If all goes to plan it should be about five weeks until the frame and forks are ready, which is why I set today as the deadline by which I had to decide what colour the frame will be painted. Because I’ve gone for a lugless construction there’s no possibility of accent colours, so this should have been a relatively easy decision. On the other hand it’s a bike that I hope will last me a long time, and since this is a bespoke item it’s one which I want to reflect my personality to some extent, certainly more than an off-the-shelf model.

Although it might seem a bit backwards, one of the things driving my decision was that I’d already ordered a set of Velocity Deep V rims in orange. I’d seen these rims on a Surly Steamroller in NYC Velo last year, and my first thoughts were to copy the colour scheme but with orange rims instead of red.

Surly Steamroller in NYC Velo

When I made a rendering it just didn’t seem right though:

So the next thought was to try the complete reverse, ie a totally white frame:

Mercian offer two types of white paint: white enamel and white pearl; I’ve gone for the pearl. For this to work, it relies on sourcing black components rather than silver for the hubs, spokes, headset, seat post etc. As you can see from the rendering I’ve not made any choice about the type of bars yet. Although I’ve not ordered it yet, the seat will be a Fizik Arione Wing Flex. Fizik allow the customer to customise the colours of the saddle, and this model offers the most customisation opportunities. With the white colour scheme, my saddle will look like this:

I tried out one other colour scheme before I made the decision, which was suggested by a friend as well as being one I’d noticed on Fixed Gear Gallery.

To be honest though, even though I like it as a colour scheme I can’t really see myself riding it. So it’s the white that I’ve gone for. Next stage of the project will be ordering the hubs and building up the wheels…