People suck...well ok, maybe only a few

Hope everyone's holiday weekend was grand.

I worked a 60 hour shift Thursday through Sunday morning at the FD so I missed out on the big family feast, the shopping madness on Friday, and enjoying a long weekend.

Highlight though was 0230 call from the Wooster Police Department Sunday morning.... "Hey Rody, there's been a break in at your shop, we need you to come down for a damage and inventory assessment."


"_________ !" ... I'll let you fill in the blank with the expletive of your choice. I won't share mine, as I'm pretty sure it's not meant for family reading consumption.

As I pulled into the parking area, there were five police cruisers all with their spot lights on, aimed at the north window. I quickly scanned the back seats of the cars, hoping that one would be filled with my uninvited guests; no such luck.

I could tell from the exterior that the damage was bad, glass everywhere, stuff turned over inside, and police officers dusting for prints near the window. I paused for a moment and took a breath as a weird queasy feeling twisted in my stomach...gosh I hate that.

As I came through the door, most of the officers were gathered around one of the mills. Announcing my presence with a bit of a grunt, they quickly turned around and smiled, like kids getting caught looking through their dad's dirty magazine collection... "Rody, this stuff is so cool, do you think you could make a couple silencers with all this equipment?" Glad their minds were on the task at hand ;)

The burgler's had let themselves in using a large sandstone block lobbed through the triple pane glass and then crawled through the window over the weld table. I had hoped for some blood stained glass around the entry point...not so much for DNA analysis or anything fancy like you see on CSI, but for a bit of cruel kharmic revenge. Alas, let down again.

Fortunately, after surveying the shop through a hazy early morning mindset, my losses appeared to be minimal. I believe their intent was to access the store in the front half of the building, breaking through a wall in my assembly area to gain access to the Glass Bongs, Rap music, and crystal studded gangster clothing that is sold there. No accounting for taste I suppose.

So, Sunday and today were spent doing inventory, cleaning up, replacing the window, closing the hole in the wall, and fabbing up some nice steel window bars to provide a deterrent against future midnight visitors.

Framebuilding as a career would be so cool if all you had to do was make peoples cycling dreams come true. Too bad all the business stuff goes along with it :)

cheers,

rody

Wednesday...holiday packages going out

Yesterday was a flurry of activity as Christi and I got bars, forks, and soft goods wrapped, packaged and out the door. All the steel bars for December should be on the way with Ti scheduled for the next two weeks.

Michael was able to stop by and pick up his chamellion metallica BOI fork, hope he chooses to share some build pics with all of us this winter.

One of the fun bars to head overseas to Daniel was this Dino themed piece. Dan had seen the funky pink and green splatter alligator bar I had done and wanted something different for his old vintage ride in a silver color. We agreed that some dinos would rock it out...

I got a little carried away, adding in some airbrushed brown turf, blue skys, and some hand painted plants and clouds, but it really seemed to be appropriate.

Anyhoo, hope you like it Dan.

Back in the FD today for Thanksgiving...hope you all are enjoying the day with your families.

cheers,

rody

Web crawling tunes...

Need some funky tunes to surf the web to tonight while you are checking out your favorite forums/blogs/whatnots?

Check out some offerings of Funk, Soul, and Hip Hop from our brothers to the north...

WeFunk radio

Get your groove on baby!

r

Weekend round up...

Last post we left a few forks looking kinda pale in their primer'd skin, today I'll how ya how they turned out :)

Dario from Italy commissioned a BOI fork for his Yo to match the Kooka nightstorm color scheme... a mix of black to 3D Violet with turquoise splatter. I had to custom mix the translucent purple, spraying it over a sterling silver base and it came out really nice (of course you'd never know it in pictures...arghh!) I can't wait to see this built up with the rest of the bike.

Michael, probably better known as IF52 to all you VRC guys, was to stop in Saturday evening to pick up his fork, but I had to scadaddle due to a family medical happening. So, to soothe his soul til we can meet up, here's a pic of his BOI fork to go on his Chameleon Metallica Yo.

And finally, I'd like to introduce you to the weekends headliner, held by Christi ...

My sister was due to have this little girl toward the middle of December, but she decided to come early. Of emergent concern was that she presented breach, so a C-section had to be performed expediently to help her out. We rounded up the family and traveled down to Columbus to OSU Medical Center to meet her. Congrats to Lacy and Tim on the birth of my new niece :)

cheers,

rody

slow week...

Sorry for the lack of action folks, had a slow week in the shop due to lots of hours at the fire department and teaching...when I finally crossed the threshold Friday I was pretty mentally sluggish, just could not keep focused. That being the case, I did not get a lot accomplished.

I spent most of Friday installing the new DRO (digital read out) on the Lagun. This piece, while not a necessity, will certainly speed up operations for fixture work. It is made up of two precision measuring scales that must be mounted to the fixed and moving axis's of the machine to provide numerical feedback on tool location. I had to fabricate quite a few parts to get the scales mounted just right. She works a charm...

I also installed a new Kurt vise and speed handle. Gotta admit, the vice is spendy, but the handle is a steal! Custom machined out of solid steel billet, three removable handles, all nicely treated with black oxide here in the US for the bargain price of...ready for this? 22 bucks, dang! If any of you fabricators out there want the contact info, drop me an email.

The kids stopped by to have dinner with me one night, a sumptuous meal of roast beef sandwiches. We sure now how to live (read with HEAVY sarcasm).

This morning I began some paint work on two forks...one for Miguel and one for Dario. A little primer and flash off in the box...
Miguels is going to be bright yellow with black/silver Eddy's on the tops, and Darios is gonna be a whole lot different... black to 3D Violet fade with Aqua splatter. All to match his Kooka components of the same ilk. Should be sick.
While I had paint flashing off, I sat down with Kalten to teach him to build wheels. Every 14 year old boy should know how, right?
He's lacing up a set of commuter single speed wheels for a beat Yo that will be his new school bike as the 64 Schwinn Phantom has finally been deemed too small to continue service. We had a nice chat, puzzled out some wrong lacing, and had to end out session early as a family medical emergency occurred.

best wishes,

rody

Tri-plane fork...working in some kinks

So I take one day off out of the shop in three weeks to take some stuff to Pa and ride with some friends and as soon as I hit the parking lot...

"Why aren't you working on my frame?"

Who'd thunk, but Stevie D. just happened to be at the same trail head to ride the same trail at the same time as me...even though neither of us live anywhere close by. Surprised the crap out of me. Such is the cruel irony of building for others, the burden of keeping projects moving never leaves you. Fortunately, I bonked to the point of near hysterics, so that over whelmed any guilt I was feeling :)

So, the last two days I've been working in the shop to keep Steven's highly custom frame moving forward. A number of fixtures needed to be made to bring the fork crown fabrication into reality; an indexed flat crown bender, a mitering fixture to locate a origin point hole for the second operation bends, and a fixture to hold the bent crown for final milling of the 1.00" fork leg opening. All those special pieces take a bunch of time but will allow for excellent repeatability and efficiency if I choose to make more of these.

A shot of the bender. The center 1.125 steerer hole locates over the top of the circle and is clamped down by the square stock sitting on the vise, allowing for the bend to be placed equally on both sides of the crown.
The crown is then taken out, the bender reset for the leg portion, and then each side is bent again. Here's a shot of the final leg bend being placed, you can see the almost complete crown just below the bending arm...
The first mocked up piece...the angles are a bit steeper than what I want. I'll run another and then scribe a point on the bender or add a stop screw to indicate the appropriate distance for each bend.
A quick mock up on the steerer. I played with 4 or 5 spacing sequences and am still not decided on where I want it to be. This shot is a tighter configuration than the original drawing.
Despite my best effort, these projects always take longer than anticipated. I'm sure that it will be worth the effort though when the finished bike hits the dirt.

cheers,

rody