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 tripdic of the parts rough cut and layed out.

The finished product.

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.

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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.

Dearest Dave brought the truck at the drop of a hat from Route 1 Farms.

And my neighbor Pat came in right on time with a forklift to set it in the driveway.

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.

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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:

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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.

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:

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.

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Sunday April 19, 2009

more big frames

and some forks with Pacenti fork crowns.

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.

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.

This bike is Ben’s.

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