Minnecycle

Well, Minnecycle 2 happened. For those that don't know, that's the quaint gathering of twin cities framebuilders and bike related artists to show our wares.

It was a great show, lots of bikes, lots of art, could have used a few people on Sat, but Friday night was great. Here's the pictorial:





The man that put it together:


All in all, a good time. Thanks Eric and all those that came out.

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direction

Things have been going, and going fast around here. Lots going on, it seems I never have time to write here much but rest assured the bikes are still being made. In fact, here's one I've had under wraps:

Just finished up building a handcycle for a great customer. Now don't go thinking I'll make you one, this was a special circumstance and I have no intention of building any more. I'll try to get some pics of it tonight.

My biggest project lately is one I can't really disclose a lot about. But here's the gist. I'm working with a non-profit to design and built the protoypes of a cargo bike that will be manufactured in Tanzania. We're actually going to be building a factory over there to employ locals to produce this product for locals. The overall plan and concept is spectacularly logical, which is why I'm supporting it. Unfortunately it take a lot of my time right now, but so far it hasn't really interrupted my regular production que.

We have the first prototype just about complete now and I wish I could post pictures as it's awesome! But those will have to wait until the official release. Now in the meantime I figured I'd let you know that most of the profits generated by BBC this year will be going towards this project in one way or another. Whether it's purchasing raw materials, components, or hopefully sending me to Tanzania for product testing, your money is by in large going to support a great cause.

For more info on the non-profit, take a look here:

http://www.cheetahdevelopment.org/

anyways, that's all for now

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ex.

Well, made it thought the bike expo this weekend. It was a far cry from what the organizer's claimed for attendance, but actually better than I was expecting. Met a lot of people, hopefully a few that will someday buy bikes.

Of the things that stick out in my mind, the one that surprised me the most what the sheer number of people that stopped by the booth and were genuinely shocked that I was Bob Brown. As if they assumed I have a whole brood of marketing peons whom I can send around the country to trade shows and such. It's just me, really, a one-man-show. Or maybe they were shocked that Bob Brown was manning the booth of world-famous bicycle company Bob Borown Cycles LLC:
Truth is, I do have a brood of marketing geniuses running the show for me, and here's photographic proof:
From left to right, Paul Wyganowski, Dave Anderson, and Erik Noren (peacock groove) all just hanging out in my booth. Actually, Paul and Erik were working the booth next to me and Dave stopped by to visit and helped me take down the booth (thanks Dave!). talking to Erik and Paul all weekend really got me fired up for Minnecycle 2, it's coming folks, and I'll be there. It'll be great. More info to come!

Thanks to everyone that stopped by,

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Housekeeping

Got a few items that I'd like to move out, let me know if you want 'em. shipping not included.

White Brothers Rock solid 29'er fork. This is the 465mm a-c version, which fits suspension corrected 29'ers. Disc only, post mount. Steerer is 7.75" long. This is as close to brand new as you get without it being in a box. It was on a show bike, ridden about 3 times then taken off. Looks brand new other than the lawyer lips have been filed off the dropouts for easy wheel removal. It's light, 810 grams actual weight on this one! $225

Used campy record crankset. 175mm arms, 53 39 rings. Condition is clearly used, but perfectly functional. The rings have a lot of life left in them and look better than the arms. Arms are in ok shape, 100% struturally sound, but heavy shoe rub marks and some cosmetic pitting. Probably would look good with some elbow grease and a buffing wheel. How about $80, which is far less than you'd pay for chainrings for these.

Singlespeed hubset. Front is used white industries hub, 32 hole, good shape, smooth bearings. Rear is a brand new Rockworks brand hub, 32 hole shimano singlepseed cassette body. Very smooth cartridge bearing hub. How about $75 for the pair. Might be willing to separate if you only want one.

Raceface Revolution stem. 130mm x 8 degree, flippable logos, 31.8mm bar. Brand new in the box $20

IRD Alpina F triple front derailleur. Brand new, in the bag with tag on. 31.8 clamp or braze-on style, nice triple front derailleur designed for road rings. $30

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workin it

I've been busy. finished up 2 frames this week, got another half built. Here's a little red rocket:

953 frame, everything stainless, polished everything.

The chainstays and seatstays are polished, but 953 doesn't lend itself well to polishing, hence you can see some small scratch marks. The material is just too hard to be practical when it comes to getting a true mirror finish from polishing, but it's not a bad look.

Then there's this fun singlespeed 'cross frame. It might look familiar since it has the same paint scheme as my personal cross bike.

Neat track dropouts with built in adjusters, much better looking than the Paul's dropouts. I'll be working on making some of these in stainless steel soon. I leave the dropout faces with just primer as the axle nuts tend to really gouge up these candy color paint jobs.

Chrome paint on the lugs and crown

Well, back to it. Still have lots to do.

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call me!

If your name is Bob and you live in Apple Valley and have been trying to reach me about a new frame. My phone died and with it went your number. If by chance you're reading, please give me another call.

Thanks,

Bob

an extra dallop of elbow grease

Polish, polish polish. That was the order of the day. This one is going to have a lot of bling. Polished lugs, couplers, shift bosses, chainstays and seatstays. Paint coming soon!


Despite the quiet on the blog, the shop is in full business mode. 2 more frames in the works currently as well as this one. pics soon.

just because I'm not writing much...

Doesn't mean I'm not working. Just been too busy to take pics and write much. It's been S & S central around the shop lately. I think I've ordered from them every week for the last 2 months. Just finished up 2 more this week including this cute little voo-doo with a full repaint:
They've got some unique sliders they use, very functional and cool,I also had to add some adjustable disc tabs to a singlespeed frame . I machined up some nice tabs with slotted, raised faces for the caliper mount. I think it came out pretty good.

I'm also making good headway on the next 953 frame. Reynolds has eben killing me with delivery of raw material, but hopefully they've got that issue taken care of and the stainless will keep flowing. Look for pics soon.

Bob

hero

first off, you should buy the Dec bicycling mag. I wouldn't usually recommend something like that, but there's a great story about the Large Fella in it.

In the meantime, here's a link to some more pics that weren't in the mag:

http://www.bicycling.com/bke/slide/home/1,8155,s1-1-81-0,00.html

He's the man.

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tandem

Well, just about done with this one, another fully lugged S & S tandem! Here's a couple of pics for a preview of the lugs after paint.

It's looking really good, just need to unmask the couplers and it'll be ready for assembly. If it looks kind of familiar, that's because it's almost the same paint job as my personal lugged S & S tandem. But this one has a few notable improvements that I hope mine will have someday. All the cable routing has been designed to come off the frame using only one set of cable splitters, which makes packing much easier. The lugs are a little different style, I prefer this new seat-lug style. And of course the geometry is fit to the new owners.

On a totally unrelated note, all those pics were takes with my new phone. I picked up a new droid eris to replace my dying cell phone and I'm loving it. I need to adjust the white balance a little for the fluorescent lighting in my shop, but I can actually do that on the phone. Pretty nice, it seems to be a pretty fun toy thus far.

State CX chamionships this weekend! I probably won't be racing due to ongoing foot-issues, but I'll be there cheering. Hope to see you out there.

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lead

Went to the Leadville flick last night. It was good, the footage was pretty spectacular and I'll probably buy the dvd, but there was about 1 sec total coverage of tandems. In the first 15 minutes of the actual race coverage there was a quick shot of us climbing St. Kevens. That was it for the entire movie. I was pretty surprized that a film highlighting how grueling the event really is didn't even mention those of us dumb enough to make it even harder by riding tandem.

Still worth seeing if you can.

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tandem

Coming soon, another fully lugged, S & S BBC tandem! I've been working on this one for a while, these are pretty much as labor intensive as custom bikes get. I make most of the lugs from scratch, which is as big of a job as building an entire frame. I'm really happy with how quickly this bike has been going together. I've really learned a lot over the years making lugs from scratch. I can honestly say I'm down to about 1/4 the time to fabricate a lug than the first time I tried one of these bikes. Having a new tig really helps on that front. I can jig up the frame with all the lug parts assembled then tig tack the lugs together while they're on the frame. That pretty well assures the lug angles are perfect.

Once they're tacked I take them apart and fillet braze the joint. After that, I carve the points and bore out the ID to fit the tubes perfectly. Having proper machine tools and figuring out a method to bore and mill the lugs after brazing has really helped me too.

I usually install all the S & S couplers in the tubes before I build the frame. Some guys do it after, I prefer before since I have a handy jig that holds the tube in perfect alignment. That makes it really easy. Here's a big boom tube getting a really big coupler 1.75"!


Once I have all the couplers in, tubes mitered, and lugs finished, it's time to assemble and flux. Here's the frame ready for brazing. Just preping the tube ends, fluxing and re-assembling the whole thing in my jig can take a couple hours, but when it's ready to braze, the lugs fit up perfectly and all the tubes are in perfect alignment. You'll note the c-clamp on the head tube to hold the lateral tub lug in place. That lug doesn't wrap around the headtube, so it's needs to be secured for tacking.I started out with a full container of flux. Here it is after fluxing one frame:

I'll also go through several Oz. of silver on just this main triangle. There's a whole lotta lugs on there. If you click on the full frame pic you'll also see how I do my extended heatubes these days. I pre-braze a sleeve on the headtube, then turn the whole thing down on my lathe to make it match up to the upper headlug. It makes brazing the lug easier later on.

In other news, I haven't been on a bike in over 2 weeks. I don't like that. Gonna try to make it out to the Wirth 'cross race this weekend, hopefully I can get on a bike before then. Otherwise look for me, I'll be the guy cramping up at the back of the B race pack...

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953 with paint.

Just finished the paint on this one, full stainless steel frame with stainless fork crown.

I like the blue, it adds some nice color to what otherwise tend's to be the industrial look of full 953 frames.


I finished up 4 paint jobs this weekend, talk about busy. But it's always good to get work out of the shop. I'm slowly working on catching up on my backlog of stuff from the last year of turmoil. Next up is a fully lugged tandem that the future owners have been more-than patiently waiting for.

On a totally unrelated note, I have the barter of the century for someone if they have what I want. I've got a set of nearly new Record skeleton brakes, which are fantastic brakes. Only problem is they're black and I want polished brakes on my personal bike. So if anyone out there has a set of new or like new Chorus skeleton brakes or like new old polished record brakes (the pre-skeleton style), I'll swap ya. Or I'll sell 'em straight out for $175.

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picture show

Finally got my shop computer de-virused and fully operational again. So to celebrate, here's a bunch of pictures:

Here's what happens when you have too little brake pad area on your discs at Leadville. Tore 'em up good, even removed some chunks of metal from rotor! I think the race may have been a bit too much for the avids. One thing I know for sure, Avid pads are 100000% better than any aftermarket pads. Clarks's brand seem to be the bottom of the barrel. We completely burned up a set of Clark's pads in one decent. the Kool-stops made it through a few hours more, and the Avid OEM pads held up for multiple rides.


Onto new stuff, here's a 953 frame I'm finishing up right now. It's just about set for paint. This one is getting partially painted. I think it'll be a great looking bike!
All stainless with stainless couplers:

The headtube and headlugs will be painted to add some color. Fork blades will also get painted to match.

Regular 4130 fork blades though, so those need paint. Still no stainless for blade options....
Here's one I finshed up a few months ago but never posted pics of. Paint is "Black Pearl"
Sach's lugs, always nice. Double taper seatstays to keep the seatlug attachment looking good.


Rare fork crown for 24mm round blades. Looks really nice and skinny.
"B" brazed onto the brake bridge
The paint really pops in the sunlight, it's actually a rainbow effect of sparkles!