Foresta Frames

[Craig Ryan]

Thanks Eric, yes, that is where the vise will go. I've yet to finish the top piece. The 2x4's go all the way to the wall, seems to be pretty sturdy.

[datas_brother]

snip... In the beginning Susan and I talked through all the options for growth, with the biggest goal being to get me out of the garage, and the cars in. We looked at renting space, moving, adding onto the garage, and even adding onto the house itself. In the end we settled on...

Replace "Susan" with Kerstin and I could written exactly the same sentence! That is one beautiful space! Can't wait to see pictures of it finished.

[Craig Ryan]

Thanks Kevin, I think there are a bunch of folks keeping the cars out of the garage. Sometimes I look at the dollars which went into the new space and think of all the fixtures and tubes I could have bought, but the painting ability was the kicker. It'll take a while to recoup the material costs, if ever, but the mental profit is huge. Looking at the big picture of my life it seems right.
Craig

[Jonathan]

Craig,
that's going to be a nice workspace. I think there is nothing better for motivation than the right environment.

[Craig Ryan]

Moving into my new shop. Setting up and details take time, but it's pretty much what I envisioned. Still have to move the heavy stuff and make adjustments, but it's starting to look like a shop. The new grass seed is coming along despite the local drought. For more see my blog:
www.forestbikes.blogspot.com

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[Craig Ryan]

Finally, after weeks, I'm cutting lugs in my new shop. What an experience it's been.

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[Craig Ryan]

A little report from the land of Foresta Frames... Fall is here, and I'm firmly entrenched within my new shop. Work is going on; tubes are in the jig, I've gotten some painting kinks worked out, I've built some new equipment, and made some good purchases. I hosted an open house of sorts and it was great to have bodies in my shop. That's when six of us manhandled my surface plate from the garage to it's final resting place. Last night I finished getting my new compressor wired up. I think my last chunk of large space will be taken up with a future media blasting cabinet.

The space is amazing, and I feel lucky every time I go out and put the key into the door. Here are a few pics, but I need to do some cleaning and get a nice complete set which shows the whole scene. Basically, within my 12' x 16' building I have a 4' x 5' paint booth, lots of bench space, a drill press, compressor, pickling tank, surface plate, storage, and jig. I can walk in, flip on the wall switches and have XM radio, lots of light, air, and views. I'm a lucky man!

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[dcpdpayne]

Hey Craig,
It's been fun watching the birth of Foresta on Vsalon and your FB page over the last several months. So now that you've launched the business, how's it going? Are you starting to get a que? What has it been like to balance building frames professionally with your teaching job (a few of my friends from Ball State had you as a teacher.....most even have nice things to say about you ) Do you find that it's any more or less stressful building for people who have a financial investment as well as an emotional investment in the outcome?

[Craig Ryan]

Hey Craig,
It's been fun watching the birth of Foresta on Vsalon and your FB page over the last several months. So now that you've launched the business, how's it going? Are you starting to get a que? What has it been like to balance building frames professionally with your teaching job (a few of my friends from Ball State had you as a teacher.....most even have nice things to say about you ) Do you find that it's any more or less stressful building for people who have a financial investment as well as an emotional investment in the outcome?

Thanks for the kind words, and following along with me. I've had a lot of exposure through my blog, and the Vsalon and FB have helped spread the word with what I am up to. Without social media I would never be where I am today, but they can make you look bigger than life. Under it all, I'm just a guy standing at the bench trying to do it better every time. The orders aren't pouring in, but it's going exactly as I expected. You don't just start making frames and be an instant star after only 30 tries. Slow growth, gained experience, better skills, more time, 100% dedication. I'm fortunate I can set my timeline and model my business around it. Everything is falling into place at it's own pace, and you can't change time. My vision has changed, but I realize all the frames I've made are one. And they are getting very nice.

My teaching and my building go together like peanut butter and jelly! They are a perfect complement. Trying to make something as abstract as a bicycle forces you to put extremely high expectations on yourself. If it doesn't, well...

I wonder which of my former students you've met... the good, the bad, or the ugly! Hey, I like my westerns.
Craig

[Craig Ryan]

A quick note and a heads up. After running up my blog for last three + years I've made a major deviation and changed it. I've started a fresh new one and have been running tests on it as I double post. Soon I'll end the original and make the switch to the new one completely. Why? Well, as I look back at my posts, (while educational and nostalgic) I realize I've changed my methods and processes significantly. A lot of it is because of changes in tooling. I want viewers to see what I'm doing now, since many of my readers are in the early stages of their own building.
My new blog
new
My old blog
old

[e-RICHIE]

My new blog
new

this is very cool atmo.

[Jayme]

Hey Craig,

The new blog looks great. Love the logo.

Jayme

[edoz]

this is very cool atmo.

Hell yes it is. Craig, you're awesome for learning two crafts at the same time.

[Craig Ryan]

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[cement shoes]

Craig,

What led you to the the numeric designation, 359, for your frames? Does that have any significance? I think it's pretty cool. Sorry if this has been answered elsewhere.

Thanks,
Tom

[Craig Ryan]

Hi Tom, the #359 is a bit obscure, but at the root level of my inner self. 359 is the model designation Peterbilt gave to the last of their great trucks. I could go on a long time about trucks and their development, and where they are now, but let's just say the Peterbilt 359 was one of those milestone products. After it there was the 379 and 389, and all the aero models they've come out with. I like what the 359 represents, and it's place in history. The 359 ran the roads before they were all 4 lane. Power steering was just being thought about, and they heralded in air ride suspension and A/C. The 359 is understated, clean, classic, simple with a sense of unity. So when I think of great model names in history, the Peterbilt 359 is right up there. I suppose it could have been a Rolleiflex 2.8F, but I just really like trucks. The photo below is one I took at a truck show of a mid production 359. It's a bit tarted up with lights and crap, and the wheels aren't period, etc., but you can see what I'm talking about.

I would like my bicycles to have the same sense of unity and classic design as the 359.

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[Jonathan]

Craig, the association with the truck is maybe one of coolest things ive read on SO. I just google imaged the 359, I loved those as a kid. There are some wonderful paint schemes. Do you ever see a truck and think that paint might look good on a bike?

[Craig Ryan]

Thanks Jonathan, yes, I like trucks. I really like many of the old classic paint jobs, like the one above. You can date trucks using them sometimes. I haven't thought about applying the patterns to a bicycle because they are so different. It's a great idea and you could do something really cool by picking up on a color scheme and striping. I'll think about that one and see what emerges. It's interesting, Tom Inman Company ran celeste trucks back in the late '70's. What many truck painters don't achieve is the whole package look. We talk about it here on the salon often when we look at bikes. It's what I've found to a great goal. Here's another 359 I thought was fun. I don't want this to be about trucks, but they are a great inspiration for me.

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[Craig Ryan]

I've been super busy, and since I can't quite yet show what I'll be taking to NAHBS, I thought I'd take a break and let you see a bit of my history. I like big projects, and one of my favorites through the years has been my interest in photography and the work I did with my pinhole Roadside Memorial Cross portfolio. The short story of it all goes like this: I was teaching photography at my school (9-12) where we had a pretty nice darkroom program going and tons of students involved. While working with a student who was struggling for an idea for her Senior Portfolio, I suggested she go back to her first experiences with the darkroom and work with a pinhole camera. We always made our own 4x5 cameras using matt board as our first unit. We'd recently seen a bad series of teenage deaths from driving in our county, and it touched our school very deeply. So I told this girl to get a nice wooden pinhole camera, some TMX 4x5 sheet film, and go photograph roadside memorial crosses. She didn't bite, but the next thing I knew I was doing it. A pinhole camera is very simply a box camera with a needle hole for a lens. The circle of confusion is larger than with a fancy glass lens, but the depth of field is infinite. They don't gather much light, so long exposures are necessary. I documented all the roadside memorial crosses within our 5 county area of central Indiana. I drove lots of miles and did a lot of documentation to go with it all. After a couple of years I had a couple hundred negatives. I contact printed them onto an 8"x10" piece of nice paper, picked about 25 of the best and had them framed. I had three gallery shows from it all and enjoyed every minute of the whole process. I photographed 3 sites which belonged to former students. Now when I drive around our area I always look for them and check up on which ones are struggling to stay around. About 1/2 are now gone, but there are others popping up all the time. I also became keenly aware that I was standing taking a photograph on the side of road where it was likely quite dangerous. Many exposures were several minutes long in these images. I shot all across the seasons, and took whatever I could get. I used a 4"x5" Leonardo wooden camera with standard sheet film holders. I shot on Kodak TXP 320, developed in Ilford ITHC. I often used a red #25 filter taped to the inside of my camera. I keep four of the framed prints in a grouping on a wall in my home, but the rest I've dispersed to my family or stored away with all the rest of it.

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This one is the marker for a former student of mine.

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[Jonathan]

that's really spectacular, touching and thought provoking Craig. Look forward to seeing you in Austin.