Ughh, forgot the camera at the shop tonight...sorry.

After pushing through a 40 hour straight shift at the fire department, I slept for an hour and was back in the shop today pushing to meet the deadline for Don's frame.

Got the rear end all mitered up, brazed on the dropouts, silver brazed and slotted the seat binder, brazed in the H2O bosses and welded up the rear triangle. Still have the fiddley-bits to tack on the frame and then it is ready for paint on Saturday.

I'm about two weeks behind where I want to be on the build schedule as the booth took longer than I'd planned, but here is what is coming up;

April - 6-10, work on repaints prior to the business trip to Az
- 21 through 30, work on custom stems/bars/forks

May - 1 through 5, prototyping some TI Luv Handles for all you folks that have been bugging me for these ;) and Doug and John's 6-5-0 builds
- 6 through 9, Phat Jay's 29er SS
- 13 through 16, Eric's 6-5-0
- 20 through 30, Chris's 700c SS and two day trip to bike festival with demos
June (tenative schedule)
- Goyo's 6-5-0
- Groovy at GOBA

It's a pretty knarly goal to keep this schedule, but I promised the kid's that once summer hit, I'd get back to just an 8 hour day in the shop so I'd have time with them. Lot's of rock climbing, biking and kayaking in the kid's plans this year :)

Pics tomorrow for your enjoyment...thanks for being patient,

rody

Don's bike is in high speed...

Bike two for this week, Big Don from the dualing states of CT and NY is hooking up with an internally cabled geared 29er for his main ride. This beauty will be outfitted with XTR drive train, Phil Wood hubs, Magura Marta hydraulic brakes, Thomson post and stem, and matching Luv Handles.

Should be a pretty trick build.

Let's start out with a pic of the internal cable guides looking through the down tube from the bb.


After slotting the tubing in the butted sections where the cables enter and exit, I then fit brass tubing in the piece that will fully encase the cable allowing for a rattle free ride with easy cable routing. Everything is silver brazed in place and finished smooth. In the above pic, you can see how the internal pieces are positioned once in place

And a quick pic below of the entrance point...


After all the internals are placed and the ends mitered to fit for the main triangle, it's time to put it under the torch. The majority of the tubing on this build is 8-5-8, meaning it is .8mm thick on the ends where strength is needed and .5 mm in the long center section to reduce weight. Though thin, with tight miters, you can run a tiny tig bead that will dissapear under the paint, giving a seamless clean look.

Here's a couple pics of the welds on the bottom bracket area, a challenging spot due to the varying angles of intersection and the disparity in tubing thicknesses.

and here is the main triangle all welded up and ready for some rear end attention :)

I start the rear end by working on the chainstays. I mill the dropout end first, cutting it in two planes for the angle from the dropout to the bb and the offset so that the tubing wraps around the shape of the drop. I then tack the two together to give some strength and stability during mitering the bb end.

The shot above shows the mitering end of the Anvil fixture. The scribed lines indicate the bb centerlines so you can position the intended placement of the chainstays once everything is all cut up.

Dead sexy curves on those chainstays. Is it wrong to get that excited about a bike?

A single cut to length is all it needs once set up is appropriate.

Moving on to the seatstays, I custom bend them to fit my design. The pic below shows two correctly bent seat stays and one that I pushed too far and the wall collasped...bummer. I hate to waste product and money, but every once in a while the demands we put on the material is greater than it's ability to support our expectations :(

Mikey, whose SS coupled frame is documented below, stopped by to refine his wheel building skills under a watchful eye. Despite a few false starts, he cruised through the lacing portion and will be ready to tension and true on Thursday when he stops back. That's when the real education will begin ;)

Next day in the shop should see the end of fabrication on Don's niner and the beginning of the last frame before I head south.

cheers,

rody

So ends Mikeys fabrication...

I had a startling revelation this morning...

I've been pushing pretty hard the last couple of months and finally reached a critical point; I've been working to get these three frames done by Thursday so that the new owners can take them before I leave for my trip, time is running out and I've been burning the candle at both ends to make the deadline. When speaking with Bill and Christi about the coming week and my impending departure on the 11th, they kept looking at me like I had two heads. That was when I realized that I was the one with the problem, I had lost a week on the calendar! Here I was sweating the deadline and in reality, I've got another week. What a relief, as I hate to rush paint :)

So, Mikey's 650b is finished and I really like the way the frame came out with the couplers. The paint will be a radiance red to orange to yellow fade and be built with a Rohloff hub, White Eno cranks and M16 front hub, Thomson post and stem, and a Luv Handle to round it off. Should be a killer travel bike.

That's all for now, catch y'all later.

cheers,

rody

The Chef is in the haus!

I've had a few folks ask why my business cards include the title "Chef" under my name...it's because once I put on my frame baking apron I enjoy cooking up some sweet frames :)
It's been a hard push the last three days;

I've got two SS coupler bikes, a 29er and a 650b, and one 29er with all internal cable routing to get done before I leave for a business/lil bit o' pleasure bike trip to Arizona next Thursday.

On top of that, Bill and Aaron Grove and their friend Brandon crashed out at our house for some urban assault riding over the weekend at Ray's Indoor Mountain Bike park, so it's been a few days full of working from dawn to dusk and then socializing into the wee hours...good stuff!

So, here's some pics from the shop on the builds, but first, Aaron's custom DJ bike he and Bill built together...


The frame uses a pierced Head tube junction for a massive triangulation, super strong!


A set of Hot Rods with Trial's gearing and a relieved chainstay for clearance

the seatstays wrap around the seat tube and meet the top tube

The seat tube is also relieved for tire clearance

The chainstays actually sit outboard of the EBB using a scalloped wrap, lots of details stuffed into a small frame, totally killer. Bill's still got it!

Ok, on to some raw shots. This is Mikey's 650b build with SS couplers.

Here we are mitering the down tube

A shot of the SS coupler when compared to a normal downtube. The coupler is placed in the butted section of the tube for maximum strength. I stuffed a bit more silver in here than I needed but wanted to insure that I got good penetration all the way around as well as securing the stainless steel blanks that protect the inside of the tubes when the bike is taken apart.

Setting up the frame fixture...

checking the tt miter

the front triangle all mitered up

the front welded up and the rear ready to go under the torch :)

cheers,

rody

Been pretty busy of late...

Hey folks, things have been crazy here lately.

Good news for me and those waiting on paint...the new booth is finally DONE, fini, complete!

I'll put it to work this week :)

Here's a shot of the inside...got each light glassed and sealed with a rubber stripping to keep the volatiles out of the electrical works, a rated filter wall for drawing out the nasties, and a ceiling mounted stand that allows me to rotate the frame 360 degrees in the vertical plane to insure full coverage.

While I was making a mess, I built up a new bake box for flash curing the paint. It can accommodate two frames at a time, lots of forks, and as many bars as I care to stuff in there.

The frames are secured in position by placing the headtubes over the fixed mounts at the far end, allowing an externally touch free support with full moving hot air coverage. The bars are for hanging forks off of and can be removed at any time. The whole shebang is run with a hot air circulator that can bring the temp up to 400 degrees. Mmmmm, can you smell what I'm baking?

Next up are some shots of the antique rootbeer build that I documented in the powder coat process.

I built up some sweet White Industries ENO wheels for this; yep, I do wheel builds too, been doing them for 20 years now so if you have a special need for some custom hoops, let me know :) .

I wanted to keep this build somewhat classic and understated, so the frame is adorned with just polished silver components and honey brown leather, yum.

This will be a shop demo or if someone can't live without it, I'll move it on ;)

Next up is the prototype Hot Rods by Bill Grove. These are the cranks that are finally moving on to Holland for Roy's polka dot bike. Sooo glad to have this last piece of the puzzle so I can get that bike outta here! Not that I don't love it Roy, but it's been eating me up as much as you to get this thing home and in the dirt.

The cranks were the first two piece design, created in 1978 while Bill was running Titron components. Yes, that's right, these pre-dated Roger Durhams's Bullseye cranks...we've got reports of him checking them out a local races long before his parts came to fruition.

The cranks use a unique tri-coidal polygon spindle which allows 360 degree surface contact, making it the strongest spindle interface possible. This is the same design used on military tank drive shaft systems. They will spin off of external bearings or the new BB30 standard.

The cranks are uber light, though final numbers are being withheld until the design is concrete.

The final design is being flushed out now and should be ready for production in July. The cranks can be utilized in any ring combination with a proprietary spider and custom one speed rings will be fabbed by White Industries for us. Custom lengths upon request.

When they are totally ready, I'll help Bill let the world know, I know I'm jonesing for a set.

Well, I'm off. I've got 3 frames to build in the next four days, so posting may be a bit slim but I'll try to get some build shots up for y'all as well as a rough schedule of when projects are timed for.

cheers,

rody

tidbits and happenings...

Well, after 3 hard weeks, the booth is almost there. Gotta hang the glass over the lights and install the filters and I'm ready to spray :)

Took a week longer than I wanted, but I'm eager to get to some of the re-paints I've got scheduled.

Immediately following my paint projects, I've got 5 frames to build before I leave for Phoenix for a little warm weather mountain biking and business trip.

I organize all the tubing for each build into it's own box with an inventory sheet so I can insure that I have all the required materials before I begin working. Keeps me from having those "DOH!" moments like beginning a build and realizing I don't have the dropouts or worse ;)

Monday saw 5 hours of wrapping, packing, and shipping to send out the last batch of bars. I'm actually ahead a bit and sent out 3 more orders that were suppose to be delivered in 4 weeks...you'll know if you are one of the lucky ones in about two days. On the bench is a separate bar that I'm putting together for Eric at the Slippery pig, using a bit longer grip section to meet his wide stance preference.

Lastly, here's a quick pic of a piece of machined beauty...an S&S coupler. These pieces are designed to be built into a tube to allow the frame to come apart in two pieces at the top and down tubes. This will allow your bike to fit into an airline regulation sized box so you do not have to pay any additional fees to fly with your bike. I'm doing two S&S frames in the next couple of weeks. The addition of the couplers adds about 500 dollars to the cost of a frame, expensive but it quickly pays for it's self at 160 bucks for a round trip with your ride.

Hope everyone is getting out and smiling...

cheers,

rody