Things to do when it's cold out

Start thinking about building bike frame.

Smudgemo and I have an email dialogue going, tossing around ideas, plans, and web links as we're both planning on embarking on a new (to us) arena of the cycling world. Building bike frames.

This will obviously be a slow process, and it's supposed to be that way. You must take time to get things write. I'm making my way through the Paterek frame building manual, and in the book, it says that you can expect to build up at least 10 frames before you actually start making some nice ones. At 40hrs + per frame, that might seem like a lot of wasted time. But, good things come to those who wait. Wait for the learning, understanding and experience to happen.

I've spent several years of my working life machining. I studied it in 1st year as a Millwright, and feel very at home on a lathe and a vertical milling machine. I can tig weld quite well, but I'm very inexperienced with brazing. I built a little rack for my fixie this summer, but that was 1 night in the garage, and some steel brake lines for tubing. The torch I used was a kit from Canadian tire that I bought to fix a radiator leak once. Not exactly the right stuff for building bike frames. The rack is holding up nicely though.

First order of business for me will be to mess around with a few more racks. I hope to do this while Smudge and I hone in on a frame design we like and then get those built up. We might likely end up both building the same style of frame. A little easier that way and we can bounce different thoughts and ideas off each other.

When it's too cold to be doing much riding outside, you can still be obsessing about bicycles inside. I'm looking forward to the journey, and the learning of a new craft.

Alex's Cycle Truck

Alex Wetmore has a great blog to chronicle his bikes and bike related builds. Mostly I've been studying all of the racks he builds up, hoping to glean some tips for my growing interest in building racks. His latest project is really quite amazing. Photo album of the build is here.

He built up this cycle truck from an old bike. Man this thing looks good. With his basement lathe and brazing equipment, I'm amazed at the quality of stuff that he produces. I just wish I live closer to him to pick his brain. He's even getting involved with other local Seattle frame builders to hold groups meetings/discussion on all things bike building. Man it'd be cool to sit in on one of those sessions.

If you're interested in rack building, I suggest you check out his site. He's made it quite easy to navigate and has a whole series of posts with some of the how-to's of brazing including tools, techniques and tips.

Thanks for your great work Alex! Most appreciated.

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.