Archive for March, 2008

Another first! We can’t stop! Local man-about-town Kipp wanted a bike he could take on planes and in trains, so for him we’re doing our first demountable. We’re using S&S Couplers, lovely stainless doohickies that allow you to break your full-size frame into two pieces! And then put it back together again! It’s true! Here they are:

So using these require that we take the top and down tubes, cut them in two, and braze the couplers in. I got True Temper tubes with extra-long butts (yes, we like big butts) so that I’d be brazing the couplers in the thick section; then I had to make a jig to hold the two sections of tube in line during the brazing. Kipp got this 80/20 which allowed us to jig it up nicely. Here are some shots of that, and yes those are lengths of old innertube holding the sections in place:

  

 

Then I mitered the tubes as usual. It’s a welded road bike with sloping top tube. Here are the joints before welding:

  

Here’s some shots of the frame in the jig, after welding & brazing, and out of the jig:

  

And here you can see how the entire frame & wheels will fit inside a wheel-size box about 12″ deep:

Room to spare, and that’s a bike with a 58cm top tube! Next up: Kipp’s complete bike, & Steve’s single speed cross bike!

Liane picked up her mountain bike on friday. It’s totally green. I’m not even kidding.

Here’s some detail shots. She’s running Avid Juicy 7 brakes, Sram XO twist shifters, and a Sid Team fork. It has a cool lockout you can see inboard of the right brake lever.

   

Having painted the fork I wasn’t excited about putting zip ties all over it to direct the brake housing so I made a little aluminum holder that’s bolted in where the canti posts were:

And here’s Liane on her test ride. Look at that smile!

So I finished up Liane’s mountain bike this week. She wanted it this hi-visibility green so she doesn’t get shot at by any off-season hunters:

Here’s a closeup of the BB shell:

And here are those great Paragon disc dropouts:

Liane is going to be using mostly Sram XO components, with Avid brakes. The last hydraulic brakes I worked on were from Garrett’s 1972 VW bus so that’s going to be fun. She’s running a Sid fork which I took apart and painted the lowers to match:

I’ll post more pictures of the complete bike later this week. Also I painted two frames for other folks this week: first, this beautiful retro-style single speed made by Liane’s husband Mark:

And this road bike from Bowen Bicycle Works in Connecticut:

Keep them coming. Next week – Kipp’s s&s coupled road bike! stay tuned!