More Art - The Evil Twenty

Last March, I pulled this 1972 Raleigh Folding Twenty out of the junkyard. I didn't really have any plans for it, but I always thought they were cool. So, I brought it home and stuck it in the storage building.


(Click all of the pictures for BIG.)

I emailed Phatatude, because I knew he was building up a project Twenty, to see if he or anyone he knew might want this bike. He told me that it probably would serve me better as a project, due to its condition, so I started formulating plans for the custom version.

I like the wordplay of Evil Twenty (Evil TWINty). I just wish I had another one, to do the Good Twenty. I messed around with the lettering, a bit, and this is the look I came up with.

The first step was to figure out what to do about the headset and bottom bracket situation. The Twenty has a really long steer tube, with a plastic bushing at the top, rather than a ball-bearing headset. And, the bottom bracket shell, while standard English thread, is a proprietary width.

The head tube problem was easily fixed. I simply cut it to a length that would work with the fork I wanted to use, and used my Campy head tube reamer/facing tool to finish it off. Then, I installed a mid-90s Dura Ace headset I had sitting around, and the fork was installed.

The bottom bracket took some thought. I know a lot of the Twenty guys use Phil Wood bottom bracket cups and whatnot, but I wanted to build it with what I had on hand (that's sort of my forte'). So, I started messing around with a Shimano bottom bracket, and found that I could knock the outer lip off of the non-driveside cup and just screw it in until it bottomed. It was about 5mm inside the frame, but I didn't really care. It worked, so I pulled everything apart and painted the frame flat black, then lettered it.


Next, I printed out a small copy of my Devil Girl I had worked up for a skateboard design. I printed it on glossy paper, trimmed it out, then saturated it from both sides with Krylon Crystal Clear. This effectively turned it into a waterproof sticker. She became my headtube badge.

Then, I worked up a Devilish portrait on paper, trimmed it and used it as a template to carve the top layer of leather off of the saddle. This got me into the raw leather, which will hold the paint a lot better than the slick, finished surface. I filled in the carved out section with white enamel, then painted the Devil head over that. More Crystal Clear sealed it in, and gave it a shiny surface to match the rest of the saddle. (The color in this photo is weird. Look at the photos below, and you'll see that he is actually bright red.)

A second Devil Girl was applied to the seat tube. But, I actually hand-painted this one. The size of the tube gave me more room to do it by hand. Again, I used a printout of the initial study to outline where she would go, then filled the area with white. The colors pop a lot better with a white base. The flat black base really mutes them, if you skip this step.

Next, I painted the outline of flames. Yellow enamel applied with a sable brush, for those who care.

Then, I filled in the red, and used a Pitt art pen, with waterproof archival ink, to do the black areas and the fine details.

I built it up with a 24-inch front wheel to emulate the "48 Harley Panhead" motorcycle look. The bars are some Soma Noah's Arc bars I had lying about, and the bmx pedals are Primos.

V-brakes on the front give way more stopping power than the long-arm side-pulls it came with. The rear is still the original brake, squeezing a 20" alloy bmx wheel.

So, there it is, The Evil Twenty, ready for its art-show debut.

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