From the Desk of J. Muir

Sunday May 31, 2009

Adventure tourist

Head badge requests can be challenging. I usually keep things fairly simple, but simple doesn’t always mean good or beautifull. Carrie sent a photo of her favorite tree, an iconic Acacia in Africa. here is the link Lucky for me, this one worked out pretty darn well.

A sparse few photos of the process:

salvadora

28  badge
A tripdic of the parts rough cut and layed out.

C front
The finished product.

C side

This 700c adventure tourist has “more brazons than usual”.

It has Ritchey break-away couplers, routing for disc brakes, canti brakes, deraileur shifting and rohloff shifting, 3 bottles, front and rear racks, and fenders. It also is equiped with an eccentric BB for chain tension with single speed or multi-speed internally geared hubs. The low-mount disc rear drop outs are from Paragon Machine Works in Richmond. CA and allow for standard rack and fender mounting.
C R DO

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Sunday May 31, 2009

The Supermax

I bought my first big machine. Tired of the frequent, tedious and arduous setup and maintenance on my little Grizzley mill/drill, i invested in a bigger, older machine.

I bought it from Pavel for a mere $600.00, and he set it on the truck.
pavel
Dearest Dave brought the truck at the drop of a hat from Route 1 Farms.
dave
And my neighbor Pat came in right on time with a forklift to set it in the driveway.
Pat
Then, with a digging bar and a pallet jack, housemate Jason and I worked our way back and into the shop.
It will be a short while before I have everything up and running and switch over to the new situation, but it found it’s way into my little space, and feels pretty comfortable after some remodeling and a bunch of reorganization.
supermax

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Sunday May 3, 2009

headbadges

time for finishing touches on a few frames, and here I have the badges looking pretty ready for brazing:
badges

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Tuesday April 21, 2009

Clayton's Fixtoneur

Clayton had a specific bicycle in mind. He sent me a spreadsheet with the specs that he wanted, and he sent a NOS Reynolds 531 tubeset dating from 1974, along with campi dropouts and imperial oval fork blades with a Cinelli crown.

25c

The front Rack is a slightly modified Nitto (I added a light mount and had it coated). The rear rack is my own design and is a support for carradice-style bags under the saddle.

More Photos:

25

25e

25b

Down around the bottowm bracket, we find a drain for moisture that may find it’s way in, a closable hole for internal routing for the rear light wire from the front hub, and of course, the chainstay bridge fender mount. the schmutz is dust sticking to framesaver overspray.

25bb

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Sunday April 19, 2009

more big frames

and some forks with Pacenti fork crowns.
big
They’re resting on the old Mexican tricycle with a load of carpentry tools for downtown house calls.

Here are a couple photos of the brakeless rear bridge on a 63.5cm fixed gear. (that’s the frame in the foreground above) The bridge is stainless and will get a light polish and be left unpainted.
ben's bridge II
I think I went thru nearly a foot and a half of stainless stock before finding “the best” order of operations and procedure (stamp unbent tube with hammer and letter stamps, anneal tube, bend, hack saw, file, etc. — if it were a straight tube, I could miter it in the machine. . . )

In the usual style, letter alignment and punch depth is wonky.
ben's ss bridge

This bike is Ben’s.

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