Another option instead of 1000 grit is to use steel wool (like a pot scrub but no soap). this would dull the finish but would be a bit of work. Can also use on aluminium, stainless and chrome.
Nope, 1000 grit on the mold surface will leave you with a dull surface.
If I were going to try and copy the finish on that bike I think i would stick with sand blasting with very fine sand.
…Or you can POST spray with an additive called MATTE finish for clear automotive clears.
It basically adds a flattened finish that you can control by coats or mixture content.
Cheers,Vinny
Or you could do it right and use a release agent made for producing matte finishes.
Will still release easy because the mold stays smooth, and won’t damage the finished part because there’s no abrading.
Does a sand blasted or shot peened mold cause demolding issues? Wouldn’t steel wool or fine emery paper cause a fine streaky finish? I imagine some form of media blasting of the finished part would five the best matt surface finish.
It has already been said that if you buy/use the correct mold release agent the part will come out with a matte finish.
Why damage the mold or modify the mold? Just use the right mold release. geeesh
Any particular products (Matt finish release agents) you guys use. Its hard to find info on these types of products in Australia.
I look on here quite a bit and decided I should post a pic of a bike I customized at christmas- approx 50hrs of sanding/painting/polishing to get the look I wanted on this ‘MCR’ (Monocoque Carbon Road) bike built by Giant bicycles in 1998 and designed bike Mike Burrow in 1988 (yes 1988!)
It was orignally blue with masses of excess resin (with a black tint/pigment) to hide any potential carbon blemishes that go hand in hand with high volume production.
enjoy!
Ps yeah it gets lots of looks when riding it 
About matte mold release: look into Zyvax (their product for matte finishes is “sealmatte”.)
Started off with a huge bike interest and thought i’d do one for m’self in carbon, on my way to build one for my girlfriend currently.
Nice fixie! Can you tell us something about your build? How did you build it? What is the weight of the frame?
Did you use a foam core and wrapped around it? Or may be even tube to tube technology?
Questions over questions, :nuts:
Build: The bike was made from 7 seperate tubes, three front triangle and four for the rear end. Head tube, bottom bracket and rear dropouts were metal parts from framebuilding.com
The tubes were UD carbon, wrapped around a 40 or 20 mm plastic tubes, packed tightly with plastic wrap. After curing the plastic tubes were freezed out with ice water.
When all the tubes were ready they were cut so that all joints fit perfectly. To help me with this i used a CAD program that could produce the unfolded tube edges on paper as cutting templates.
I built a simple jig that could hold all metal parts in the correct place, then bonded the tubes in place with some epoxy adhesive. After curing i made fillets where all the tubes met.
Finally everything was laminated together with progressively bigger patches of UD carbon.
Weight is something like 1500 grams, not so light but for this build i was more into learning the building skills and not challenging the strength limits.
One thing that had a big impact on the weight is the carbon fiber i used for the build, i bought it (cheap) from a czech company and it turned out to be pretty crappy. The UD fibres were very coarse bundles, stitched together with a thick thread. It was very hard to pack the layers together closely and to press out excess resin from the laminate which created a resin rich, thick and heavy laminate.