Thursday, July 03, 2008

Rack Building

I've decided to try my hand at rack building. I've always wanted something for my fixie, but the bike is so clean looking, I couldn't bring myself to slapping on any old rack. Nothing was worthy of this stead. Until, I built one.
hot off the press (not that hot, I am holding it)
Brazing is actually not that difficult. I had to dig back in my memory to my trade school days, where they tried to teach us the theory on brazing. Later in the class we were supposed to braze a few joints in some pipe, but I ended up spending my time rebuilding axial flow compressors. I digress.
Long story short, I wanted to build something small, light (the bike is incredibly light and I'd hate to give that up) and that was almost unnoticeable when there was nothing on it. I still wanted my fixie to be a fixie. Clean. Simple.

This picture shows what the location of the panniers ends up being. Just a nice amount of heal clearance for my size 11s.

I painted it to match the rest of the bike, and I think it does a good job of blending in. Can't wait to ride this to work and see how she stands up.

I plan on building a few more racks. After that, I'll try a portier front rack. Something I've always wanted. For that I'll also need a new bike project to mount it to. Always searching.....

Cheers.

3 comments:

Smudgemo said...

Outstanding! I wish you lived anywhere close to me so we could futz around with this kind of stuff. Can I order one of the front racks? I just want something to hold my front light and a smallish basket.

Jerome said...

Hey Smudge. I always wish I had someone close to me that was into this kind of messing around also. Oh well.

If you want, I could build up a rack for you. I still owe you for your generouse hospitality. I'm actually looking for a better brazing torch right now. The one I used for this rack takes forever and 2 days to heat the tubing up. There are also a few other things I need to mess around with and I'd like to flog my rack to make sure it's actually built well. But seriously, I can build you a rack if you want. we can go over it via email. Cheers.

Doug said...

Wow...very nice design and build Jerome! I'm impressed.