In the last installment we had cleaned , radiussed and polished the rear hub, time to powdercoat the rims now! We used Johan's new blasting cabinet to remove the chrome from the rims first. This is a type of blaster that actually pushes the grit instaed of having to suck it from the bottom of the cabinet, works amazingly well!

 
 

Without touching the blasted surfaces (to avoid getting greasy fingerprints) the rims were hung in front of a filter wall that sucks up any excess powder. The rims are hung on a negatively charged hook, the powder itself is positively charged and because of that sticks to the metal in a uniform thickness.

 
 

We had just guessed how much powder to order, but had estimated way too high. After doing 2 rims the bag of powder looked as full as when we started. Check out the closeup, the powder is matte looking and the surface seems quite grainy. At this ponit the rims went into the oven, 20 minutes at 180 degrees (C), it is like baking a cake.. The handsome fellow doing the actual powder spraying is Rob Reeuwijk by the way, powder coater by day and really good Elvis impersonator by night!

 
 
 

While waiting for the oven we replaced the wheel bearings in the rear hub, and soon we had some quite pretty looking rims ready for new stainless spokes! Below is the latest rendering of what the bike will look like: