Tag Archives: retroreflective

Bright Bike mod in Brooklyn

August 31, 2010

In May of 2010 I saw this dark blue-green bike at Flatbush and St. Marks Place in Brooklyn. The design is stripped down to just three bands on the fork, top tube, and seat stays; one band is 1 inch, two are 1/2 inch. I was excited by seeing retroreflective vinyl on a bike in the wild. It seemed like it had to be related to the Bright Bike project.

In August, after a summer away from NYC, I walked in to my local bike shop, and noticed that they had the same configuration of vinyl on all of the ~20 rebuilt vintage bikes they had for sale. Earlier in the year I had brought the shop a couple of sample Bright Bike DIY Kits. When I saw their modification, I talked to the guy the guy in the shop, and he quickly confirmed their origins from those kits. In many respects, this was the goal of the project: get it out there, so that others could take it and make something better out of it. Awesome.

Their mod has much less reflective material, which means it is less visible at night, but also easier to put on, and less visually conspicuous during the day. I could imagine that visual conspicuousness during the day would be a significant factor for someone buying a bike with the kit already installed. It would have to be “tasteful” enough!

The other interesting effect of this distinctive design is it brands the bike as coming from this specific bike shop. They advertise the bicycles as “recycled” rather than “used.” They rebuild the bearings, and put new chains and tires and brake cables on them. They are clearly are trying to separate these bikes from the general used bike market, and their simple vinyl patterns becomes the brand’s mark.

Recycled bicycles at Brooklyn Bike and Board

Posted in News | Also tagged BrightBike, Photo |

Bright Bike V2.0 DIY Kits Video

December 15, 2009

Introducing the new version of the Bright Bike DIY Kit. To BUY a DIY Kit right now, go to BrightThread.com

After a year of testing, we are releasing DIY Kits for an updated version of the Bright Bike. The kits come in two types: Caterpillar and Pinstripes.

The Caterpillar has 1 inch bands that wrap around the main tubes, and in inch dashed lines along the fork and seat stays.

The Pinstripe has 1/4 inch strips that run along the outside faces of all tubes.

Each kit is sized to be large enough for a 61cm frame with extra wide tubing, so in nearly every case, you will have extra materials that will give you room to play and experiment.

Video by Bennett Williamson. Tx to Scott Kildall for playing along. (Michael, Bennett, and Scott are the bike wrappers)

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged bikeNYC, BrightBike, DIY, Eyebeam, Video |

Retroreflective Thread and Yarn

December 13, 2009

This is an old post that got stuck in my drafts box… (oops).

Along with Alan Paukman and Jacob Mellinger of Nikolai Rose, we have been making experiments with trying to make retroreflective fabric. Jacob writes:

I did some simple tests yesterday with the yarn dyer. He wanted to open everything up and get an idea of what we’re dealing with.
We mixed together a very small batch of the 3M ink kit and watered it down heavily to bring it closer to a dye.

In the picture below, here is what’s going on:

Left: Black cotton yarn. First test, some ink (part A), lots of water, very few beads (part B), no coupling agent aka hardcore chemicals (part C). Quickly ironed for partial heat set.

Center: Black cotton yarn. Second test, more ink/water ratio, many more beads, a dash of part C. No heat set.

Right: Grey wool yarn. Third test, same mix as the second test with most of the water poured off the top, leaving a thicker mix of ink/water and a high concentration of glass beads. No heat set.

Pretty cool, I think. Though they were not properly heat set, the pigment took pretty well to the yarns. Even on the third test it didn’t get too stiff or crusty, despite the heavy proportions. Although without heat setting it, the glass beads do rub off some.

Posted in Thoughts | Also tagged bikeNYC, BrightBike, brightthread.com |

Vaporware: Retroreflective headband disguise

September 4, 2009

I think this is the new thing for celebrities. A retroreflective headband, or a retroflective hat. When the paparazzi pop their flashes on them taking a bat to their ex’s car, or doing drugs, or walking out of court after being arraigned for doing drugs… all they camera will record is a halo of a face. great protection. you can’t prove it was really that person. and anyway, it is unpublishable.

Plus its much more reasonable than Michael Jackson’s head to toe black getup he sported in Bahrain.

Posted in Thoughts | Also tagged vaporware |

Retroreflective Fabric Test

September 2, 2009

This is an update on an ongoing project. I wrote this months ago, but forgot to post it. There will be more posts on new progress soon!

This is a photograph of a test swatch of retroreflective fabric. Alan Paukman and Jacob Melinger of Nikolai Rose helped. But the key producers were Bethane Knudson and the Oriole Mill.

The image doesn’t show it too well, but the threads definitely reflect nicely.

We have had a lot of trouble making it work. Bethane writes about the problems she encountered:

We encountered a number of challenges with using the 3M Scotchlite "yarn". The Scotchlite stretches and breaks when pulled from the spool. Our crew tried various approaches but the breakage continued. We then re-wound the Scotchlite onto a yarn package, called a cone. This allowed for an even release of the Scotchlite which the spool did not. However, having eliminated the problem of the spool, we encountered a new problem –going through the accumulator which feeds the weft to the rapier also stretched and broke the Scotchlite. We slowed the weaving machine down further and that helped but did not eliminate the problem.

While some of the problems in using Scotchlite might be resolved with further investment of time and resources, some cannot. The Scotchlite is not well suited to weaving on the industrial loom. While the Scotchlite has some stretch, it has no recovery — meaning when it stretches, it distorts and does not return to its original state. This would mean that as the garment is worn, the fabric will stretch and would return to its original state, except for the Scotchlite weft. The stretched Scotchlite would ripple, like a seersucker effect, and would eventually break. Scotchlite is too weak to be used as a warp thread and it not really strong enough to be used in the weft for a garment. The demand put on a garment — especially pants — is significant.

The other problem is that a pinstripe is, by definition, a line that runs vertically. Since we used the Scotchlite in the weft, the lines run horizontally. Because garments are cut with the grain of the fabric, the pinstripes will become pin-bands rather than pinstripes. (In some cases the fabric can be used in the horizontal orientation but this limits the length of the pant and alters the drape radically. The warp direction has the best drape.)

Posted in A Partial List of Projects | Also tagged bikeNYC, BrightBike, collaboration, CreativeCommons |