amckimmey

Does anyone have ideas of how to make a head badge.

and or any glue or tape to attach the badge and still remove it with no damage.

unterhausen

double sided tape works.

It's pretty common to get head badges cut by water jet -- that's going to run about $200 for 20 or so. Cast head tube badges cost about $500 for the first one. Alternately, you can get stainless shim stock and cut it yourself

mudboy

https://www.headbadges.com/id74.html

unterhausen

Pete, you should get one of those

Booger1

You can make a better looking one than those with a coping saw and some files.Those things look like they were cast in beach sand.You can attach it with rivets,small screws or clear silly putty(silicone).

unterhausen

these guys do a really nice job, not sure about price

biketroubadour

I make mine by electro etching. It's super easy but do the etch outside cuz the byproducts (albeit in small, probably unharmful amounts) are chlorine gas & hydrogen...

guy153

Interesting! Can you explain how to do this in more detail (or post a link)?

biketroubadour

the process is fairly simple. First you need to transfer your image onto the metal plate you want to etch, using a medium that won't wash off in salt water. i stamped the plate with enamel paint in this case, but you could also cover the plate in masking tape & cut out a stenciled image, or I've heard of Laser printer toner working well too. Next, soak some cotton balls or q-tips in heavily salted water, I don't measure but it's in the neighbourhood of 1.5 tbsp salt dissolved in half cup of water. Hook up an alligator clip to the positive terminal of a 6V battery and a corner of the plate you want to etch. Hook up second alligator clip to the negative terminal and a soaked cotton ball (or near the end of a q-tip). Slowly & methodically dab cotton onto your image, for about 3-5 seconds at a time, moving around the image in overlapping dabs. Replace cotton as it gets dirty or dried out. 5 minutes of this will give you a light but well visible etch as seen in my pictures, 10 minutes a deep etch but most resist mediums will start breaking down before then.
make sure you so this outside or in a well ventilated area with no open flame, process creates small amounts of hydrogen & chlorine gas. Not fun to breath or blow up

duanedr 

Jennifer makes jewelry quality head badges or quite simple ones. And she's great to work with.

Andrew R Stewart 

I've had my second batch of "S" badges made and delivered only a few weeks ago. Water cut .044" SS plate, about .875" x 1.55". I do the bending. The first batch of 17 cost about $200 in 2008. The resupply of 20 cost just over $100 recently. First batch was designed on E Machine.com and resupply based on that design file (yes they still had it on record). I silver braze it on then hand finish before masking for paint. Andy

Tandem Tom

Andy, I see McMaster Carr has .048 available. How difficult would it be to cut and file by hand? As a woodworker this is still a bit foreign!
Thanks!

Andrew R Stewart 

The first attempt I made for a SS badge was by cutting a "S" from a SS tube. I started with drilling a series of holes then opened them up. This was very slow and I still had to file/grind a lot so I next used a jewel's saw. The follow up with files and Dremel took much less time. Here's a shot of the hole drilling step. It was the time it took to do this that motivated me to design a "S" on Emachine.com and seek a quote. I have been very happy with the pre made badges. Andy.

Doug Fattic 

I'll add that a good way to make a head badge is the same way I create and cut out designs for blank lugs. I find the right size and then increase it to 200% with my copy machine. By enlarging the size it becomes much easier to draw and when it is reduced back down to 100% size the lines become clearer and sharper. I like to draw on Vellum paper. It can be erased multiple times and is semi-translucent for folding in half to trace the other side if the design has some symmetry. I print a graph paper grid template onto the Velum paper to help with my drawing. Once my drawing is complete I go back to my copier and reduce the size back to 100% and use clear label sheets to print the design onto. This design is now placed on sheet of stainless steel.

I cut out the design using a jeweler's saw and get right to the edge of the design with jeweler's files. I hog out bigger sections with a Dremel cut-off saw. To bend the curve I use half sections of 0.120" wall tubing. The outside diameter of the inner tube is 1/4" smaller than the outside tube used to press against it. Here are some pictures to help illustrate what I am talking about. A couple of my frame building class students did 2 layer head badges. The bottom layer was stainless and the one on top of it was cut from a sheet of copper. That combination had a nice effect.


This is a picture of the template drawing being 200% life size and then reduced down to life size and pasted onto a blank lug for cutting.

This is a picture of a frame made in my frame building class. The seat tube badge was made by the process I explained in this post. Now that I look at the picture I realize he cut his own design out of blank lugs too. For those that are interested, I can email a much more complete set of instructions on how to design and cut out blank lugs (which I sell as a fund raiser for our Ukrainian Bicycle Project). The same principles apply to making head badges.

Nessism

This thread has lots of useful information about making head badges...
https://www.bikeforums.net/framebuil...-creation.html

rbrnut

I just worked with Jennifer on a custom head badge design. She did great work and is easy to work with, if going that route.

unterhausen

I really like her headbadges, but is it always $150 per bike?

dsaul

No. One of my friends had her make a mold for casting bronze headbadges and the per badge cost was around $35 after the initial mold fee.

These guys messaged me on Instagram and gave me some very good prices on an order of 20-50 badges.(around $2 each after initial setup fees) https://www.schildnederland.eu/

unterhausen

Thanks, I always wondered how people could afford her badges.
I follow Schild on instagram. Problem is I would have to do some design, and that's where it all falls apart

rhm

A few years ago I restored a 70 year old Armstrong Moth frame. I didn't do much to the paint, just touched up the black paint that was on it (not original) and recreated graphics based on photos of similar bikes (which are hard to find... imagine what happens when you google "armstrong bike"... But I found this photo on bike forums:

I decided to recreate that as a real headbadge. That basically meant making a greyscale drawing, from which a 2D-to-3D software program generated a 3D model. Here is the 'preview' it gave me:


I had that printed in brass (which means the 3D printer put out a wax version, which the 3D printing company cast in brass; I then manually curved it to fit a head tube (somewhat imperfectly) and added some color (imperfectly as well... but I will get back to that). Here is what I have now:

unterhausen

All I need to do is get in my time machine and go back 100 years and talk someone named Keller into starting a bike company so I can copy their headbadge

rhm

Be careful, if you do that, you could wind up with Spanish Flu. The irony would be priceless.

unterhausen

Aren't we at least partially immune to to the Spanish flu?

oliverh

I like cutting them out myself, it adds gives the head badge a little more uniqueness and complexity. The filing is more time consuming. As far as attaching it, any frame builders will drill and tap a tiny threads into the head tube that you can attach the head badge with some tiny hardware.