Man, the bikes look great, but I really envy your ability to come up with all the visual promotion type stuff. Even if you know what you're doing, I've found that it's easy to make yourself look like a garage hack with some crappy cell phone pics in bad light. I can see you doing very well at framebuilding.
I'd love to have this diversity through the year. Where I am the roads are the same the whole year. Only the number of layers I dress in changes. I have been starting to mix things up and trying out some whack routes which is kind of fun. Also venturing further out of town to hit the dirt roads.
Love your bikes and as Eric said you self promotion/look really sells the already great product. Still saving hard for that deposit.
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"Even my farts smell like steel!" - Diel
"Make something with your hands. Not with your money." - Dario
I just looked through your whole set of tooling pictures on Flickr, and it was really cool.
I'm wondering though, how you set up your jig differently for fat bikes with a bigger bb shell. Do you need to?
Hi Adam - thanks for the kind words regarding the work.
Regarding fat bikes & 100mm BB shells: I have a set of aluminum spacers I put on / pull off for 68, 73 and 100mm bottom bracket shells. So for example, you'll notice there are no spacers for a 100mm bottom bracket :
VS. in this shot, you can see that I have the spacers in place for a 68mm bottom bracket : (with a 73mm, I replace the 5mm spacer in this shot with a 2.5mm)
The frame jig's bottom bracket post has an elongated shoulder for the spacers to ride : (That machined line is where the previous shoulder had been relieved - I adapted this after the fact for 100mm BB's) You can also see the threaded blind hole for the bottom bracket post and the blind hole for the argon back purge setup as well.
And while we're on the subject of the jig: Here's a vid for you to see how the whole assembly can be rotated and repositioned thanks to the trolley (at the end of the video). The final step of the entire front triangle for me is to wrap two small welds on the top tube at the seat tube and head tube junctions on the underside of the top tube, so my apologies for the pregnant pauses while I come in/out of the frame to make adjustments on the welder for the different tube thicknesses :
That's a really cool system. I think I might have to copy it to some extent when I re-do my jig coming up here soon.
That's a sweet jig design. I admire all of your stuff, keep it up!
-Adam
The addition of the Rinnai ES38 propane heater which was installed friday threw a bit of a visual "monkey wrench" into the shop setup. I was going to reorganize things once the floor is re-poured but the addition of the heater quickened that pace. So first things first: Move the mill forward so I can rotate it.
Once that was out in a more manageable space, I lowered it back onto the floor, and began walking the front and back so the mill rotated in place pointing it towards it's final spot in the corner of the North facing wall:
I've found picking the mill up a bit easier if you place a 4x4 beneath the ram, centered and placing a jack beneath that 4x4 to carefully tip the mill up far enough to place blocks beneath the base. Then I repeat this in front but with the tanker bar which enables me to place the 1/2" pipe beneath the mill. Repeat the process to lower it back down onto the pipes to roll. Slow and steady is the key.
Final resting spot:
The tooling cart is temporarily in front of the heater. I'm going to build a shelf around the heater, but not in front of the heater to make it a bit more visually integrated with the shop space. This will be a nice spot for tooling and right next to the mill. The future lathe will sit to the right of the heater, so tooling and heat will be right at hand.
Whole move took about 6 hours with the majority of the move being the mill due to the uneven floor. It was slow going moving it a little bit at a time. Going to insulate the ceiling this afternoon so the new heat which will be online monday will be fully retained and I'll be nice and cozy.
Tiger-Drylac's "Sparkle Sky Blue". It's one of their Dormant Powders and so far I've had 2 frames done in 2 different colors of their Dormants and each one has been stunning. They have a really deep red in this color I'm considering doing my next bike...
So I stumbled upon this when loading images from a different memory card. (Spring should be here sooner than later according to that Groundhog. Gotta get in the spirit!) I believe this is from last spring on a first ride in singlespeed mode for this bike. Just the solitary sounds of the NH woods and mosquito's while I toil some time away on a tricky line choice...
My personal rules on riding lines like this:
A. You have to be clicked in.
B. You can't drop your post.
C. Ideal clean is JRA = "Just riding along". So no run ups, no scoping lines etc.
I nabbed A and B but not C. Oh well. (Editor's note: I've done this line a number of times but the great equalizer of mountain biking is no line is ever truly dialed). Enjoy.
Rolls with style
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