begun to embrace the Japanese concept of Wabi-sabi, which celebrates imperfections and repairs instead of hiding them, often using gold. It's an approach that acknowledges a bike's age and experience, so to speak. Healing its suffering without hiding it.
A 1974 Motobecane Grand Jubilee where the red paint had flaked off of the chrome fork.
As humans, of course, we can never be fully new, never OEM. No one's going to powdercoat us or hunt down our missing bits on eBay until we look like we just rolled off the factory floor. We carry all our joys and our traumas with us, leaving marks that can never be fully concealed. It's a life's work to live and love in the present without denying the past.
And a bicycle, well it's just a machine. But anyone who has loved a bike, who has shared untold joyous adventures and survived numerous crashes and near misses, will know that bicycles have a soul. It may be just a part of our own souls that we lend to it, but a soul nonetheless.
And when that soul has seen some shit, when it's earned its battle scars, it deserves acknowledgement. It deserves celebration. It deserves a new lease on life without the expectation of perfection. This, to me, is what it means to build a Wabi-sabi bicycle.
And a bicycle, well it's just a machine. But anyone who has loved a bike, who has shared untold joyous adventures and survived numerous crashes and near misses, will know that bicycles have a soul. It may be just a part of our own souls that we lend to it, but a soul nonetheless.
And when that soul has seen some shit, when it's earned its battle scars, it deserves acknowledgement. It deserves celebration. It deserves a new lease on life without the expectation of perfection. This, to me, is what it means to build a Wabi-sabi bicycle.
My winter bike, a 1987 Schwinn Mirada, that developed rust spots that I treated and painted.
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