Saturday was spent working on Phat Jay's Bigwheel SS. This build will be a sturdy performance frame for Jay who rides hard and wants a frame that will keep up with him for a looong time. This one is being built with a mix of Columbus, Dedda, and custom drawn tubing for a sweet mix of comfort and performance for the demands of single speed riding.
I mitered up and welded the front triangle. The welding went pretty smooth although there is always one or two spots that inherently cause difficulties. The use of the 1.25" top tube is one point to take note. Once mitered, the "ears" or the long point of the miter wraps around the head tube and leaves a bit of an edge as it sits on top rather than butting tight against the joint. To keep things flowing smoothly, you must position the torch angle just right so that the heat is concentrated on the thicker head tube and does not melt away the "ears" of the top tube too quickly. Then you have to feed in the filler, in this case Weldmold 880, at a fairly fast rate to build the puddle up to give a seamless transistion to the joint. Tough to do and takes lots of practice. In the pic below, you can see how bead on the long edge of the joint is just a bit lager than the points preceeding or following it. More filler = a little larger puddle/bead.
I hit a stopping point with Jay's frame as I'm waiting on a shipment of sliders from Paragon, so I finished up a few more Luv Handles. Some lucky customers will be getting their June shipment early ;)
At the spur of the moment, a group decided to go hit the trail for some late evening single track...Zach, Ben, Doug, John, Kalten and I headed down to Mohican for 9 miles of hilly single track.
We had a butt load of fun, but it was very muddy, wet and cold. Kalten suffered some entertaining carnage as he lost control on a STEEP downhill switchback, promptly endoing and hitting a tree. Here's a shot post ride refuling at Micky Dee's (note the blood ladies...he's hardcore!)
Sunday was a bust for me for productivity.
It's Mother's day and I got up and made Christi breakfast then thought "I'll just lie down for a bit while I wait for the kids to get through the shower". Big mistake...I woke back up at 2:30 in the afternoon. I guess my body just decided it had run hard for long enough. Anyway, made my Babie Momma some dinner, chocolate covered strawberries for dessert, and called it a day.
I spent this morning answering emails (4 hours!), updating the web site and posting this up for y'all. I try to communicate as frequently as I can, and some folks wonder why builders don't get right back..."it can't be that hard to plan some time in the day?" Truth is, with the advent of the internet, it is so easy for folks to fire off questions to numerous builders but good solid answers take quite some time to formulate, so solid communication takes a lot of time away from the work bench.
Anyhoo, I'm off to build a wheel and start busting out some stems for Eric, Durga, and Tin tin.
cheers,
rody
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