Black, Polished or Milled, that is the question.

I thought we would mention something about the finishes that we offer for our triple clamps and other aluminum items.

We originally were offering just a milled finish. This was the finish that came right off the mill with no adjustments what so ever. But we started thinking, most of our own builds have used the polished aluminum parts. And you know what, polishing the parts is a real pain if the arse. I hate doing it, I love the results, but doing it is not on my list of fun hobbies. So we felt if we don’t really like doing it, then maybe you don’t also. So we started polished them ourselves and making it one of the offered finishes.

So how is it polished? Well the brunt of the outside polishing is done with a polishing wheel with rouge and polish. But the inner top and some other surfaces just cant quite be done that way. So the process goes to hand polishing at that point. Our calloused up little fingers do the work so that you don’t have to. Each and every polished aluminum part goes through this tedious process. Its time consuming and a hassle, but it ensures that every piece has a perfect polish and no surprises arise from shipping out a bad finished part.

Now the anodized parts. These items are actually rough polished as well, then a fine bead blast to make them even and then to the electro-chemical color bath. The anodize you notice is quite hard and substantial. We don’t want any of our parts to scratch easily, so we have used a few anodize companies and tested the results. We are happy with our current guy and are proud to have him finish our parts.

Now, back to the milled. You may have noticed that not all of our parts are offered in a milled finish any longer. Why not? Well, initially our designs were pretty simple and straight forward to mill. As our designs have gotten more and more complex, leaving them with a milled finish has proved to be inconsistent. We want every single part to be perfect in every way for your bike, and sometimes these milled finishes look great, and other times you can see some swirls, cut marks or grain. We still produce some here and there, but so far most people want an anodize finish or polish. So although the milled finish is near and dear to our hearts, it will be on a limited offering basis for most of the parts. If you really really want it, drop us a message and let us know. We will see what we can do.