The Custom Romax Titanium

My purpose was to create a design that would stand the testament of time and have a personal touch, often difficult to produce in a production frame. I have some friends with titanium frames and decided that I wanted one too. So I bought a Brodie Romax Ti.

The Romax Ti comes in a brushed finish but I liked the look of a matte finish. (I want to let it be known that the idea for this creation came from seeing another titanium custom bike from Naked bicycles. A true piece of bike art in my opinion). In my free time I paint and draw First Nations art as a past time. I am always trying to find ways to incorporate my different hobbies together and thought that this would be the perfect opportunity. I ordered a frame from the great guys at Brodie bikes and the process commenced.

First and foremost I wanted to have my art on my bike and I had little idea how to do it, but knew that I wanted to do most of it myself  I had drawn the eagle on my computer with my drawing tablet and saved as a .ai file. I had called around numerous places to see who could take a computer file and make into a bead-blast resistant vinyl. After several hours and about twenty phone calls I got ahold of Steve from Burdett Signs here in Victoria and he was happy to help. After a few hours and some concern I picked up the vinyl stencil.

Here is the vinyl applied to the frame.

There is a great new place called ‘Blast-it! Do it yourself’ and they were so accommodating I could not say better things about them. So if you live in Victoria and need to sand/bead/walnut blast something, I highly recommend them. The gentleman asked me what I was blasting and took me to the machine, showed me how to use it and we slowly took up the psi until I got the results I wanted. Checking in my progress every few minutes he even let me outside and we inspected areas where I may have missed. When I was done I was super surprised at the cost, it was cheap! There is an eagle on the top tube and a frog on the seat tube. I had expected to lose the Brodie logo and head tube logo so I made some Brodie decals too. But pleasantly the graphics are laser etched and they stayed just like new. Sorry if it is difficult to see but it is very challenging to photograph the frame well.

So after 500 km in under 10 days, I absolutely love this bike. It is fast, responsive and lively. I won't bore you with trail figures and calculations, but I will tell you it is the best bike I have ever owned for the road, period. Although I still never received a solid answer if I voided my warranty yet.

Terry from Fairfield Bicycle Shop