Ready for the road

Izzy has his bike all built up and decked out with some pretty nice parts. He sent these pics and I must say it's looking good and ready to rock!

In his words:

As for the frame, I love it! It's responsive, light, and extremely fast. I have been and will continue to sing your praises to anyone interested in getting a new bike and the guys at Fixed and Free love it almost as much as I do. Thank you for building me the perfect bike frame!

Gotta love that.

Ding! Ding! Frame's done!

Israel's frame all buttoned up and ready to go out the door. It's basically a British Racing Green with a metallic added to it. A very cool color that I somehow failed to capture until the last pic. Oh well, someday I'll get the lighting thing figured out. Experimenting with new a logo design. I like this one- an "almost script" style while still being easy to read from a distance. I'm planning on having more made that will be a little smaller and have a contrasting outline to the letters.

Another headbadge I blame John for! ;) This time it's the Greek letter sigma. I'd better tell Israel to not park it near any of the frats on campus.

The semi-wrap seatstays- a first for me. I usually make a scalloped end. I think these are a nice classic touch for a lugged frame.

Here is what it really looks like in the sun. If you look close, you can see another feature that personalizes this frame.

What you can't see are the ports for the internal brake cable guide inside the top tube- I put them low on the tube to keep them out of sight, plus the color hides them well.

Next up, a different kind of frame...one I'll have to do some research for to be able to pull it off. Let's just say I hope Velocio will be proud!*

*If you get that reference you're as big of a bike geek as I am!

Not much left to go...

A few shots for ya as the frame gets done.
Loving the drops, but not as much as...

The seat cluster!

All those points come together quite nicely. I'm diggin the semi-wrapped seatstays points- a first for me!

The beauty of a lugged frame.

This was my favorite shot. The lighting is perfect, the angle, the transitions between hard and soft outlines...the freakin fly on the top tube! I was all set to make this my new header picture for this blog too!

Nature can be a real...you know.

Tune in for the dropouts

OK, I'll admit it...I'm a bit obsessed with rear ends.
Of bike frames! Get your mind out of the gutter already.
Anyway, rear ends, or rear forks, or as most people call them- dropouts. The dropouts are key to completing the whole look of a frame- especially on a fixed gear bike. Way too often you see a great custom frame ruined with cheesy premade drops that don't match the angles of the frame. This isn't to say there aren't some pretty nice drops out there, but if you want it done right.....

Towards that end, here's where Israel's drops begin- in a sheet of 3/16" 4130 steel. Much stronger than the 1010 steel most drops are made from. Three hourse of grinding, drilling, and filing nets us these (this is usually where I cut myself and today was no exception- a little blood in every frame, free of charge!)

How it looks about 30 seconds after the torch is shut off. I leave the seatstay tab a little wide so it can be shaped to the perfect angle later.

Stage one complete. Notice how the line from the top edge of the drop flows perfectly into the line from the chainstay scallop. When painted you won't be able to tell where the chainstay ends and the dropout begins.....that's money baby!

The Quality Control inspector agrees!

A new bike is born

Sorry for the delay, but for once it wasn't my fault- we've been waiting for a new modem since ours decided to self destruct (one month out of warranty of course) and that's kept me off line.
Didn't keep me out of the shop though!
Here we have Israel's new fixed gear just waiting to be cut and welded- all True Temper tubes. The first step is tube inspection- they are cleaned thouroughly inside and out and inspected for defects. Then the butted sections are marked and the bows (all tubes are a tiny bit bowed from the factory) are placed in the right orientation so they won't affect frame alighment down the line. Were talking less than a millimeter here- but it all adds up.
Here are the tubes laying on the frame drwaing so I can mark the cut lines on them- making sure all the butted areas are in the right place for maximum strength.

The first miter! 59.5 degrees to be exact.

Fork crown time. The points have been shaped to better match the lugs and a little design is drawn on per Israel's request.

A little lightning carved in and the crown brazed on. This will be a very subtle detail, one of those things you wouldn't see at first, but still pretty cool.

Fork's done!

Next up, custom dropouts for a custom bike.

What would Dave do?

As in Dave Elliot an offroad/ultra marathon running tough guy I know.http://runningmandave.blogspot.com/ You see, Dave has all the time constraints (and probably more) that I do and they always seem to keep me off the bike...or at least cut rides short. Between our day jobs, kids, and framebuilding (that's for me, not Dave) it just doesn't leave much time for our chosen forms of self-inflicted punishment. Now, the problem is compounded by the fact that I have to train for a big event, and even though it's not till next June, I can't afford to be cutting miles in September.
So what would Dave do? He'd put the kids to be, go to some trail, meet some other crazies...errr, I mean runners, and run till sunup!
So here was the scene this morning at 4:30 before I headed out for 55 miles of dirt road riding. I hope Dave would be proud.

So what's your excuse? ;)

Like Granpa's ol shotgun

I've been playing around with some alternative finishing ideas and decided to start with bluing- the same finish most firearms have. After seeing a bike from Ezra Caldwell of Fastboy Cycles with a similar finish I knew this was the way to go. Check out the Thunderf****r here: http://fastboycycles.com/ (By the way this is reason #742 from the list of "Why Ezra Rules")
I started small with the stem and after a couple of adjustments to the application process this is the result:


Pretty flippin cool, don't ya think? I came out even better than I'd hoped. The bluing will discolor the brass in the joints, but it doesn't really stick to it and can be buffed out pretty easy. I'll leave the brass mostly discolored because I think it really adds to the overall look.
Gotta do the rest of the bike now- this should be more of a challenge as you only have a 30 second window to neutralize the acids in order to make the finish work....no pressure there!