not much time

I'm short on time right now, but I wanted to get some pictures up here for the soon-to-be new owner. It's almost done now. Just need to finish assembly. The pictures still appear slightly more teal than it looks in reality, but heck that could be my monitor too. enjoy.


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59 hours

Left till Fruita Fat Tire Festival Departure! I can almost taste the Hot Tomato pizza now.

Paint is on the tandem, I sprayed the final clearcoats last night. I tried to take a couple of quick pictures of it, but you really need to see this thing in sunlight to get the real color.

The fluorescent lights of my shop make it look a touch more teal than green, but it's really a dark green. I'll get some pictures of it in sunlight soon.

I spent 4 hours last night doing all the lug-lining. Yes, 4 hours straight trying to keep the hand steady. Despite the shear volume of lug lines, I think it went quite well. Now I've got a few hours of removing masking and it'll be a frame! More pictures later.

In preparation for Fruita, I picked up some new tires for the 29'er. I've had a few sets from Kenda, and while they all perform well, I'm really tired of their crappy weight labeling system. I got a set of Small Block 8, 29'er tires and right on the packaging it says " 500g +- 25g". They average 560g, seems to be a flaw in their measurements. Kenda Karma tires, clained 550g, out of 4 tires, they average 640g. That's a pretty big difference for something being sold as a lightweight tire. Kenda, get it together.

Made a few more minor adjustments to the 953 road bike last night, hopefully I'll get to sneak out one more ride on it before Fruita to make sure everything is good to go on it. Since we're driving the hippie van out there, we're taking road bikes too, so I'll have the 953 bike out west. If you're going to be out in Fruita for the Festival and want to check it out, let me know.

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forgot to mention

I meant to also note in that last posting that I've updated the Sale page on my website with a bunch of new stuff and pictures. The shop is filling up with random stuff again, mostly parts left over from bike builds, many new, some old, some odd. check it out. If it's not gone soon, it'll go on the 'bay.

That's it, got to get back to working on bikes. buy stuff, it'll make you happy.

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finally, spring.

It finally came this weekend, real spring weather that I was in town to enjoy. And by "enjoy" I mean work in my shop noticing that it was real nice out.
Well, not totally true, I managed to get out for a great ride yesterday late afternoon. I thought I'd just go for a nice spin out around Cottage grove and hit some hills (Fruita is only 7 days away and I'm still about 2 months away fitness-wise). It was time to test out the 953 bike, and it was beggin for hills. I made a few adjustments to the bike, and headed out. I hit the hills in Cottage Grove first and it felt great. The handlebars on it are a touch too narrow, need to change those out, but the frame was great. Really stiff, really light. Felt like a good steel bike, but lighter.
I was having fun, so I headed east, towards Afton figuring I'd turn around before I made it all the way to town. Well, I spotted a group of about 5-6 riders turn onto my route ahead of me, so I decided to catch up and see if I could sit with them a little. I eventually caught them heading into Afton, oddly enough on a long downhill (Usually I catch people on climbs and get dropped on decents, part of being light, but tall and not aerodynamic). I was easily pedaling past them, so I took the front of the line figuring they'd just in my draft, but a mile down the road they were nowhere to be seen. Oh well, back to riding on my own. I head out of Afton up Stagecoach Rd to Indian Trail. One of my favorites, but in reverse. By this time the hills are really starting to catch up to me. My training regimen of riding once every 2 weeks doesn't seem to be helping me much. Both quads are on the verge of cramping, so I take a GU and manage to struggle home. Didn't feel so hot the rest of the night, but I felt like I really hit it hard and better to feel bad now than out west (as if this one hard ride will get me fully in shape!).

The bike was great. The rear end is very stiff, it's definetly a bit more firm than my other road bike, but hte biggest difference I noticed was actually switching from the Alpha Q sub3 fork to the Reynolds Ouzo pro on this bike. This fork feels way stiffer than my Alpha Q. It was quite surprizing, and I'll be curious to see how i like it as the roads improve (things are pretty bad in MN in the spring). The frame actually felt quite reminicent of my RB-1 when climbing, quick and stiff. I actually think I could get away with standard oversize tubes in a 60cm frame for someone of my weight and still have a very good riding bike.

The bulk of my weekend went into trying to finish up the tandem. I managed to get all the base paint on it on Saturday, but my plans were thrown off a bit when I discovered my paint supplier changed their hours and were no longer open on weekends. I need some green basecoat. So I did soem checking around and managed to find a place carrying House of Kolor stuff and got the materails I needed. I tried somethign new, their dry pearls to develop the color. This stuff is amazing, I applied it over a black basecoat and got the most beautiful dark green I've seen. Here's a quick shot of it curing. Note: I love painting S & S tandems compared to regular tandems. Spraying in three sections is far easier than trying to get the clear to lay down smooth on one large item. I've got a few hours of lug lining and detail work ahead of me, then a couple more coats of finish clear and this will officially be a bike! Can't wait to see this one all built up. I have all the parts in now and it will be a head turner!

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So much going on, lets start with the bad. We're in a winter storm watch tonight here in the cities. That sucks, really truly sucks. I'm sooo ready for spring to come it's not even funny anymore. We've had some really warm weather earlier this spring, but of course I was out of town for all of it. Ok, I don't even want to talk about the weather anymore.

Let's talk about utility biking. I don't know why, but I love combining errands with riding, they're just two great tastes that go great together. Maybe it's because riding time is so precious to me, maybe I'm just a glutton for punishment, but there are few rides I enjoy as much as one where I'm loaded up with stuff going from store to store.
I did just that yesterday I had 4 packages to drop off at two different places and a few other misc errands to run. One box was a fork, which is pretty long, tough to fit in the messenger bag (even my XL Bailey), so out comes the BOB trailer. Hitch that baby up to the RB-1 fixie, throw on some knickers and your stylin! or at least you got a rig that turns a lot of heads in town.

If you're not buying it, you really ought to give it a try, I think you might have fun. Besides, it's a great way to get in some riding while conserving some gas and milage on your car.

shop talk:

The tandem is coming alone nicely. Actually as of tonight all that's left is some finish sanding on the frame and it'll be ready for paint. My pictures aren't coming along as quickly as the frame, but here are a few more.

Here's a shot of the frame as it sits completely jigged up and ready to braze. As you can see I have all the lugs completely done prior to brazing the frame together.

From here I flux everything up, tack it and pull it out of the jig for the first alignment check.

This frame is full of details, little things. Here's one that I like, the bike is built for a disc brake in back, caliper in front.

The owner wanted mounting for a light rack and possibly fenders along with the disc caliper in back. That can get tricky, so rather than try to cram all of it on top of the seatstay and have to do funny things to get the rack stays to clear the disc caliper I moved the caliper between the chain and seatstay. This has a few benefits on this particular bike. First, it tucks the caliper neatly between the tubes which tend to make it look cleaner and be less prone to getting damaged. Also it puts the brake load on the chainstays rather than the seatstays which is good here. The tandem chainstays are quite beefy and since this bike doesn't have a rim brake, I can now use a lighter seatstay to save a touch of weight. Finally I got to make a neat brake mount with a little more style to it. I carved this one from 3/16" plate. Still have a little cleanup and shaping to do on that brass fillet, but you get the idea.

I also chose to use Henry James Dropouts on this one, which is a departure for me. I typically don't care for them much, but they really fit this application well. The tandem chainstays are larger diameter than most, so the large touring dropouts fit the diameters really well. Most forged dropouts tend to look a little small in these larger stays. Plus they're stainless, so they'll be a nice touch to go with the stainless couplers and headbadge.

I'm getting excited to see this thing done and painted. I think the whole bike is going to be stunning once it's built up. All the parts are coming together and hopefully it'll have paint on it this weekend.

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Lugs galore

Yeah, lots o lugs, and they're all on one frame. This tandem is coming along pretty well. These pictures aren't quite up to date, the frame is further along than this, but I haven't had time to take pictures today.

The third eccentric is in as well as all the couplers. There's a whole lot going on around the rear BB shell. The lateral tube now nestles down in right on top of the rear shell and passes right over the top of the thrid eccentric. Here's a shot of the rear BB lug all mitered up and ready to braze. I'm also adding a taller point on the seat-tube socket.

There's six couplers in this frame as I do with most tandems. Placing the couplers was a little tricky with the davinci drive, they needed to be immediately infront of the drive in order for all three sections to fit in the 26" x 26" case.

I have my own system for installing couplers in new tandem frames. Since I design the frames with tube butting to fit up to the couplers, I have to install the couplers into the tubes before building the frame. The jig shown in the photo is how I align the tube while installing the couplers. The jog holds the tubes in perfect alignment while I braze in the coupler.

This is my favorite part of most lugged tandems. The headlug. Yeah, singular, not plural. I combine all three lugs into one continuous shape. For this one I welded the three lugs together then fillet brazed on the port. I was able to start with Slant Six lugs for this one , cut them up a bit and work them into this design. I really like the look. Certainly a pile of work, but this whole frame is and it'll be worth is in the end.


Here's a quick shot of how I start off the other lugs. I miter up sleeves to fit around the tubes, then I jig up the frame to ensure the tubes are at the proper angles. Next I tack the sleeves together in my jog with a couple tiny welds then I remove the tacked lug from the frame and fillet braze it in the vise. Finally I finish file the whole thing and shape it up, then it's ready to be brazed into the frame.

Well, it's late and I'm tired, so the rest will have to wait till later.

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Makin' the world go round

Inflation, and not the stuff holding your tires up. That's what makes things keep moving these days, and I'm surrounded by it. Or maybe more precisely, being engulfed by it.
Anyone who works in the industrial sector will tell you steel prices are skyrocketing, but that's nothing compared to stainless and silver prices.

Sure the volume of raw materials a guy like me uses is small, but this stuff hits me right on the bottom line. March 1, S & S machine (the fine folks I get the couplers from) announced their first price increase since they started making couplers. Honestly it was long overdue and because of that it's a big hike. I have no real option but to raise my coupler installation pricing accordingly. So starting today coupler retrofits are $475. Any work or quotes I have in my que right now will remain at the old price of $400.

Silver is insane these days too. 5 oz of silver ran me about $50 two years ago, it's now up to about $150! Tubing prices have gone up about 150% in the last couple years as well, not to mention the cost of electricity, of which I use plenty per frame. So frame prices need to also go up accordingly. About 75% of my frame orders all fall into the same price range (whether road , touring, mtb or anything in between), which has become my base price. That is a fully lugged frame with Pacenti, Sachs, or Long Shen single point lugs with some shaping and carving, matching steel fork, Premium heat treated tubing. This level of frame and fork has been $1800 for several years, and now it will be going up to $2000 for the frame and fork.

There's really no reasonable way around it. The work I'm doing today is really my best and it just get's better with each passing year, yet I seem to make less money with each passing year thanks to my raw material costs. I still feel I'm very competitive on pricing in the custom frame world and downright reasonable when compared to some of the grossly overpriced non-custom offerings out there. Some of the mid-sized and larger manufacturers have actually made my job easier by flooding the market with ridiculously overpriced bikes that don't offer much for the cost. They just seem to make my work and my prices that much more attractive to people.

Enough money talk, more shop talk. Finished up an S & S retrofit and a frame repair this weekend. I'm a good chunk of the way into a really great project: a fully lugged, S & S, Davinci drive tandem. I'm building the lugs, including the third BB shell lug needed for the Davinci drive.

Fully lugged tandems are a pile of work, but his Davinci drive has really added to this one. There are a few pretty critical dimensions for placing the third BB shell in relation to the other 2 shells. For that reason I need to actually have the third shell pass through part of the boom tube, so I'm making a lug out of the shell to accomplish this.

I'm trying to keep all the lugs matching with a simlar style point and overall shape, which will also match up nicely with the S & S couplers. There'll be a lot going on near the rear BB, as I have the BB shell, second BB shell, lateral tube lug and 2 S & S couples all coming together in about 10" of space! It's almost too bad that the stoker cranks will cover up most of the detail work down here.
I'm pretty close on having the lugs built. That's the longest part of these frames. Once I have those building up the frame goes pretty quick. I'll try to post some more pictures as I progress on this one. I'm sure the soon-to-be owner enjoys seeing them. I've definitely found most of my customers like seeing pictures of their build as it progresses.

I managed to get out for one ride last week, a nice 2 hour jaunt on the fixie. It felt great to be out, wish I could have gotten in more. I'm hoping for a couple of good rides this week, but time will tell... I gotta start getting back to it though, Fruita is coming up again in April and I'm planning on going out for a whole week this year. It would be nice to have some inkling of fitness so I can find my way home once Otree and Thorny ride me into the ground out there.

I did get in a short ride this week too, rode over to Dave Anderson's shop to pick up a tube he was kind enough to front me. Had an odd thing happen on the way back, I broke a spoke on my front wheel. Not that broken spokes are unheard of, but pretty darn rare on the front wheel. These particular wheels are far from new though, probably have 20,000 miles on 'em. I suspect there was a nick or something on the spoke though, since I've never had an issue with the rear and that sees far more stress (especially with the fixie) than the front.
It did make me a little nervous though as I know better than anyone what can happen when you lose a bunch of front spokes!

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Expo'd out.

I'm a little slow posting a recap, but this past weekend was the Minneapolis Bike Expo. This was my first year there, and only the second year of the show. Overall it was a good experience, but a lot of hassle to prepare for and set up.

I split a booth with The Route, as we were debuting the new Route 29'ers at the show. I managed to pull together 9 bikes which really filled up my 10' x 20' space!

Fortunately the Route has some nice display fixtures for me to use, which really helped. Having and end booth helped too, I could have bikes hang off the side for people to see as they walked down the side isle.

There were 2 other framebuilders there as well, Dave Anderson (who is doing the Powdercoat on the Route 29 frames) and Vincent Dominguez. Along with them, there was a full array of local shops and big manufacturers present, lots of bikes! There was the same cool test-track for riding bikes in the center of the show complete with man-made obstacles for trying out your mtb'ing inside. All in all, lots of fun stuff to see, I wish I had more time to browse, but I was stuck manning the booth nearly the whole time.

I'm gonna blow my own horn here for a minute because I think I probably had the showiest collection of bikes in there. The 953 bike definitely caught the most attention, it was the only one at the show and the first stainless frame most people had ever seen. Lots of questions on it, some folks knew exactly what it was, others had never heard of anything like it. It was fun to see the look on peoples faces when they picked it up, people assumed it would be heavy just because it was stainless.

I also managed to throw couplers in my original 29'er and refinish it. I decided to try another copper plate job on this one just to have something totally unique to show off. I have to say, it came out incredible.

I did the same basic process I had done about a year ago on a Nature bike, but I tried a new clearcoat which is deeper and glossier. I used a downtube decal instead of etching in the lettering, and made up this spiffy new antique looking headbadge.

I also built up a rigid fork for it with my new crown, I'm really diggin how that looks under the copper.

This bike was the original inspiration for the Route 29 bikes. It has the same lugs and same general geometry, but different dropouts and tubing.

In addition to these fresh bikes, I also had three Route 29 bikes there. One in each color, and each frame option. The silver singlespeed caught a few people's eyes with my new sleek sliding dropouts.

These are my own concoction. The slider inserts and the thrust washer are machined from aluminum in my shop, then I blast the inside surfaces to roughen them up and make a really good high-friction surface for clamping to the dropout faces. They use a single large m8 bolt to clamp down which when combined with the design of the clamp assembly provides more holding force than the more common two m5 bolt style. Not to mention they look a hell of a lot better than another other slider I've seen. Small and unobtrusive. The non-drive also has a disc tab machined into the insert, for those who want discs with their single.

The Route guys even came through with some pretty nice photos of the built up bikes for a brochure. Here's a shot of the singlespeed all built up and ready for action. Note the WTB 2.55" tires fit both front and rear with plenty-o-space.

The Route bikes are officially available now. There are 2 built kits available, one with Sram X9/ raceface cranks/stem & bars, Reba 29 fork with pop-loc, handbuilt WTB wheels and Avid cable discs for $3299 complete.

The second is an XT built kit, White Brothers Magic 29 80mm fork, Race Face stem, bars, Thompson post, handbuilt wheels and Hayes hydraulic Discs for $3499.

The singlespeed with a rigid fork is $2699. Custom build kits are available, so just as the fine folks at the Route for your custom build!

www.theroute.net

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What a week. As you should know by now, the Minneapolis Bike and Travel Expo is this weekend, Sat @ Sunday at the Minnepolis Convention center. I'll be there at Booth 347 showin' off. I've been working my arse off the last few weeks trying to get ready only to find out I had to leave town this week unexpecedly.

So here I sit in the Little Rock AR airport trying like hell to get home. For those not near the middle of the US, basically there is nothing but trouble from border to border. We're in a tornado watch here in Little Rock, but I'm supposed to be getting on a plane to connect in Memphis. Memphis is in a tornado watch. If by some miracle I get to Memphis on time, I'm supposed to connect and get on a plane to Minneapolis where there are suposed to be Blizzard conditions all day. When they cancelled my original flight for this morning about 20 hours ahead of time I started feeling leary. Then the weather this morning didn't boost my confidence. I was actually thinking I'd just drive home instead this morning (it's about 12 hours which is probably faster than Northwest will be able to get me home). But then the fine folks at the weather channel informed me there was a tornado on the ground in Kansas City and if I made it through that, there was already a blizzard in Des Moine.

Great.

So I'm taking my chances with airplanes, I'm guessing I'm going to end up driving some part of this trip yet. Of course I don't have everything ready for the bike show, so when I get home I'll have to do some crazy last minute work and try to get everything loaded into the convention center tomorrow afternoon.

So if you stop by my booth, cut me a little slack. The odds aren't good that I'm going to sleep a whole lot between now and then! But it'll be worth stopping by the booth, I've stil got a lot to show.bbbb

Too many travels

2007 has thus far proven to be a most ridiculous year. Between my vacation and a lot of work trips, I've had to travel somewhere at least every other week this whole year, sometimes more. The latest destinations were Texas most of last week for a conference and then Bayfield WI for a 4 day weekend of skiing. Texas sucked, WI rocked.

I was down in San Antonio for 4 1/2 days last week at the National Stone, Sand, and Gravel convention. Just by the name alone you should be able to get a rough idea of how exciting it was. I was supposed to be looking for new technologies for 3M, but the show was kind of a bust in that respect, so I had a hard time feeling like it wasn't 108 of the worst spent hours of my life.

Everyone told me San Antonio was a great town to visit, but these high expectations must have led to my disappointment. It's fine, I mean I'd take it over many other places, but I certainly wouldn't seek it out for a vacation or anything. The downtown is clearly set-up for conventions as pretty much the whole downtown area seemed to be hotels. There are 2 main (supposed) highlights to San Antonio: The Alamo, and the Riverwalk. I didn't have time for the full tour of the Alamo, but it looked pretty neat, a nice piece of history right downtown. The Riverwalk however was a pretty big disappointment.

Just the name alone is enough to turn me off. RIVERwalk. That seems to imply it's a river which it most certainly is not. It's a man-made concrete trench, 3' deep that makes a loop through downtown. They run smelly, ugly tour boats up and down it all day and night and the whole thing is lined with fake-old time looking restaurants which are mostly overpriced (I'm sure to cover the high rent of being located on the "river"). Sure there is a river that runs into San Antonio and yes it's technically connected to this man-made "river", but the reality is calling the actual river a stream is giving it too much credit most of the year. It appeared to flow less than an average garden hose, the river was less than 8" wide!

I just can't help but feel like I'm at Disneyland walking along this thing. Here's a crummy picture I took with my phone to give you an idea. The area to the left (where the boat is coming from) dead ends at a shopping mall. The path to the right dead ends at the convention center.

This part is pretty vegetated, which is nice, but most of it is all building and restaurants. There's no fences or guide rails, so I winder how many drunks fall in each summer. Good thing it's only about 8" deep on the edges!

Bayfield was a complete change though, it was great. I honestly wasn't too fired up to leave town again only a day after getting back to town from Texas, especially knowing how much work I need to get done in the shop. But I also really needed a break. We headed north Friday about noon with a couple friends and planned on meeting a few others up in WI. We stopped off in Duluth on the way up for dinner and to hang out a little, ended up there for a few hours, so we didn't get to Bayfield till after dark.

Saturday we skied at Vahalla, which was great. They seem to be in a super-isolated pocket of snow up there. There's hardly any in Ashland, but plenty in Bayfield. Odd. I got to classic ski for the first time this year since there was enough snow to set tracks (none of that in the Cities). It felt great. We kept it short in the morning because we all planned on skiing the Book Across the Bay that night (a 10K race on Lake Superior at night!). That night the weather was just about perfect for skiing, about 15 degrees and clear skies. Unfortunately there wasn't enough snow on the lake to do the usual course, so they made a 10K loop by plowing up a "road" of snow on the ice. So the skiing was on essentially tilled granular ice about 2" deep. It actually made for great skate skiing, really fast and really flat/smooth. I had low expectations of this race since I hadn't actually done a race in years, and I'd only skied a grand total of 6 times prior this season!

The start was chaotic, 1500 skiers in a mass start on a flat lake, in the dark. There was no moon, so things really were quite dark. I started in the middle and worked my way up quite a bit in the first few km's. I found a pretty comfortable pace and just stuck to it and things eventually thinned out. About 8K I was starting to really feel like I hadn't trained at all (which was true) but I figured I could push it through, after all it was only 10K. I managed to finish in a little over a half hour, which was what I was shooting for, so I guess it was a victory. Ended up around 70th place, which I felt good about given my complete lack of fitness.

Sunday we decided to hike out on Lake Superior (really) to check out the ice caves in Apostle Islands Park. They're really sea-caves and they're a very popular destination in the summer for Kayakers. It's quite rare for the ice to develop right on the lake to be safe for walking to the caves, but this year we got lucky! I've got a bunch of pictures, and I'll post some later, but I haven't had time to root through them all and pick out the good ones. Pretty spectacular in the mid-day sun.

Monday we wrapped up with a good ski at Mt. Ashwabay, which was great as usual. Another nice day of classic skiing on nearly perfect trails. Afterwards we headed back, packed up and hit the road. Great weekend all in all!

I came back re-energized, so I hit it full speed in the shop yesterday. Finished up the third Route 29 frame, built and installed the new motor mount platform and motor for my new paintbooth (did I mention I built a new booth in between other trips?) and did an S & S retrofit. Whew.

I also managed to finish up a bunch of new pages and updates to my website, take a look around. I added more information on frames, more pictures, subdivided many sections, and added a new site-map page.

There's finally a page on the Route 29 bikes. It's preliminary, but gives some information, geometry and pictures: http://www.bobbrowncycles.com/route29.htm

I'll be adding more content to that section soon, and The Route will have their e-commerce site up soon with full pricing and buying details for anyone interested. I will have 3 of these on display at the Minneapolis Bike Expo March 3-4th.

So for the 2007 recap thus far:

Traveled to Mexico, California, Texas, Arkansas (soon to be twice), Wausau WI, and Bayfield WI. I've built 5 full frames (which is usually about 6 months work for me) and 4 additional forks, several paint jobs and repairs, built a new paint booth, redone just about my entire website and designed and sourced all the parts for 2 complete runs of production bikes. Makes me dizzy, I hope things slow down a little soon!

Well, I'm out of time to write, as you can see, I have other things to do.

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buy stuff.

Things are busy as usual here. As part of the barder of the century, I just received my new (to me) Gretsch drum kit. This is in exchange for a bike frame to be named later this summer. I'm pretty excited, these things really sing. Unfortunately that puts me in the really cramped position of 2 full sets of drums and a set of cases in my basement. It's cutting in on my shop space, so things need to go.

If anyone is interested in a really nice set of mid-end drums, here you go:





New in 2002, Yamaha Stage Custom Fusion 5 piece drum set. Birch and Falkata shells, beautiful cranberry red birch finish. Toms are 10", 12", and 14" bass is 22", 14" steel snare.
The shells are nearly perfect and the Chrome is perfect. They're in exceptional condition.

Click on a pic for big.





Included are all the stock Yamaha spherical drum mounts (the best out there, really), a Yamaha 700 series stand to hang the 14" tom and a boom cymbal arm for it.
A Yamaha 700 series hi-hat stand in perfect working order, however there is a break in the base casting which has no effect on the performance of the stand.
A Ludwig straight cymbal stand, and a Ludwig snare stand.

I also have a Yamaha 700 series double bass pedal I'd consider throwing in. That would give you a complete package, just add cymbals and you're making music!
I'd like $600/obo for everything you see here, $75 for the double bass pedal.

Or I'd trade the whole shebang straight up for a 80's vintage Grestch Jasper Shell 14 x 6 (or 5.5) snare in Rosewood Gloss finish, but I'm sure that's a long shot.

Help me out, spread the word to any aspiring drummers you know. It's a fantastic sounding kit, really I think about the best you can do for under $1000. Drums new were $900.

In the bike world, I stil haven't finished putting components on the latest 953 bike, just waiting for the Reynolds fork to arrive. I'm about halfway through another route 29'er and built a couple forks. Basically finishing up many small loose-ends and trying to get ready for the Expo in March.

Thanks for all the kind words I've gotten about the latest 953 bike. That stuff really seems to be getting folks excited. I'm pretty psyched to be displaying a 953 frame at the Expo, I imagine it will be the first one most people will have seen in person.

I've also been on a kick to try and get my personal bike sup and running. It seems I've got about a half dozen bikes hanging around here in pieces and I'm tired of it. I got my sweet riser-bar RB-1 fixie back up and running this week. I love how goofy it looks, I think that is part of what makes it so fun to ride.

I suspect this bike is and will be the most ridden bike I've ever owned. It was my only road bike for a lot of years and got thousands and thousands of miles then, now as a fixie it probably still sees almost half my road miles. It just keeps going and going. Yeah, lugged steel.

Alright I'm defintely rambling now, so it's time to run.

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picture show

less talk this time, more show. I've been crank'in, I think you'll like some pic's of recent work Click on 'em for a big photo:

Nice little sport tourer, I dig these bike a lot, and I really dig this paint.

And another 953 bike done! This one will be at the Minneapolis Bike and travel Expo March 3-4. Come on down and stop by my booth to say hi.




This one is pretty sweet, the lugs are carved up quite a bit from stock, the hidden binder seatlug was a pile of work but came out super-clean, and the polishe headbadge put's it over the top. 953 seems to be causing quite a clamor, I've had 4 inquiries about frames this week alone. Get'em while they're hot!

Incidentally, this one is a 60cm effective seat-tube, 58cm top-tube. I used a little thicker guage tubes on it due to the larger size and the hidden binder adds weight since i have to braze in solid stainless slugs into the top of each seatstay. But the frame still weighs in under 4 lbs, which isn't bad for a big frame. It'll be built up with a Reynolds fork and a record kit, should be a nice ride

Gotta run, have a headshok fork conversion to finish up, and a few forks to build, then it's back to making 29'ers.

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been too long

Yeah it's been a while since I've updated the blog, but for good reason: I was on vacation in Mexico all last week, and I've been trying to catch up from being gone all this week.

The vacation details will probably be a full posting on it's own in the future, but for now let's suffice it to say it was good. Not what I expected for Mexico this time of year, but not bad. The sun never showed it's face and it rained nearly everyday at somepoint, but we saw some cool stuff and did a lot of chillin' out.

I've been having chronic issues with my email for the last 6 months it seems and they've really ramped up the last month. My web hosting provider (netfirms) seems to be the source of all these problems and they also seem to not have the slightest bit of concern about them. Basically it seems that the bulk of people who try to send email to me through a Comcast server can't get messages to me. That's a big problem for someone trying to run a business as Comcast is now the largest internet provider in the US. Netfirms sucks. Period.

Therefore as I type this, my web hosting service is being migrated over to Network Solutions. Hopefully if all goes well it will be a seamless transition from the web-site end of things. All of my user contact info will remain unchanged (web address, email address, etc...) so you shouldn't notice anything. However there will be a short interruption in my email service this weekend. So if you email me this weekend and it bounces, don't be shocked, try it again next week, or give me a call.

I really hope this will be the end of my email issues, I'm getting really tired of dealing with them. I've been purchasing my domain name from Network Solutions from the start, so I figured I'd try their web-hosting package. I've only heard good things about their service, keep your fingers crossed.

Now that I'm back from vacation I'm not wasting anytime. This week I've got the bulk of the next 953 frame done and started on another Headshok suspension fork conversion. Finished up the artwork and ordered the decals for the Route 29'ers, and gotten in most of my steel for the next batch of those frames.

This 953 frame will hopfully be featured in an upcoming issue of Vintage Bicycle Quarterly in their "Builder Speak" section. And as long as my booth comes through for the March 3-4 Minneapolis Bike Expo, it will be on display there along with several Route 29'ers. I'll post pictures of this one soon here too, it's a bit fancier than the last one with more lug carving and a very unique seatstay attachment.

Once I get the first few Route 29 bikes back from powdercoating (Dave I know you'll read this, but don't take it as me trying to rush you!) and the decals (which are pretty sweet!) are on I'll be setting up a web-page dedicated to those. You'll find all the pertinent info on there, sizing, pictures, components, pricing and how to buy them on-line (yes, they'll be available for purchase on-line through The Route).

Well that's about all I have time for now. Got bikes to build and a few forks to make with those new crowns!

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They're here!

Yup, first shipment of the redesigned crowns arrived yesterday. Here's a bunch of pictures:



Overall I'm much happier with these than I was with the previous prototype. The fit of the blades in the socket is much better. It's just about perfect with no sanding at all. The steerer hole has a small burr on the top-side which prevented a steerer from fitting right in, but a couple turns with my reamer in there and it's a perfect fit. I thickened up the walls of the sockets a bit as I felt they were a little on the skimpy side before, and I thickened up the cross section of the horizontal members that connect the steerer to the blades. That was good because they're still under design spec, but I accounted for that in my design, so they still meet the factor of safety.
I guess that's one of the hassles of dealing with outsourced manufacturing, I need to modify my designs to accomodate their looser tolerances (but loose tolerances are what make it affordable).
Even despite beefing up a few areas, the crown is slightly lighter than the protoype designs due to the decreased overall height and width. It weighs in about 190 g which I feel is very appropriate for a mtb crown of this style and width. It's certainly much lighter than the old Long shen mtb crowns I used to use, and about half the weight of my hand made wide fork crowns. They're going to look great on my lugged 29'ers.

Billy, you'll have your fork pretty soon!

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