Thinking of bead blasting my frame...

[lava]

I have a Trek 1500 frame that I'm thinking of bead blasting to a plain aluminum finish (I like that look). However, the other day I heard a horror story about someone blasting their Bianchi frame and exposing many patches of ugly bondo. Could this be true? Should I be worried about this happening when I blast my frame?

 

[CAMPYBOB]

way back in the dark ages...the early 1970's to be exact...when italian bicycles were in great demand (and limited supply) due to the bicycle sales boom in the states, the italians could have sold dried spaghetti as frame material and made a fortune on it if they could have found a way to slap a cheap paint job on it and got a crappy set of decals to stick. i'm quite sure the italians were not the only offenders.

indeed, paint...and bondo...they hid all sins. and there was sin. stripped frames turned up poor brazing, dented and bondo filled tubes and all manner of poor finishing.

i would suspect that today this sort of shoddy production quality would be a thing of the past. back in the day it only took an italianesque name (invariably ending in a 'i' and the more syllables the better) to get us to buy mediocre frames.

 

[KellyT]

I have a Trek 1500 frame that I'm thinking of bead blasting to a plain aluminum finish (I like that look). However, the other day I heard a horror story about someone blasting their Bianchi frame and exposing many patches of ugly bondo. Could this be true? Should I be worried about this happening when I blast my frame?

I have three Trek's and I have personally found their quality to be excellent. I've never bead blasted one of their frames, but one of my Trek is partly exposed (varnished) aluminium and the welds and finish is 100% excellent.

I would be extremely surprised if the paint hid any rough work on a Trek. Be careful to choose the right kind of blasting though. Aluminium is a softer material than steel. It might be best to speak to the company doing the blasting work about the most suitable abrasive. I think walnut blasting is more gentle and would not attack the actual metal, such as bead blasting can.