For the 2020 Chris King Handbuilt show, the color choices were either Gold or a Two Tone Black/ Gold. The Gold was going to be polished and the Two Tone Black/ Gold was going to be a matte finish. Both colors were gorgeous in their own rights, but once we saw the shine of the polished gold finish, we knew what we had to do.

The shine of the gold color is so bright that we figured we could finish a frame with a similar finish to really make the bike stand out. We wanted something that would attract people to the finish as something they had not seen before, or for those who knew about titanium bikes back in the 80’s and 90’s, maybe would bring back a little nostalgia to the hand polished frames of yesteryear.

The finish on this Barlow is a hand polished finish. The frame itself took over 20 hours to complete. Each tube was hand polished prior to welding to a pure mirror finish. Once welding was complete, the frame weld areas were refinished to match the shine of the frame tubes themselves. The Sage titanium seatpost, Sage titanium seatpost collar, and the Silca Securo titanium bottle cages were all hand polished as well. Interesting fact: Round tubes are miserable to polish as there is no flat surface on them. As such, the bottle cages with their many bends and shapes took over 6 hours to complete just for the 2 cages while the seatpost collar took 1 hour to complete.

For the rest of the finish, Gold was the natural choice for the anodized logos. For the Enve components, we painted the fork, bars and stem with a gloss black wet paint base coat and then used a red auto color paint for the Enve logos themselves. We found inspiration in Ferrari cars and their use of red, yellow, and black. The elegance of those classic and modern variants of cars evokes a sense of grace, speed, and class that we felt the polished finish on the frame really brought to the bike.

• Build Spec:
  • Frame: Barlow with hand polished custom finish and gold anodize logos
  • Fork: Enve All-Road fork with gloss black/ red wet paint custom finish
  • Headset/ BB: Chris King Inset 8 Headset/ Headset Spacer/ T47 24X BB: Gold
  • Cockpit: Enve Carbon Stem & Enve Carbon Bar w/ gloss black/ red wet paint finish. Sage Titanium Seat Post and Seat Post collar with hand polished finish/ Brooks C17 Saddle with custom gold rivets
  • Drivetrain: SRAM Red AXS Drivetrain w/ Quarq Power Meter
  • Wheelset: Enve 3.4AR Wheels with Chris King R45D Gold Hubs and custom Enve wheel decals, Schwalbe G-One Speed 700×35 Tires
  • Bottle Cages: Silca Securo Titanium Bottle Cages hand polished