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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recappage

Here it is almost the end of the week and I still haven't written the Cable Classic recap.

4 Kenwoodies head north to the "Love Shack" Friday afternoon. Despite stopping in Cumberland for watered down red food coloring spilled on overcooked spaghetti noodles, we get to the cabin pretty early. Normally we cook up at the cabin that night, but since we had our fill of starch already we didn't really know what to do with the evening. So when Deanwood asked if anyone wanted to take a tour of the lake via boat, we were all in.

It was a pretty typical Deanwood outing. Nearly clocks me in the head trying to start the motor, and he ended up knee deep in lakewater while standing in the boat before the night was done.

The next morning we rolled out of bed at the crisp hour of 6:30am, for an 8am departure. Again, with only 4 of us at the cabin, things went far too smoothly, and we actually left on time. TSP has teh foresight to make his own coffee at the cabin, so we didn't need to make the usual coffee stop in Stone Lake on the way to the race. Good thing since we left so early we actually rolled through Stone Lake before the coffee shop even opened.

We made it to the Lakewoods (start point) at like 8:30 or something. A new world record. I don't think a Kenwoodie has made it to the Lakewoods before 9:45 before (race starts at 10). We all register, roll around a little and try to figure out what you do with yourself when you arrive an hour early to the race!

Continuing the anomalies, the weather was oddly decent at the start. I've been doing the Cable Calssic for years now and I honestly can't remember it ever not being 40 and rainy at the start. It did rain for about 3 minutes an hour before the start, but quickly cleared up and was about 60 degrees. Again, I didn't really know how to cope with that, I had plenty of wool, but not much warm weather stuff. Oh well.

I lined up pretty far up in the main start area, hell bent on trying to spin the 34:17 gear fast and get in front of people before the singletrack. I didn't need a repeat of last year.
Start rolls out and I spun my butt off, but it wasn't enough. I slip into the singletrack about mid-pack and promptly stop. Literally, unclip and stand there waiting for the line of people to ride the first singletrack climb. And repeat it on the second and third climb. Frustrating to say the least.
Even despite the waiting, the rest of the early singletrack is horrible when stuck mid pack. People are moving waaaaay too slow for my gear and I'm rapidly blowing up trying to turn it over at about 40 rpm. Finally after about 12 miles things loosen up to the point where I can ride at a comfy pace. I start passing people like nuts in the woods, but as soon as we hit any of the fire road sections they put it in the big ring and drop me. Head into the next singletrack, repeat.

That's pretty much how it worked the whole race. I popped pretty hard about mile 18, but pulled 'er through to finsh pretty much right in mid pack. Right about where I went into the first singletrack. sigh. I'm starting to think Cable isn't as singlespeed friendly as I keep telling myself. Maybe back on the tandem next year.

Additionally this weekend, both my cars broke. Yup, I spent most of last week riding my bike everywhere and I think my vehicles got jealous. The clutch release cylinder went out on the Miata (meaning you can't DISENGAGE the clutch!). The Jetta had a more interesting failure. I was pulling it in the garage and went to raise the windows. The passenger side window stopped about 3/4 of the way up and then went back down. I raised it again and it responded by going about half way up, then suddenly dropping freely down into the door! I didn't have time to look, so I pulled it in the garage and left it.

Sunday I rebuilt the release cylinder on the Miata. Fortunately (probably unfortunately) the exact same thing had happened on the Jetta last year, so I knew how to attack it. $7 in parts and 2 hours of labor later it was back in action.

Took the door apart on the Jetta to find the window regulator in pieces. Pretty much unsalvageable, so I went and ordered a new regulator. Picked up the new regulator last night, went to install it and it didn't fit. Went back, had them actually order the right regulator. Hopefully I'll get it in this weekend if it shows up before then.

In other news, I'm being inundated with requests and orders for 953 frames. I can only come to one logical conclusion about that, my prices are too low, so they're going up (God bless Capitalist Free Market Forces). A base 953 frame is going to be $2500. I'm really not just gouging people here. I simply can't keep up with huge demand, so I'm hoping this will help keep my lead time less than 2 years and to be completely honest, my time is becoming increasingly valuable to me. I feel that if I'm going to spend it building bikes it needs to be more worth my while.

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week in review

It's been a pretty good week, I actually rode my bike more days than I didn't ride and given my schedule as of late, that's a big accomplishment.
Monday night I did my errand running via bike, I have three forks to ship out and a couple other packages. Somehow I managed to get all three fork boxes halfway in my Bailey bag which was enough to do the job. Rode 'em down to the fed ex depot and dropped everything off. It happened to be a pretty warm and humid evening and it looked like the rain was going to hold off for a while so I extended my ride. Went into South St. Paul a little bit, hitting the Ohio St. climb on my fixie and then riding up through the big park in Cherokee Heights. Exactly as I was turning around to head home I feel a few sprinkles of rain. No problem, it was really hot and humid and the drops were actually feeling pretty good, that is until I got down to Shepard road by which time is was pretty much raining full-on. I had a rain coat with me, but I was already soaked and it seemed like it would just make things less comfortable. Made it soak, completely soaked through, but it was still warm and I felt pretty good.

I did a couple of off-road rides in Battle Creek this week too. First one I rode my usual racing bike set-up with the Crow's for tires. It felt good and light after riding a heavier bike with heavier wheels out west the previous week. The crows really are silly light and I think you really get used to how they handle (which is a little on the sketchy side) and learn to deal with it.

I bought a set of Kenda Small Block 8 29'er tires before heading to Fruita, figuring I'd want a spare set of tires out there. Well, I didn't end up needing them out west, so I figured I'd give them a go at Battle Creek. They're a pretty light all around 29'er tire, the two I have weight in at about 625g each (Kenda claims 575). In contrast, my Crow's come in around 530g.
I put the SMB 8's on my King/bontrager wheelset which are slightly heavier than my full Stan's tubless wheelset, but I didn't want to hassle with the stan's tubless goo which would have been required to use the lighter wheels with these tires.

First off I noticed the heavier weight right away. The SMB 8's definetly don't accelerate as fast as the crowns, but nothing really does. They felt about the same as my Little Alberts for acceleration. Once I got in the woods though it was hard to deny that they roll really well and feel nice. The rounded shape made cornering great and I felt a lot more surefooted in the technical areas where the Crow's get sketchy.

The biggest difference was in decending some of the rockier sections. I didn't feel like my bike was bouncing all over the rocks and that the tires were liable to be cheese-gratered over any sharp rocks (which is pretty much how the crows make you feel). It was nice.

All in all, I say if you've tried the Crows and felt they were a little too sketchy on tread for you, you should really check out these tires. I think you'll dig 'em. I'll probably try to run them tubeless and see how that feels. But for now I'll probably run the crow's out at Buck hill as they're still tough to beat for big steep climbs on a singlspeed.

I am considering trying these at the Cable Classic though, they roll fast and it tends to be wet, slippery and flat in Cable, might be less than ideal for the Crows.

Last night was the big Derailleur show at Memory Lanes in Minneapolis. It was a fund raiser for the Minnesota AIDS Ride, and I'd say they had a pretty good turnout. We had a great time and I felt like we played an excellent show. The sound was a little funky being that it's a bowling alley and we're set-up right in the middle of the lanes, but most folks said it sounded pretty good. Got to debut my "new" drums for the first time outside of my basement and they really do put out some killer sound. I don't know exactly what it is, but there is definitely some magic in these old Gretsch babies!

in shop talk, I've just been catching up on small jobs that have been waiting. Build three new forks and did a couple repairs. I've got a few repaints next then back into new frame orders, the fun stuff!

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back in town, shippin stuff out.

Another successful Fruita Fat Tire Festival. I don't have a whole lot of pics, simply because I didn't take many. One of those things, when you've been to a place a few times already I just never seem to take pictures. But here's how things pretty much looked all week. Hippie van with the awning out, usually 3 tired people sitting under it and lots o bikes on the top and back of the van.

This was sunset at 18 Road early in the week before the crowds appeared.

There were scattered storms around that whole day. As the evening came on, it got sunny at the parking lot, but was raining pretty hard about 1 mile east of us, creating this great rainbow.

This pic pretty much characterizes the weather the first 3 days, scattered heavy rain, but not a washout. Then the skies cleared we had sunshine the rest of the week.

Lots of riding, usually 2 big rides per day followed by lots of eating and drinking. We hooked up with one of the mechanics (Fish) at The Edge Bike shop for a ride one day and quickly made a few new good friends. Andy from the Hot Tomato joined us and led us on an epic day of riding out at Rabbit Valley. Ended up camping at Fish's place the next three nights and partying at Andy and Jen's place each night. All around great folks, can't wait to see them again next year.

I'll write up more of a report later when I have more time and get some of the pics from the others that were out there.

Back in St. Paul things have been hoppin. I made the sprint for the finish line this week, building wheels and assembling the tandem just in time for it to arrive on the new owner's 50th Birthday. It all came together in a spectacular finished package: (click for big)

This was really a "spared no expense" bike. Campy Record Drive train, Davinci cranks, Phill BB's, King Wheels, you get the idea. Hopefully these pictures help clarify some of the questions I got after the last round of pictures about what the third BB shell was for. It's the key to the Davinci Drive, which allows each rider to coast independently. It's a pretty neat idea, but a lot of work to make, especially when you're building a fully lugged tandem. I'm thrilled with how it all came out and I hope the new owner is equally thrilled!

This one was without a doubt the most complicated frame I have ever constructed simply because of all the lugwork that had to be made for the Davinci drive. But it's truly one of a kind and I think that's what the owner was shooting for.

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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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