Bullwhip

For Sam I’m making a demountable touring bike with S&S couplers. This one is going to be fully lugged, with front and rear rack mounts for loaded touring. So with the couplers, you need to cut your top tube and down tube and braze them in, so I got special True Temper tubes with long butts so that I’d be brazing to the thick part. Here are some shots of the couplers, and brazing them up to make the tube:

  

This frame is also going to use capped seat stays, brazed to the outside of the seat lug, for good tire & fender clearance. Some builders use cast caps, to which we say, bah! They’re heavy and artless. So we take our seat stay and file in a channel; then we braze a section of seat tube scap onto it, and grind it smooth.

  

And here are some more pictures of the frame in the jig. You can see the 7 degree sloping top tube and the low bottom bracket for stability.

 

I’ve also been working on a tandem rehab for Matt, on an old Schwinn Twinn. I know. That’s how they spelled it. See:

 

It’s getting a full repaint, with new fenders, racks and an 8 speed internal hub! I’ll have more pix next week of the fancy components, but here’s the painted frame and new fork:

  

  

So the last week featured two exciting pick-ups. Casey had been working in Appalachia, fighting mountaintop mining, and was en-route to the Cape when she rumbled up in her grease-powered Mercedes. Accompanying her was old friend and comrade Francesco, who rides this bad boy. Here they are with their various non-petroleum powered vehicles:

And here’s a shot of Casey’s bike - she brought her beloved Brooks saddle to put on, and now she’s ready to rock:

And yesterday Paul picked up his mountain bike, Cuchulainn - he’ll be joining Mark and Liane on the trails of western CT soon!

Here’s what he’s in for, courtesy of Liane:

Also check out our new projects blog, soon to be linked to the home page. And here’s a bike rack I built for my local pub, the Scurvy Dog:

 
 

And clearly I mean sick in the best possible way. This is Paul’s mountain bike. Components are on their way. Marvel, if you will, at its majesty.

  

  

  

I’ll post pictures of the built-up bike next week. Meanwhile perhaps you’ve suspected that the inside of an air compressor looks a lot like a vertical twin motorcycle engine. You’re not wrong. I put new rings on ours this weekend. Here’s what it looks like with the head off:

I know what you’re thinking. It’s 90 degrees out - what better time to play with fire, or put on a full-face respirator? No air conditioned offices for us! Summer pretty much means all sweat, all the time, with time-outs to stick our heads in buckets of iced coffee. But despite it all, and the sputtering air tools that the humidity brings, we’re getting some bikes out. I’m ironing out paint details with Paul for his mountain bike, and in the meantime did this repaint of our friend Scott’s Russ Denny track bike. In blasting the fork I found some nasty rust holes, so Scott had me build a new fork to match:

  

Sort of looks like it’s made of porcelain, huh?

The paint is white and a custom blue to match his rims, all with a pearl overcoat that really sparkles in the sun. Scott designed the logos himself, and sent us ready-to-cut artwork, which is almost as good as cupcakes.

  

I also started a touring bike for Casey from Austin, TX. She’s going to use 26″ wheels, and I used the Mini 6 lugs that allow for a 6 degree sloping top tube. The seat stays are capped for plenty of tire and fender clearance:

  

  

Next: paint for Paul and Casey, some tandem repaint action, bees, and grease!

Ok so this is a big bike. 60cm top tube, 108cm wheelbase. But Paul’s a big guy so that all makes sense. The main frame is tig welded, with brass used for the Paragon disc brake dropouts & the tops of the seat stays. The tubing is a mix of Dedacciai Zerouno and Zerotre. Here’s some pictures of it getting jigged up & welded:

  

  

  

  

Team Circle A also did the MS150 ride last weekend; thanks to you, we raised about $2700 for the team and the entire ride made nearly $500,000! So thanks from Shawn, Shauna, Brian, Hilary, Tom, Garrett, Amy, and me! Here’s the only picture Garrett has sent me, Brian and I representing:

Next: more paint jobs, Paul’s complete bike, and stuff like that!

So first off, this weekend is the MS150 ride; it’s not too late to contribute if you can, the team page is here.

So Than picked up his straightened and spruced Bottecchia; in addition to some fresh paint, we replaced the bent cranks and smashed pedals, and gave it a tuneup. Here are some pictures of that, and of Than as he prepared to ride away:

  

I also painted a couple of frames for our friend John at Echelon Cycle Works in Vermont, formerly of Pawtucket. Here’s one now:

And I started cutting tubes for Paul’s mountain bike. More on that, and stories of the MS ride, soon.

So a big thank you to all our friends & customers (most end up as both) who came out sunday and helped us raise money for the MS 150 ride! We raised several hundred dollars for our team. It’s not too late to contribute if you can; the team page is here.

Here are some pictures from the festivities, and Brian has a whole slideshow here.

  

Lots of paint jobs are in the works, which you’ll hear about later, but the most interesting thing I did this week was breathe some new life into a battered Bottecchia. Than was hit, hard, while riding; he’s recovered well, not so much the bike:

  

It looked bad enough coming in, with a taco’ed from wheel and a left side crank that was bent all the way over the chainstay, but it wasn’t until we got it on the alignment table that we could see how bad things were:

As you can see the seat tube is bent wildly up - about 2 inches out of plane with the BB; and in turn the head tube, tt and dt were pulled left as well. After some wrestling we got it looking a bit healthier:

Now we’ve added some rack mounts, and Than is getting a full repaint. We hope to have him back on the road next week.

Coming up: Paul’s mountain bike and Casey’s touring rig.

Diverse projects have abounded the last couple weeks. I spent three days last week at Bikes Not Bombs in Boston, at a workshop sponsored by World Bike. We were experimenting with quick and dirty trailer designs, primarily for use in countries with few transportation resources. After a day of introductions and discussions of designs, I was privileged to team up with BNB founder Carl Kurz, and this is our creation:

 
  

The emphasis was on simplicity; no milling machines, no fancy tubing benders - we used a pulley off a car engine to bend the round stock to make the racks. Lots of folks took pictures during the workshop, which I’ll link to as soon as they’re up.

I also built a road bike for our friend John Sorensen; here are some pix of that:

  
And here it is with paint; it’s a crazy multi-layer custom action with a dark silver base and layers of translucent red over it. Hopefully today I can get some shots in the sun.

  

And yes, I said ice cream; Garrett and I worked on making his ice cream maker pedal-powered. We’ll debut it this weekend:

And somewhere in there I painted some more bikes for Bowen Cycle Works:

  

So I finished painting Steve’s single speed cross bike. Here are some pix. Also here’s a link to his blog which is quite excellent and hopefully will soon have tall tales about his hot new bike. Which looks like this:

  

   

Note the custom stop for the rear canti that lets you adjust the brake, & is slotted so you can pop the cables out for cleaning.

I also put a disc brake tab on an old Bridgestone MB-4. We made a brace to transfer the braking forces down into the chainstay; without that, I’ve seen many seat stays buckle:

  

And here it is primed and ready to rock:

So Kipp came by yesterday and built up his S&S coupled road bike; check it out:

  

Above you can see the Ritchey quick cable disconnects. These allow you completely separate the two halves of the bike without getting all tangled or messing up your brake & derailleur adjustments.

  

The bike comes in at just under 19lbs complete; the couplers add about 10oz, which is handsomely offset by the superlight Ritchey WCS carbon fork. Kipp has promised a slideshow of breaking down the bike into a case, so watch this space!

My next bike is for Stevil Kinevil of Swobo. They make some of the hottest & coolest cycling clothing out there. For Steve I’m doing a single speed cross bike, matched to the nutty Hunter Supercrown fork he sent me.

This is going to be a very clean, fully welded bike. Steve’s focus was simplicity and durability; I’m using a mix of Deda Zero and Zerouno main tubes, with Columbus Zona S-bend chainstays and Spirit S-bend seatstays.

And here are some detail shots of the assembly:

  

Should be painting it by the end of the week!