Laying out the rear end...

Laying out Chad's rear triangle consumed the early morning hours at the layout table.  I wanted to insure that Chad's Ti frame was stiff enough to be able to handle those County Line sprints and playful accelerations that are common when a bunch of overgrown boys get out on the road together.  To do so, I'm using .875" diameter tubing for the chainstays.  Let's draw it out and see how it fits...

I planned the rear spacing out to accommodate for up to a 35mm tire and larger non-compact rings...both items that will not be used at this time on Chad's build, but looking forward to the future, it's nice to have the capability built into the frame if it becomes desired or necessary.  As you can see from the layout, utilizing round stays there is some interaction between the front chainring position and the drive side stay.  To grab the clearance we need, I'm going to shape the ti stays into a nice oval to round profile.  It sounds easy, but there is a high probability of cracking the tubing with the process, as the finished width needs to be .45", six inches back from the bottom bracket centerline.  To accomplish this, there is a significant amount of pressure on the tubing at the terminal end to create the gradual taper towards the dropout.  In the end, I had two beautiful stays, and two that went into the bin.

Now you can see how ovalizing the stay gained the necessary room...

The pressure to repair Jeff's bike before the weekend turned up just like the 95 degree heat in the shop. When Jeff crashed, he literally tore out the down tube water bottle bosses from the tubing, taking almost .500" out of each area.  Folks talk about how silver is weaker than brass, but this was a good example of it's strength...the .5mm tubing failed before the silver did.  So we stripped the frame, filled the dent with silver and replaced the torn downtube bottle bosses with custom machined .5" diameter plugs that filled out the cleaned and drilled out holes.  It was a shame to see the snazzy paint dissolve away to be replaced with a simple powder coat due to time constraints, but it's more important to have a bike under Jeff than something purty...he'll just have to be the eye candy, eh ladies?

I finished up the late afternoon in the shop by working on Chris's single speed.  Chris, who recently relocated from Texas to Arizona, has found the single speed a bit more challenging than desired in his new mountainous area, so he flew into town to have us change it over to a 1 x 9.  We also trimmed the steerer tube on his Fox fork, and made a custom spacer to clean up the look a bit as the bike has changed/ been repurposed through the years.  We'll hit the trail Wednesday night to check it out.

As personal time outside the shop has been suffering a bit, I found myself getting home at dark and getting on the mower, as our yard is beginning to look like the hay fields to either side.  As the sun rose this morning, I gotta admit, mowing in the dark is not a good idea...looks like a kid with ADHD was behind the controls :)

rody