5 daze

seems like more time has passed since that last post, but lots has transpired. chronology here.

Thursday night, greatDerailleur show at the 400 bar. We played the middle spot between two other bands, two bands that should thank their lucky stars we were there otherwise they woulda been playing to an empty room. First band literally played most of their set to the 5 of us and a couple of our friends that showed up early. Last band (speaker speaker) was from Seattle and consisted of a couple of just out of college age guys clearly just trying to make it across the US getting shows anywhere they can. No local fans since they weren't local, and loud as hell. I think they were good musicians, but the sound dude had them way too loud for the few people that were left in the room. Drove me to leave 3 songs into their set. Thanks to all the fans who came out for our show, we had a great time. Thought our set went really well.

Friday: head to the Vitch's for his final, clear-out-all-the-Kenwood-cyclery-crap-from-my-basement garage sale. I wanted to get in a ride so I decide to ride my bike over to chez-vitch in south Mpls. I had a couple alterior motives as well. I was going to meet TSP and Tomac in Longfellow and ride in with them, so I hauled the two suspension forks I had for them over in the b.o.b. trailer. The Vitch still had my S&S 29'er from his trip to singlespeed worlds in Scotland, so I planned on picking that up and hauling it home in the trailer as well.

Got to the sale to find a few other kenwoodies there picking through the goods. Most of the stuff I recognised from the shop as stuff I had passed on then, but I did pick up a few goodies. Most notable in my book: the Waterford sign from the shop (will look great in my soon-to-be renovated shop), a full Modolo speedy brake kit, with lots o' small parts for brakes (I can't imagine anyone else at the same could have used that one) and a super-cool aluminum chainguard that will inevitably end up getting polished out and fancied up for a BBC someday.

Add in a pair of shoes for a customer of mine, a few other odds and ends, all the extra clothing I brought and I had a really full trailer and messenger bag.

Loaded everything up into the b.o.b. with a bunch of bungee's and duct tape and set off on my way about 10pm, the temp had dropped to the point I could see my breath now. Ordinarily it's about a 50 minute ride home from the Vitch's, but that trailer kept feelin' heavier and heavier the closer I got to downtown St. Paul (probably had something to do with knowing I had 2 big hills to hit before I got home). I stopped for a short rest near downtown. I had the foresight to know I'd be doggin' it near the end, so I brought some food which I promptly scarfed down. Got back on the rig, checked the clock. It was 11pm.

Finally rolled into my driveway about 11:15. Felt good to get inside and warm up. The Xl bailey bag on my back kept that part of me warm, but my feet were getting a bit frosty.

Sat, put the finishing touches on two 953 'cross frames and got one of them ready to ship out to Oregon. This one is double oversize tubing with a neat seatlug that I'm really digging. I like the clean look of the seatstay sockets in the lug, my only grip is the lug is a looser fit on the top-tube, hence there's more silver visible between the lug and tube and it's harder to make that look clean. This one has indented 953 chainstays which I was able to manipulate to get 50mm of tire clearance between them! This one is a disc only frame, no canti mounts, and just hose guides brazed on the frame.

Pardon the bad picture placement formatting, blogger sucks for placing pictures.

The other one is heading to Marko Lalonde for the rest of his 'cross season. He's been ripping it up out there this year too, including finishing 11th and 14th this weekend at the UCI double header in Cincinnati (nice work darkness)! I'm really excited to have him and Jesse racing for me this year. And for the record, brother Jesse won the Badger 'cross in Madison this weekend

I wanted the logos to pop out a little more on this frame, so I painted in some panels instead of my usual etching on the stainless. I like the look.

This one had a whole lotta custom stuff. I had to make the track dropouts from scratch, this was the first side-tack seatstay I'd done on a 953 frame. I was worried about how much silver would show around the stays, but now that I see it done, I love the look. It shows off the inverted tube brazed in to make the scallops (no investment cast plugs here, those are for the lazy). The chainstays are the first 953 bent chainstays (anywhere as far as I know) and when combined with the indentations give clearance for 2.2" 29'er tires. It's a cross bike by design, but it's got clearance for full 29'er tires and is actually just about the same geometry as my personal 29'er. I really love these 'cross/29'er rigid frames, they're about as versatile as a bike gets, and they handle both applications extremely well.

Sunday I raced. What a day for cross, raining and about 45 degrees all morning, got the course all wet and slick in time for the start. I stuck in the B race and I think my total lack of training will keep me there this season. Started mid-pack right behind Freeride and rode most of the first two laps just a person or two behind him. There was a huge pile up right at the start and we both managed to get around it. About lap three I was feeling good so I ramped it up and passed freeride and a few others. I kept it going till the last lap, and once again I hit the wall on the last lap. I didn't lose a lot of ground, but I could tell my last lap was considerably slower than the rest. That was confirmed by the Cutshall superfans who were gracious enough to give me hand-ups during the race and unbeknownst to me were timing my laps. Thanks Team Ultra!

Good day of racing, however I will whine about the stupid course. The Ridley folks (formerly Alan folks, *wise-ass Alan comment deleted*) put on this one and they usually do a great job, but this year taking out two full sets of barriers only to replace them with a series of 12 180 degree turns (think of a riding your bike through the line que at a Disneyland ride) was 100% lame. It did nothing for the race and kept the people with any kind of real 'cross skilz from using them. Oh well, other than that it was a great race.

Alright, I'm outta time, so write at you later.

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Derailleur tonight

Don't have a lot of time to write today, but thought I'd post that my band (derailleur) is playing the 400 Bar tonight in Mpls at 9pm. There's a cover, but not much, swing by and check us out.

Pic's very soon of the two 953 frames I'm finishing up this week. It's been crazy, but I've managed to get three frames cranked out in the past 4 weeks!

Lake Rebecca CX mini recap: Hot, too hot for cx. Felt like I rode well for not really training much, finished mid pack at 27th. I was in the top 20 most of the race till I hit about 40 minutes, then I popped. bad. Cramped both legs, struggled to make it up the final run, but I'm sure got stronger in the process. Hopefully I'll last through the last lap next weekend.

Thanks to sideburns for all the great pics on skinnyski.

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catch up

I've had so many things I wanted to write about lately, but never had the time...

Friday: JL and friend KT make the pilgrimage up to St. Paul to get JL's new frame. I meet them at the shop about 11 and they get into building it up. JL simply brought up a big crate o parts, added in with a new frame and fork and we ended up with a bike.
Pretty great build if you ask me, 29'er wheels with crows on 'em, drop bars, Sram brake levers with pink hoods (where does he get this stuff?) White ind. eno crank, pauls brakes. Swank.

Afterwards I had the pleasure of sneaking in a nice ride at wirth with these guys. Thankfully JL and KT took it easy on me and it was a really fun ride. I hadn't been to wirth in a while and man were there trees down everywhere. Still, it was good to get out on my 'cross bike and ride with these guys.

JL was rockin the 'crows on his bike and seemed to really be flowing well at wirth, but honestly I think he could have been riding on rims and looked smooth. KT was on the soulcraft cx bike rockin' it out and making it look too easy. I was psyched to try out the Stan's/panaracer tubeless set up would work on the hardpack at wirth. Happy to say it was good, I ran 'em low around 28psi and while I did hear the rims hit a few roots, they stayed true and held air perfectly the whole time.

After that, I headed back home to pack up some stuff and head north to my folks cabin to help them out over the weekend.

Sat: Got slots done up north, we pulled up all the boards off the deck in order to refinish them and correct some design flaws the previous owners installed. Then cut up a big oak that had fallen the previous week.
Sun: finished up my trip north helping my dad set up a big shelving unit in the new garage they're building. Quite a lot of change up there, can't wait to spend some time up there next summer.

Side note: driving up and back I got to try out my new stereo in the jetta. In short it was awesome. The ipod integration is so seamless, I can now see why their next model up is an ipod only receiver, no cd player. It sounds at least 95% as good as playing an actual CD, which is a night and day improvement over every other ipod playing scheme I've tried in there before. Just set it on shuffle and you've got an instant roadtrip soundtrack.

Mon: usual day at work, but Beth and I decided to celebrate our anniversary a day early with a nice dinner. We headed to a new place in Minneapolis (although they're in plenty of other cities), Fogo de Chao. For those that haven't heard of it, they bill themselves as a Brazilian Steakhouse. The set-up is a bit unusual, but really pretty sweet. There's not really any menu, everyone gets the same treatment. There's an incredible salad bar to start off with, fresh everything, cheeses, salads, veggies. All top notch fresh.
Once you get through with that, you're given what looks like a coaster, but it's red on one side and green on the other. Set it out green side up and they start bringing around the meat. They've got about 10 different meats, mostly beef, all exceptional. They literally walk around to your table with a spit of meat and carve whatever you want off right at your table. I truly don't know how to describe how good all of it was, I can't even pick out a fav. We just ate, ate and ate some more. They'll bring as much as you want.
The only thing that was better than the food was the service. Truly the best service I've had a restaurant. Period. I think I've got a new favorite restaurant.
Price was even quite reasonable for the quality of food and service you're getting. Dinner is $42 per person, or they have a lunch for $24. Definitely not applebees pricing, but trust me, this place is a great value.

alright, I better stop writing about this, I'm getting hungry. who's up for lunch tomorrow?

Finally today: spent some time giving some 953 chainstays the magic hands treatment. I needed some extra tire clearance for one of the 953 'cross frames I'm building. Reynolds has had a lot of difficulty forming these stays and I think I've worked out a method for reshaping and ovalizing them. Wish I could tell you, but for now, gotta keep that under wraps. I'll be pushing this one step further this weekend working on the worlds first 953 bent chainstay frame. This stuff isn't easy, but the more I work with it, the more I learn. Gotta love learnin'.

Reynolds will be happy to see what happens this weekend too, they've been great to work with on this project supplying me with raw materials for testing out a few methods. I think they're as eager to find a way to provide a bend 953 stay as I am to have one. coming soon (hopefully): 953 29'ers!

That's all I have time for now, gotta go find me a steak.

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stars 'n hearts

I finished up two more paint jobs this weekend, including Jesse's frame. This ting was the bane of my existence Sunday. I spent almost 3 hours applying all the masking only to have the paint wrinkle up once sprayed due to a chemical issue. I fixed that, but couldn't fully sand out all the wrinkles, so there are a couple of hearts in there with some texture in the paint, but it's not bad.

Then the colors disappointed me. The frame was supposed to be black and white, which it was. Then I added the pearl over it (which I thought would be translucent) and it turned my stark black into sort of a gunmetal gray. It's actually a really cool effect and color, but I was hoping for black. But Jesse needs it for 'cross so it will suffice for now, I can respray it after the season's over if he wants. It's still a super-cool paint job that will be killer with the BKB racing kits. Can't wait to see him out there ripping it up on this baby.

Just for the record, everything you see on here is painted in, there's not a single decal on the bike. Talk about a lot of masking...

I'm still madly working on getting the other two 953 'cross frames in my shop out. One if over half done, the other is getting there. More pic's of those coming soon. I've been held up on progress on them due to a very late shipment of the stainless dropouts and a few other bits. Those just showed up yesterday, so I should be able to get moving again on 'em.

In other news I've had absolutely zero progress on moving the shop, everything is still in disarray and I suspect it will be until I can get these next couple frames done. I should have time this winter to really get that space set-up how I want it, but not much time till then.

I finally got my 'cross bike all set-up this weekend and even snuck out for a quick ride on it yesterday. I've been running 3-4 times a week so I felt alright, but my technique was a bit off since I haven't been riding at all. I think I'll be fine though, I won't make it to a race till Oct 6th at the soonest, so I have a week or two to practice my dismounts.
I'm trying something new this year, in all my consolidations of bike stuff, I sold off the wheels I usually race 'cross on. I was thinking I'd use my Reynolds carbon wheels for racing, but I'm actually going to try something else first. I set up my King/Stan's ZTR 29'er wheelset with 'cross tires and Stan's goo. The ZTR rims are as lgiht as most road rims, and with the Stan's yellow tape and tubeless set-up, they're actually lighter than my old race wheels, plus they're tubeless, so I can run low pressure. The rims are wider than most road rims, but that only gives me more tire contact patch. I think this might be a great set-up for 'cross. They felt good last night, but it was a short ride, I'll write more about it after I spend some time on 'em.

Completely unrelated to bikes, I installed a new stereo in the Jetta last night. I'd been wanting to replace the old one for sometime and I've been kind of itchin to have a receiver with a good i-pod integration and HD radio capability. Not to mention I missed my old Alpines with high-voltage pre-outs, they just sound better than anything else.
So I scored the Alpine I wanted on Ebay and finally got it in last night and I'm thrilled. Not only does it sound as good as my Alpine's of old, but the i-pod integration is killer. You plug the i-pod right in the docking connection and the receiver is now your controller. You have all the same controls of the i-pod but they're right there on the deck and it charges your i-pod while you drive. Slick. Can't wait to hook up the HD radio (hopefully today or tomorrow).

If anyone in blog-land needs a basic car CD player I've got the Sony X-plod CDX-L550x I pulled out. It works fine, but is more susceptible to skipping if your CD's have scratches (as every Sony CD player I've ever had has been). Only one set of pre-outs, but if you don't have any amps, it's a great unit. $50 + shipping, how can you beat it.

Homage

Pay attention folks, #1 and #4 at Chequomegon, the Lalonde Bro's, both on singlespeeds. They rock, plain and simple.

I wish I could have been there, but I didn't get into the race this year and I had other priorities. I spend the weekend in the shop building 'cross bikes, three of 'em. One heading to Oregon, and two heading to where else? The Lalonde brothers. I'm pumped to have these two sporting a pair of hot BBC's this year, look for them on the BKB custom bikes.

Wish I had more picts to show, but I was in full-on building mode all weekend and didn't get around to using the camera yet. I'll get some this week. There's 2 953 'cross bikes in that mix, and they're looking nice.

Gotta give props to all the Kenwoodies turning in some big results at Cheq too. Ez, wins the singlespeed class (and places 18th overall), Thorny rockets through in 61st, TSP 81st, Tomac just a few seconds behind him in 87th. WW & Becko, third place tandem, and although no K'woodies, the Eppen's deserve props for a 16th place overall finish on tandem. Nice work all of you.

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Coming along....

The house is coming along nicely. I finished up the wiring, so now my friend Levi is taking over on hanging and mudding the drywall. I can't tell you how excited I am to not be doing the drywall. Not only do I hate it, but I'm swamped with bike work, so this really helps out.

I'm putting the shop move on hold too, while I bust out a couple frames. I've been slowly putzing on a few for a little but, but now I really need to finish them up and get them out. I've had two holdup's on the stainless frames I'm working on: waiting for material from Reynolds, and getting my lathe set-up so I can make the headtubes. Well, the Reynolds order came in last week, and I finally got the three-phase power wired up for the lathe and some of the tooling arrived Tuesday.

So last night I was finally able to crank out a headtube and get the frame jigged up. The new lathe is awesome. The chuck is big enough to hold a whole headtube with no problem and the big tooling makes a world of difference in cutting stainless compared to my old small lathe.
I turn my stainless headtubes from 38mm 316L raw stock. For this frame I needed to add a bit of heatube extension above the lug, which is usually done by brazing a sleeve on the headtube. However since I was machining this and had a big enough OD, I was able to just turn the headtube extension right into the tube. Kind of a neat trick.

A few things worth noting since I've now gotten my third shipment of 953 tubing. Reynolds really seems to be getting the manipulation of this material down a lot better. All the tubes I received were right on spec for wall thickness and butting, which is a huge improvement over previous tubes. In addition the tubes are quite a bit closer to being truly round and straight. Only a couple had significant straightness issues (on all previous orders, none of the tubes was truly straight) and the roundness is within .010" (compared to .035" on early orders).

I also ordered a couple of new tubes Reynolds is offering just to see how close to spec they were. I'm pleased to report their new lightweight chainstays are truly lightweight. Until now, the 953 chainstays were a bit underwhelming compared to the rest of the tubing. But with these new stays and the better wall thickness tolerances of the main tubing, I can now built 953 bikes that are truly lighter than any other steel available. Of course as always, weight will depend on what you're using it for, but it's nice to know these light tubes are finally out there.

And finally, I'm pleased to say I sold the steel/carbon frame that I was pushing on here for a while. Built it up with a new Chorus group this week and shipped it out. Hope the new owner enjoys it as much as I did. I'm finally getting my stable down to a manageable size, which feels good.

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remodelage.

It's pretty bad when I have to go back and look at my own blog to what I wrote about last time because it's been so long since I've posted. I've been back in full-on Bob Brown mode tearing apart our house, so I haven't had any free time to think, breath, eat, or write (well at least to write).

As I mentioned last time, I'm working on a simple project o re-do my stairs in the house. Well that scope has turned out of control, I have the stairs all turned around and functional, and I frames in a new closet and a new hallway, but I seem to keep finding more things to include in this project.
Here's a shot of how things are looking today, the stairs are sloped the "right" way now. I had to build three angled steps near the bottom to make the turn into the new hallway, but I think they came out pretty good.

I also decided to just frame in an entire room surrounding the furnace and water heater. The problem with having a metal shop in your basement is you make a ton of dust, and if your furnace is basically in the middle of your shop, all that dust makes it way into the furnace and into the rest of the house. Sooooo, I figured if I can section off that part of the basement and keep it clean, hopefully we'll have cleaner air upstairs as well. It also give us a really nice big storage area that should be free of shop-dust.

Of course after moving the stairs, I needed to relocate half the plumbing in the house since it was now located right where we'd be walking through. That ended up taking the better part of a whole weekend on it's own, but now about 75 % of the house has new copper plumbing. I was amazed, I sweated about 50 individual copper fittings during that process (there were a LOT of elbows!) and when I turned it back on, not a single drip. Guess all that brazing pays off when it comes to being a plumber.

Since I was on a role with the remodel, this seems like the right time to do my shop relocation as well. I'm taking over the other half of the basement to make the shop bigger and better. This part will be a long project I'm guessing since I can't really drop all my framebuilding right now to move the shop, so I'm slowing plugging away at it. I started with the heavy stuff though, moved the alignment table and all my tubing storage. Then with the help of local framebuilder and all around good guy Dave Anderson, moved my 2000lb horizontal mill across the basement and moved my new lathe into the shop.

Did I mention I got a new lathe? I picked up a really neat Clausing 5914 lathe from a 3M surplus sale. It's big, 12" x 36" bed, 1200 lbs of good old 'merican steel! Sorry I don't have any great pics of it yet, but once I have some free time to clean it up and get it wired I'll take some.
It's mighty nice, takes 5C collets right in the headstock with no adapters, has a true variable speed drive with hydraulic clutch and brake, turns about a million threads and has a nice big 1.375" spindle bore. In short, it's a true industrial machine, and I'm excited to give it a new home.

So this weekend I'm giving the basement the full court press. Gonna try to finish up the drywall and wiring on the house parts and get a bunch of my shop cleaned up and functional, and see how much stuff I can get moved to the new shop. I'm also planning on insulating and finishing off the ceiling in the new shop space. That should keep things quiet upstairs and give me more fire protection when using the torch. I'm still debating just drywalling the ceiling or installing a drop-ceiling with fire-resistant panels.

On the bike front, I'm still managing to get some work done, moved a couple coupler jobs out of the shop this week and one repaint. And I sold off the steel/carbon frame I posted here a few weeks back. However I do feel like I'm falling behind as I have a few 'cross frames I really need to get done before 'cross season really starts up.
Reynolds has been holding me up on some of that work though as they just shipped their August 953 production run this week (three weeks late), so I've been waiting for tubes. They're defintely getting better at delivering the stuff (a few weeks late is better than 6 months late) but it will be nice if they can actually get caught up and stock some 953.

That's about all I have time for right now, try to write again soon,

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rampin' up

Things are really starting to heat up around the shop. I feel like I've been spraying paint for a month straight right now, I just kind of let a bunch of repaints build up. Here's a pair of Molteni orange frames, one an S & S retrofit, one a Merckx restoration. The Merckx will be adorned with a record kit soon, should be a find bike for the owner!

I've been hit with the last minute rush before singlespeed world champs in Scotland as well. Got two more coupler retrofits to finish up this weekend and I think I'll have all those taken care of.

I've got three bikes to get assembled this week too, man stuff is just piling up!

The blog-sale last posting was pretty successful, but I've still got a couple things left. The steel/carbon frame and fork are still available as well as the Ritchey carbon bars. In addition I've got an IRD shimano 10 speed cassette for sale, brand new 11-23. $40.

In tangentially related news, I've started on the last really big part of our home-remodeling: turning the basement stairs around 180 degrees. I've done just about all the pre-work including a lot of demo. I think this weekend will be the big push where I'll actually pull out the whole existing staircase and build the new one. I don't think it will take long to make it functional, but the finish work will take some time. I intend to build a new hallway in the basement and frame out a new closet upstairs next to our front door, so there will be a pretty fair amount of drywall work to do (which I hate). Not looking forward to that. But I am really looking forward to having the stairs moved. It will really change the layout of my shop space and give me a lot more space. I've got grand plans for the shop this winter, but I'll write about that some other time.

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more stuff for sale

Two postings in a row, must mean I need to sell stuff!


I still have this frame available, if there aren't any bites in the next week, it's going on ebay. The group sold, so it's down to just the frame, fork, headset and seatpost. It's a 58cm effective top-tube, 60cm effective seat-tube. lugged steel front, columbus super-muscle carbon rear. Frame weighs 3.6lbs. Matching Alpha Q sub 3 fork, Record threadless headset and Wound up carbon seatpost. Chromillusions color changing paint. you really need to see this in person to appreciate it. Nearly perfect, there's one small paint chip on the left chainstay, otherwise the paint is perfect. Email me for more pictures and details. $1500/ frame, fork, headset, post.




FRM CL2 TI brakes. These baby's are about the lightest thing around, lighter than the Zero Gravity brakes which everyone mistakes them for. I've got a pair of them for sale, they have been used about 10 times, but are truly like brand new condition. These weight 96g per complete brake including the pads! (per my Ohaus balance). They work great and I cannot tell any difference in feel between these and my Record dual pivots. Great way to save some weight. I don't think anyone is importing these into the US anymore, so here's your big chance to have some super-euro brakes nobody else has! $200/ set (front and rear). Priced to move! More info here.





Flite Carbon saddle. This is the lightest flite made, carbon insert, carbon rails. Actual weight 156g. Brand spankin' new. Retail is about $160 online, this one is yours for $120 shipped.


TTT Less XL handlebar. 42cm width, 31.8 clamp, used but excellent condition. Less than a year old, 221g actual weight.
$40

Ritchey Carbon Evolution bar, 42cm. This is a fabulous bar, 200g very stiff, very comfortable shape. It's wider on the tops, and sweeps back slightly, shallow drop, typical flat top Ritchey shape. Specs are here. Retail is about $275 on these, these have less than 5 rides on them and are indistinguishable from new $200.

Reynolds Ouzo Race Aluminum bar. 40cm, new, anatomic bend, 31.8mm clamp, 220g.

$25






Thompson X2 road stem, 31.8 x 1 1/8" clamps, +/- 5 degree, 100mm length. excellent condition, like new. $50, or buy any bar above and get this stem for $40!




Those are the highlights for now, it's all going on ebay if I don't get bites here, so act fast!

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Horrible

Horrible, that's what my dedication to this blog has been lately. It's been really tough finding the time. It's been two and a half weeks since I've posted here and I think I've done 3 rides in that time. Sad.
I did what will be for me, the last Buck Hill race of the year last week. Technically there is one more this week, but I won't be able to be there. Man it's gotten rough out there. For those of you not in the Twin Cities, we're having nothing short of a drought up here. No rain for pretty much the whole summer, which has literally turned riding at Buck into a race at the beach. The trails are all sand, some places almost unridable because it's 6" deep. It's been a challenge to say the least. Sure hope we get some real rain here soon.

Even though I'm not writing much, I've been really cranking out work. Since my last posting I finished up another frame and painted four others. Paint has really been frustrating for me lately. Dupont went and changed the chemistry of the clearcoat I use again and it's really hosed me up. To make it worse on the last batch of 3 frames it appears that I got a bad can of activator for the clear so all of them had horrible clears and I had to respray them all multiple times and completely start over on one of them.
I think I've finally settled in on a new clearcoat, it's a higher-end product, so it's expensive at about $75/quart, but it really looks nice and lays flat. Combined with the new Iwata gun I've been using I can now use about 1/2 the liquid volume of clear and get a deeper coat and better shine. I'm still working out a few quirks, but I think I'm on the right track to clearcoat nirvana.

The one pictured here has painted in logos on the downtube, which I really like. They're sprayed with Chrome paint and buried under clearcoat. Looks sharp with the polished stainless lugs and couplers on this one. More pictures once it's built up.

I finished assembling this one too. Really nice little bike with the Campy Centaur group and Nitto parts. This one should be on it's way to the new owner very soon, hopefully in time to get in plenty of good riding yet this summer.

I really like the Centaur group, but I wish Campy would have kept the polished finish brake levers. For 2007 they went carbon on the lever blades. They keep trickling the carbon down further into their lines making it harder and harder to make a classic looking group with high end parts.

In other news, I've also started into the final stage of our overall home improvement scope. Faithful readers will no doubt know all about the addition to the house, well I'm on the last step, turning our basement stairs around 180 degrees. Anyone that's been in my basement knows this is no small task. It's taken me 2 weeks already to clear out enough space to stage all the construction. So I spent a lot of time this weekend moving stuff away from the stairs in preparation for demo.
When it's all said and done, the shop will be completely rearranged, we'll have new stairs and a new front entry closet upstairs, and best of all a new hallway from the garage straight up the stairs so that we won't have to walk through the shop to enter the house. That should do wonders for keeping the house clean! I'm actually really excited about getting this done. I just need to dedicate the time and do it!

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I know it's been a while... It's summer and tough for me to find time to write here sometimes.
I've been pretty hard at it in the shop, finished up 2 more frames within the last week. The first is a really cool road frame with Sach's new Nuevo-Richie series lugs.

I was loving this frame before paint, and it only got better after. These are just a couple quick shots of it under the fluorescent lights of the shop, so the color is slightly off. But it's a beautiful burgundy with a very subtle metallic flake to it, with cream accents.

The Polished stainless headbadge is brazed to the headtube then masked for paint. I've got most of the components at the shop now, so I'll have some better pictures soon of it all built up.

This one will have a Campy Centaur group with lots of shiny Nitto parts to really make it look good.

The other frame was another Route 29. This one is the first of the new non-suspension corrected frames! Lots of you have been asking me when this might be a reality. Well the answer is now. This one is at The Route getting built up into a complete bike and it's a size small (17.5").

A couple of small changes as this frame design continues to evolve. Obviously these frames will come with a rigid fork with my fork crown. I've added removable canti bosses on the forks, so if you want to run discs you can take off the canti posts. And I've modified the sliding rear deopout design. We had a compatibility issue with the old disc mount, some calipers could hit the left seatstay when the dropout was slid in all the way. So I've lengthened the sliders and given more room, so they should work with any disc caliper along the full range of travel.

I've tried to maintain a unique clean look to them even though they are a bit larger now. I think they still look really nice.

I think we've settled in on the stock colors as well and we'll have color samples up on the official website soon (when the official website is officially up!). The colors will be: Metallic silver, Root Beer candy, Madarin Orange candy, Deep blue and a Green candy.

I've been really trying to ride my bike more these days, and in that vane I actually raced (well if you call it that) at buck hill last week. It was a perfect night for it and I actually felt pretty good. Well, until the end of the third lap anyways. As I was nearing the end of lap 3 things went awry. I was starting to get fatigued (when you don't train it sure hits you quickly!) and my legs were starting to feel the verge of cramping. I must have hit something with my front tire as the bike endo'd suddenly. I didn't actually crash at this point though. I actually got both tires back on the ground while still moving, but the sudden jerk forward had pulled my right foot out of the pedal, so I was waaaaay off balance, on one foot leaning pretty far off the side of the bike madly trying to regain balance. Unfortunately I ran over a root while this was happening and I knew instantly I wasn't going to pull this off. Down I went. I flailed off the bike landing with my right arm outstretched. It was freakily similar to how I landed when I broke myself back in 2003, so my first instinct was to check the arm I just landed on. Fortunately it was fine. After a couple of seconds making sure I had all my parts, I got up, dusted myself off and got back on the bike. Felt OK for minute or so, but as I was descending down the end of the lap it became pretty clear that my left knee wasn't happy. So I decided to stop one lap early and head home before the real soreness kicked in.
It sure did kick in over the weekend. My knee swelled up a good bit and made walking a challenge, but it seems to have subsided now. I checked out my bike yesterday, found a small dent in the top-tube, bummer. But even worse found the front of my helmet cracked! Bummer since it was a fairly new $100+ helmet, but good in that it did it's job. I've got a new one on order, I'm back to using an older helmet till the new one comes. Keep those lids on folks, they do work. I'm sad to say this is the third helmet that has "done it's job" for me over my cycling career. I'd hate to think what kind of shape I'd be in without them.

I rode some errands yesterday including my first trip over to Hiawatha Cyclery. Jim over there happen to have a good stock of Nitto Crystal Fellow seatposts which no one else in the US seems to have right now. I needed one for the bike shown at the top of the page, so I rode over. Neat little shop (emphasis on little), but lots tucked in. Jim seemed like a nice guy and I'd say if you're in the area and looking for Rivendell type parts stop in. He seemed to pretty much have the whole Riv catalog in stock. To be honest, the pricing was pretty high on stuff (higher than buying from Riv direct) but then again, he's actually got stuff in stock and you can leave with the parts in your hand.

I ushered in a possible new era last night as my band, Derailleur, moved all our stuff out of my basement and into a new rehearsal space. We've always practiced in my shop, since um... since my shop began I guess. But I needed the space to do some remodeling down there later this summer, so we're going to try out a new rehearsal space in the meantime and see how it treats us. It felt really strange moving the stuff out though, kind of not right. Who knows, maybe we'll love the new space. One thing is for sure, I had no idea how much crap we had down there that we don't pack up when we got to shows. Moving the whole rehearsal space too over twice as long as just packing up for a show.

write at you later,

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Wrapped up another frame this week and just about through another route 29'er. For those of you waiting, this Route bike is the first of the non-suspension corrected frames coming out. It'll be a rigid single with sliding dropouts, can also be run with gears if you're so inclined. Pic's soon.

The frame is pretty neat, using Sach's Neuvo Richie lugs. What can I say, they're pretty cool.

The casting isn't great, but they seemed to clean up well and I just needed to flow a bot more silver inside the joints to make sure they are nice and full.

I reshaped the head lugs a bit as I don't like the forward facing points on these lugs (nor on any lugs). I think that really cleans them up and makes the shape more pleasing, but that's just me.

Richard doesn't have a fork crown to match, so I had to improvise. I took one of his Newvex crowns and modified it to match the theme of the lugs.

I had to reshape the side points and then braze them together. Then I went in with the needle files and made the resultant window bigger and shaped similarly to the lugs.

It looks good together with the frame, can't wait to see it all painted up. Hopefully that will occur within the next week.

Got out for a nice ride Tuesday afternoon. Did my St. Paul mtb ride, which is basically the first 1/4 of the super-enduro route I've put together for later this summer. I managed 3 solid hours of of-road riding and I didn't leave the St. Paul city limits and I didn't double up any trails.

In other news, Beth's folks came to town to visit late last week. It was a hectic week for me. I was down in Little Rock from Sunday night-Thursday, then her folks arrived Thursday night and we were pretty much going non-stop through the weekend.

While Beth and her Mom spent most of the weekend planting things in the yard, Bob (my Father-in-law) and I added on a new section of deck to our existing deck to go around the side of the hot-tub. It was one of the small projects I just never really got around to, and it was clear that Beth thought I needed to get around to it!

Got a few trees trimmed up too and hauled off a trailer load of branches. I've got two ash trees in the back yard that appear to be slowly dying, so I keep cutting off as much of the dead wood as I can, but sooner or later they're gonna have to go.

No Buck Hill tonight, guess they figure a holiday is in order for 4th of July, maybe a nice road ride or maybe just finish up that route 29.

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Another one down

Another year that is. Yup, as of yesterday another year down.

For a couple years now I've been meeting a few friends for breakfast at Al's roughly once a month before work. We're all early birds, so we meet right when it opens at 6am and I'm usually back to work shortly after 7. Most of the guys ride there since they live and work in Mpls, but it's one hell of a hike for me since I live and work in St. Paul. But I've always wanted to ride it, and I decided what better day to try than on my birthday. So yesterday I managed to get myself up at 4:30 am so that I could get there on time. Rolled out of the house a little before 5 and proceeded to have one of the most peaceful rides across the cities that I've ever had. it was fantastic how few people and cars are out at 5am. Made it in about 5:50 to Al's and waited for the others while mentally scoping my route back to work.

A huge plate of pancakes down and I was back on my way with a full belly this time. I stayed north of 94 on the route back to work just to keep the mileage down. Took the U of M transitway to Energy Park, crossed the ped bridge there and followed Pierce Butler up to Como. Jumped on the new bike lane to the capitol and weaved my way down to Phalen Blvd and the new bike lane there which took me right to work.

Felt pretty good all day till about 3 pm when my lack of sleep started really sinking in...

One thing I've really noticed the last few weeks is how St. Paul is really ramping up the bike lanes on city streets. I guess that huge federal grant is really starting to kick in and (like the folks at McDonalds) I'm lovin' it! In the last week I've ridden at least 10-15 miles of bike lane ot designated bike path that's brand spankin' new within the St. paul city limits. They're finally adding bike lanes that go north and south which is a nice change, and they're adding a lot of lanes north of 94 which has been somewhat of no-man's land when it came to cycling before this.

Anyone know if there's a map on-line anywhere with all the new changes or planned changes shown? I haven't found one, but it seems like there must be one out there. I'd love to know if there's more I'm missing.

In other news, my shop cleaning sell-off has been wildly successful, and in the spirit of keeping it going....

I have this full bike or frameset for sale. Long time Blog readers will know all about this baby, but for those that don't:

This is a lugged steel front/carbon rear end superlight racing frame. 58cm effective Top-tube, 60cm effective Seat-tube with a 1cm headtube extension. 77mm drop, 41cm chainstays, 73 degree parallel angles. This is a full on racing bike.

The frame is a combination of True Temper S3 and Columbus Spirit tubing silver brazed with highly modified Slant Six lugs. The rear triangle is a Columbus Super Muscle kit, including full carbon chainstays and seatstays.This is the top-of-the-line offering in carbon rear triangles.

The headlugs have been carved back quite a bit to give that "bikini lug" look and to save weight.

The seatlug and BB shell were custom creations with integrated sockets to accept the carbon rear triangle tubes. The seatlug is a carved up slant six lug with a monostay socket added to the backside to accept the carbon mono-seat stay.

Then to top off a very unique build, I gave it an even more unique paint job. The frame is sprayed with Dupont Chrome-illusions color changing paint. The paint is opaque on most of the frame, but on the rear end, I increased the translucency on the carbon center sections, so that you can clearly see the carbon weave through the color effect. The same was done on the carbon fork. The paint changes color depending on lighting and viewing angle, the dominant colors are a deep purple and forest green that you see in most of these pictures, but in sunlight it also shows a dark red and gold. The curvy surfaces of the lugs show the most change since you're viewing multiple angles at one time when looking at them.

The downtube logo is painted in, no decals there, so it's perfectly smooth, buried under several coats of clear. The headtube has a sterling silver foil logo on it, also buried under the clear to protect it. It looks stunning with the dark background.

The fork is an Alpha Q Sub 3 fork, painted to match the frame. The overall condition of the frame and fork is near perfect. The only mark on it is one small paint chip on the underside of the left chainstay near the dropout. This happened in transit to a show and it 100% hidden in normal use (you can only see it if you flip the bike over). It's on the carbon chainstay, so there will be no corrosion issue from the chip. Otherwise the frame and fork look brand new. This was a show bike I built up and did ride occasionally. It's very light and rides very smooth. The carbon rear end definitely does remove some of the jarring of road irregularities and smooths out the ride.

Currently the bike is 100% built up and ready to ride. It has a used Campy Record 9 speed (alloy) group on it with newer Record (2002 model) hubs laced to Sun Venus deep V polished rims and DT revolution spokes. The wheels are very light and accelerate well. The seatpost is the custom Wound-up carbon post to fit the 31.6 Spirit seatube. Stem is a Thompson X2, 100mm, bars are TTT 4G XL, 31.8 clamp, 42cm. The saddle is a brand new Flite Carbonino (very light). Cranks show the usual scuff marks from shoes on the arms, the shifters are the last year of the alloy lever style and are in good shape, but there are a few dots of color stain on the lever blade (no scrapes or scratches though). Cassette is a Record 9, 12-23 cassette, used but has lots of life left in it, the chainrings are 39, 53 and in good shape.

If anyone has questions on component condition, I'm happy to take detailed pics of anything.

And if anyone local to me is seriously interested, you're welcome to take it for a ride. This is really a spectacular bike and is one of a kind. I've never seen anything even close to similar and will make a great racing frame for someone. Please email me with any questions.

I'd like $1800 for the frame and fork, or $2900 for the complete bike. I think that is really priced to move considering if you put a deposit down today to have me build this bike I would charge you about $3200 for the frame and fork alone and you'd have to wait 14 months to get it!
If this is your size, this is a great way to avoid the long wait for one of my frames.

ok, now that I got that out of my system, here's some frame building stuff.
I've been working on a new frame with Richard Sach's newest lugs. I really like the overall look of them once I cleaned 'em up and reshaped some of the shoreline. The side cut-outs are a really nice shape for the size of the lug. My only gripe is that these are not cast as well as his other lugs. They're coming from a different casting house overseas and you can tell they're not Long-Shen castings. Not a big deal, but the need more cleaning up before they're ready for brazing. The front triangle is about done on this frame and I've begun the rear. I expect it won't be long before it's ready for paint, which I'm sure the new owner will be excited to hear!

not much new

It's been a while since I wrote, but honestly I haven't had much bike-related activity to write about. I've been pretty much just tying up loose ends in the shop, finished up a few repairs and repaints that had been waiting for a long time.

I've been busy on ebay too, selling off spare parts from past bike builds. You never realize how much that stuff builds up until you gather it all together to sell it! So far I've unloaded about $800 in surplus parts and cleaned out a nice chuck of shop space! Still have a couple complete bike I hope to move out in the coming months too which will really free up some space.

I was rushing a little bit this week to get a Route 29 bike together for the Hub Co-op. They're going to be carrying them as well, and they wanted one to show at the Bike in at the Bell this weekend.
For those that don't know, the Bell Museum (at the U of M) is hosting their second annual Bike-in this weekend. There's music, bikes, vendors, and a movie. You should check it out.
I won't be there for this year, I've got a wedding to attend instead, but the Hub will have a route 29 all built up and ready to go.

In unrelated news, the Large Fella is rockin' it Twin Cities style now. Beth and I helped them move in a couple weeks ago and have been providing some local guidance. Seems like they're settling in pretty well and meeting people fast, so if you see two folks riding around on BBC's with a burly piccolo in tow say hi to them and welcome them to the 'hood.

That's about all the news for now. I'll have some pics of the frame I just started next time...

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good week

Well, to finish off a story started last time, all my cars are now operational and my wallet is thicker thanks to the sharp memory of a few blog readers.

The second window regulator came in 2 days after the first one was returned and amazingly it was still the wrong part! I returned that one, got my money back and looked through my Volkswagen file of paperwork. Sure enough there was a letter in there stating they had increased the span of the warranty on the front windows to 7 years. Made an appointment at the dealer that night.

I left the whole door taken apart figuring it would just save the dealer some labor. Sure enough they replaced the broken parts for free, but they refused to re-assemble the door or install the same parts in the drivers side door because I had "modified" the doors. That dumbfounded me and I had to ask what "modifications" I had done because I really didn't think this was real. My "modification" was that I replaced the stock speakers with aftermarket speakers mounted in the EXACT same position in the EXACT same stock opening. How dumb is that. Anyway, they agreed to give me the parts for the driver's side door but they just wouldn't install them. Fine.

I went home and put the passenger side door back together and everything seems to be working fine. At the end of the day, the things was fixed and I didn't have to pay anything for it. Thanks readers!

Good week story #2: My cell phone has been in need of a new battery for some time, the current one holds a charge for about 8 hours and often just goes dead spontaneously. I decided to stop by a Batteries Plus one night this week. They had one, but it was a lower capacity battery and it was $40. Seemed a little steep for a downgrade, so I walked across teh street to the Verizon store just to compare prices (usually the Verizon store is really high). They had the exact replacement for $40 (same capacity) which surprised me, so I thought I'd buy one. As the woman opens my phone to install the new one, she notices my original battery was recalled, so she just swapped in the new one for free. Nice. Then she also informs me they've upgrade the software for phone to improve reception and that I can get that done for free too. Double nice.

Good week story #3: Buck hill. Last night was my first buck hill of the year. PD set the course and what a job he did. I did 1.5 warm up laps and was kinda nervous as it seemed like a pretty killer climbing course for the big gear I was running. But once the pack rode it in one lap it was fantastic. Classic Buck hill course, big climbs, downhill singletrack, right up my alley. I was planning on a slow race, but the climbs started right away and I knew the only way to not be walking them was to get up near the front. Went out hot, trying to keep Stone Phillips in sight. First lap went pretty well. Second lap flew by and I started to get concerned because I was riding with people I hadn't been able to keep up with for about 4 years. Third lap I managed to close the gap with Stone, and ride most of that lap right behind him. Starting into lap 4 I put down my move on the first climb figuring that was my only chance to get in front of Stone. I guess it worked breifly as I did get in front if him, but about 20 feet later my left quad goes into full cramping. I'm forced to get off and hoof it up the rest fo the climb and Stone rocks by me. I got back on fast enough to keep him in my cross hairs. Rode most of the lap just off his wheel, but coming into the final singletrack he put it down full Stone Phillips style and I was outta juice. I still felt like I had a great race and I beat a lot of guys that I couldn't hope to keep up with last year, so I must be finally reaping some reward from my suffering out in Fruita! Made me feel a lot better after a fairly disappointing result at Cable.

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