Archive for September, 2008

Ok. It’s been a busy couple weeks. First, Matt’s rehabbed Schwinn Twinn tandem went out the door. It’s gorgeous and he’s been brightening the landscape on it all over town. Note the roller brake, custom cable routing, and internal 8 speed hub:

   
   

I also shipped off Sam’s coupled touring bike. Here are some shots of the complete bike, and how it looks packed up in it’s travel box. And it’ll fit in there with all the components too!

   
   

I also built local yokel Katie a TIG welded commuter bike; she’s going to run it as an 8 speed, with just a rear derailleur. More pix of that to come. I’ve been painting it, but here are some shots of the construction:

   
   

Scott came by with the complete Russ Denny that I painted for him a while back. Here are some shots of that:

  

And finally, Kipchoge of the Ginger Ninjas came while they were touring the east coast with their pedal-powered and -transported good time roadshow, and with Tom and Mike from Recycle A Bike, I helped him straighten a bent dropout on one of their eight (!) Xtracycle equipped bikes! Catch them if you can-can!

Sam’s lugged, S&S coupled touring bike is done. He picked the custom colors, and it’s gorgeous:

  

Here are some shots of construction. As on many of our touring bikes, I used Henry James dropouts because they have enough of a slot so you could cut the chain and run it as a single speed if your derailleur blows up in Timbuktu.

  

Note the low rider rack mounts on the fork. Sam will be using a Tubus rack, which I used to locate the mounting points:

  

  

So for the paint, Sam wanted these three colors, and a leaf he had drawn for the seat tube:

He sent us an EPS file of the image so we can cut it out of vinyl as a stencil. He also wanted the bands on the edge of the panels and the lettering to be in the same green; this meant painting on the logos, instead of using the decals we have printed. So first I painted orange on the head tube, and green for where the logos, bands and leaf would be; then I cut and weeded the vinyl for the logo stencil and leaf, and applied them over the green. The vinyl for the logos is yellow, for the bands, black. After spraying the orange for the panels, I peel off the vinyl, and there is the green lettering.

 

  

In that last one you can also see the Spray Mask that I’ve applied over the lug lines so I can mask those properly. Then I cover the head tube completely, cover the panels, and spray the final mint green.