Originally Posted by
VintageTTfan
Good folks, I bring you an iconic bike:
This is the wonderful Wilier Triestina Ramata Pista. Bianchi has its infamous celeste color and Wilier Triestina has their rust color. But this is no ordinary rust color as you know. This color radiates beauty into the classic Italian bicycle Universe! It glows, it shines, it emanates gloss, it transcends in its magnificent effulgence (that should count for an 11 on the pretentious meter). I have had a fondness in my heart for this bike since I first saw it. I do not know the history of their use of this color or their secret....but I would love to know. Perhaps they use diamond dust. And the builder on this one did some things right......finally. White is the right color for this......has to be.....white saddle....white bar tape.....seems mandatory. It setts off the rust. He or she used nice gumwalls, and nice panto stem I would be interested if anybody can spot any mistakes or anything they would improve to make it more authentic? Perhaps our resident expert can give us an accurate assessment.....I would be curious for sure.
I am fantasizing about riding this on the track right now. I would have a clear advantage as the other riders would be gawking instead of focusing. In summation, Just Beautiful.
Originally Posted by
FlemmingM
I’m not a painter, but I believe you get the wonderful glow in the color, as seen on the Willier, by painting with a semi translucent paint over a chromed frame.
If the base isn’t chrome, I was once told that, if you add a bit of the base color in the first layer of clear coat, the color will get a lot more depth.
That is exactly how it is made. This finish is called cromovelato, and was the big thing in the late 70s and through the 80s. Not only one of the most spectacular finishes, but also the most special one, and the manufacturers who use(d) it never forgot to point this out. As opposed to the normal painting process where small glitches can be corrected or covered with filler and base coat and of course the paint itself, the main "feature" of the cromovelato is to expose, how perfectly the frame is made. So the whole frame has to be mirror polished, chromed, then covered with a tinted transparent clearcoat. This is more effort to make. Those who are interested, heres a youtube vid from Battaglin explaning the same.
Its intersting, that Wilier offers the finish for every current model of theirs as well for a "modest" USD1500,- extra over the bike's price, as I think, with modern frames they anyway paint the underlying chrome coating as well (I think of the carbon frames here), therefore it might not be that difficult to make, rather just "pay for the special look" thing - but I might be wrong.
While I like cromovelato frames for their looks, there is one big downside of them. If the lacquer gets damaged, it starts peeling, which does not look that good, and of course 1., repairing is almost impossible 2., full redo...hm... who would like to do that to a special frame? And if you do its no cheapo. It is always a big question, but definitely more difficult compared to painted ones.
Of course not as bad as having base coat exposed or raw or rusty steel, but not nice either:
As for Wilier, the copper color is their signature one from around 1945, hence the name Ramata (female form of ramato, meaning copper plated), and if I am not mistaken a successful model is called Gioiello Ramato, or Copper Jewel (hard to tell if it refers to every Ramato finished ones in the 80s or only a certain model, thanks to people on the net, who are labelling things to the closest one their imagination allows, like every green Bianchi is an X4 and almost every which has a yellow splash as well was ridden by Pantani himself
).
That Wilier pista is definitely breathtaking...