Author Topic: At least two good reasons for designing a nearly rusted-away bike  (Read 4201 times)

Andre Jute

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In another thread, Paul wrote about a visibly rusty frame for sale on Ebay:
I wouldn't touch it, if it's that rusty on the outside who knows what it'll be like inside.

I'm waiting for an artistic bicycle designer to specify COR-TEN steel for the frame. It's a steel alloy which rusts a little way and then the rust forms a protective layer, eliminating the need for paint. Click the right arrow to see more images:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weathering_steel#/media/File:RichardSerra_Fulcrum2.jpg

I'm sure people who worry about their bikes being stolen would pay for a COR-TEN frame. Who would steal a bike which appears to have a nearly rusted-away frame?

energyman

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Re: At least two good reasons for designing a nearly rusted-away bike
« Reply #1 on: October 18, 2019, 06:47:18 pm »
They have just replaced a local rail bridge with this and it looks rusty.  No doubt it will grow on you.  I wonder if it will produce rust runs on the pristine concrete ?

mickeg

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Re: At least two good reasons for designing a nearly rusted-away bike
« Reply #2 on: October 18, 2019, 07:59:33 pm »
Instead of an Iron oxide frame, I would rather have a Titanium oxide frame.


Andre Jute

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Re: At least two good reasons for designing a nearly rusted-away bike
« Reply #3 on: October 18, 2019, 09:51:55 pm »
They have just replaced a local rail bridge with this and it looks rusty.  No doubt it will grow on you.  I wonder if it will produce rust runs on the pristine concrete ?

I went into COR-TEN years ago as a house-building material, so I'm telling you from memory: No, no rust streaks. The outer layer is quite firm, just like a paint layer, but it self-renews when scratched.

Bill C

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Re: At least two good reasons for designing a nearly rusted-away bike
« Reply #4 on: October 20, 2019, 02:24:23 am »
thanks Andre
my son moved into an apartment in Bristol as he's started uni there, the building is unpainted rusty steel, glass and concrete
i thought it was a stupid idea having that much steel rusting away, since reading this post i googled lakeshore drive Bristol and it's cor-ten, I'd never heard of it before
the new building they are working on is copper

Andre Jute

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Re: At least two good reasons for designing a nearly rusted-away bike
« Reply #5 on: October 20, 2019, 10:33:28 pm »
the new building they are working on is copper

You can't make a bike from bare copper though, though it grows an attractive layer of verdigris on buildings. I built a nostalgicar Bentley boattail body on a Mark VI chassis and it was a PITA. The sea-green corrosion may be a protective layer but it is also poisonous, and it is another pain to repolish and varnish copper. A copper bike frame would also weigh more than steel, as copper isn't actually a structural metal. A copper frame would be pretty though if you could solve the problems, for instance by having a properly designed steel frame (a Thorn?) dipped into or sprayed with hot copper, and of course anodising aluminium with copper is no problem whatsoever, it's just a proven plating process. (But I dislike the dead feeling of ali bikes.)
« Last Edit: October 20, 2019, 10:36:46 pm by Andre Jute »

B cereus

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Re: At least two good reasons for designing a nearly rusted-away bike
« Reply #6 on: October 21, 2019, 02:50:49 pm »
Andre, have you visited Uillinn, the West Cork Arts Centre at Skibbereen. It's a striking building and features a COR-TEN exterior. Its fair to say that it divides opinion locally. I actually quite like it but I think it's a great shame that the design had to be compromised  by cost considerations.

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/art-and-design/2.642/how-compromise-hit-plans-for-skibbereen-s-arts-centre-1.2129557

Andre Jute

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Re: At least two good reasons for designing a nearly rusted-away bike
« Reply #7 on: October 21, 2019, 04:12:51 pm »
Andre, have you visited Uillinn, the West Cork Arts Centre at Skibbereen. It's a striking building and features a COR-TEN exterior. Its fair to say that it divides opinion locally. I actually quite like it but I think it's a great shame that the design had to be compromised  by cost considerations.

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/art-and-design/2.642/how-compromise-hit-plans-for-skibbereen-s-arts-centre-1.2129557

Hey man, thanks for the link. This is the first I even hear of it. I always make it a principle to contribute to the arts wherever I live, as a way of keeping myself marginally plugged in (by profession I'm a novelist) but in Ireland what the first paper I called (the Irish Examiner, then the Cork Examiner) wanted just then was a critic of serious music, which I just happened to know about, and soon they put an editor who also knew more than just a bit on me, complete with a special page, and he wasn't going to let anyone share me, so until I felt I had done enough when I turned 60, I wrote mainly about classical music. I don't have time to read the papers (not even the ones I write for) or listen to the news, so the doings in Skib quite escaped me. Fascinating. I feel sorry for the architects, first out of 217 entries, having their big chance at a big show project scuppered by bureaucrats. But that's still a good-looking building, though perhaps a little out of scale for little old Skibbereen. It must be twenty years since I was down in Skib last, to see a film producer who was in semi-retirement there. An eye-stopper building like that refocuses a town's ambience and impact. In Sydney, a most inconvenient city, to avoid the permanent traffic jam at King's Cross, I used to come to work from Vaucluse up the bay in a speedboat, which I moored under the Opera House and then walked up Pitt St to my office, and there wasn't a day that the sight of the building didn't lift my spirits. (An American described the Sydney Opera House architecture as "a quarterback being sacked by a gang of nuns"!)

Days are too short now but perhaps next summer I'll make one of "Andre's Flash World Bicycle Tours to the Ends of His Little Patch of West Cork", three days to get there on the zero-stress byways, three to get back again. (The drop bar brigade would make 104km round trip in a day...) Something to go see is always better than, "Oh, I'm just touring aimlessly."

Members who're interested should check the link B cereus sent. It demonstrates that there is no streaking rust from COR-TEN, or it would show on the white surfaces all around the COR-TEN.

On a bike, I fancy the COR-TEN, until it becomes common enough for the knowledge to filter down to the tea leaves (! thanks for the slang), could by appearance alone be a good beginning to decent bike security.

PH

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Re: At least two good reasons for designing a nearly rusted-away bike
« Reply #8 on: October 22, 2019, 10:04:39 am »
Learn something every day, I had no idea about any of this, thanks.

Andre Jute

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Re: At least two good reasons for designing a nearly rusted-away bike
« Reply #9 on: October 22, 2019, 07:57:07 pm »
Learn something every day, I had no idea about any of this, thanks.

Ha! It was you who reminded me of COR-TEN. See the first post in the thread.