So tonight, after the office, I’ll be making a Home Depot run. It’s amazing how often I’m there, being a new homeowner. I do think there’ll be a day where my number of visits begins to drop, but man. Not soon, I suspect. Tonight’s run is so that I can pick the brains of some specialists on the nature of insulating and drywalling my garage, so that I can work through the winter.
The other…
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refill acetylene tank
finish Erin’s CX frame
build final fillets for Paul’s frame
finish fillets on Justin’s 26er
email Jamie re: his road frame
add Google +1, Facebook Like, and Tweet This buttons to Gallery items
update existing Gallery Items, add Paul and Justin…
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So I’ve been monkeying around with the idea of building a gas-welded (not TIG’ed) aluminum frame. This would be one of those one-off experiments, just to see if it’s viable. I’m pretty sure I’d want to build a dozen or so, just to see if it’s a worthwhile endeavor. (Plus I get the R&D write-off on my taxes, right?) If any framebuilders out there have any commentary, opinions or insights on…
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Proceeding swimmingly on Erin’s CX frame. Beautiful, if somewhat time-consuming, job of slotting the chainstays. (Mental note: in 2012, invest in a slotting saw.) The work you see here was done entirely by-hand, with a knife-blade file, followed by a flat file.
Going to take a quick break and get some lunch in my stomach, and then get back to…
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I got asked how it is I create the fluted ends on my seatstays. I struggled to explain it in a 5-minute, spoken-only venue and struggled a bit. Seeing as just the night before I had photographed the process, I put myself in a position to write this post.
Starting out, I have a pair of seatstays. I find a piece of scrap tubing (you do save your scrap tubes, right?) that will become the caps…
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The hardest part of getting my frames to “completion” has been the battle to get a head badge design done. My experience with design is as a web designer, not as a graphic artist. A gap in my skillset (for more on skills you should have see my other blog entry “Becoming a Framebuilder”), to be sure, and one I eventually plan to rectify.
I’m on my second artist now. I won’t go into details…
So everyone’s got a dream bike. Mine is one of my own builds — a stainless 953 front triangle with a carbon back end, ENVE carbon everything (rims, fork, stem, seatpost), and Shimano’s Di2 for the drivertrain package. Tons of little bits from Fairwheel to keep weight down. Someday, I might even have the time to build it and the money to buy it. We’ll see.
What’s your dream bike?
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By now, those of you that are überbikegeeks (a RealGerman™ word) have heard the rumors of Surly’s Moonlander, a new fatty bike that sports 4.5″ tires. As usual, this rekindles my interest in a fat bike, something that’s been on the brain’s back-burner for the last three or four years — ever since Tom Stroth bought one while we were working together at Penn Cycle. The thing is, I…
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As you may or may not know, I work at a small local shop in the Twin Cities. Last night, I had my first encounter with a racing wheelchair up-close, as one was brought in for repair. At one point, I had noodled around with the idea of trying to build one, but it was almost immediately back-burnered, simply because I have enough ideas that need to be dealt with.
Now, though, I’m curious.
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1. I’m taking my first true crack at carving lugs. So far, so good. Roughing the cutouts with a drill and a Dremel, and then going in with the needle files to do the final clean-up.
2. Also building a set of lugs from scratch. Interesting process. Going to allow me to make some really cool designs. I’ll be posting pics in the near future, in addtion to some from #1, above.
3. New…
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