"Rawing" your bike

One of the things I Have recently been doing to my bikes is "rawing" them. Rawing is the process of removing all the paint from your bike frame until all you see is the raw aluminum. The process is long and a pain (literally sometimes), but the end result is pretty beautiful. It takes patience and bike maintainence skills as well. I will go over how this is done in a few different steps.

Step 1. Disassemble your bike. 

You only want to raw your frame, not your whole bike. So you will want to take everything off your bike that you don't want to raw. Once you have the bare frame, you will be ready for step two.

Step 2. Buy a paint remover.

There are two main paint removers you can buy, Jasco and Aircraft remover. Aircraft remover is a more intense version of Jasco. Both will work but you will want to choose depending on how think your paint is. Remover is cheap and can be bought at most paint or hardware stores.

Step 3. Coat the bike with the remover.

You will want to hang your bike from a tree with a coat hanger. Using a paintbrush, apply a thick coat to the whole frame. Be careful with your hands as the remover will burn your skin and it will be painful. Wait 10-20 minutes as the remover eats away at the paint.

Step 4. Scrape off the residue.

After the paint has been eaten away, you have to scrape it off using a stiff toothbrush or a plastic scraper. You will need to re apply more coats to some areas that still have some paint left.

This whole process will take a few hours. You can also use a pressure washer to blast of the remover and the paint off. After all the paint was removed, I used 3M abrasive to polish the aluminum untill it shined.

Before

After 

I have rawed one bike and I am in the process of rawing another one that I currently own. Evan also. Rawed his bike.