I finaly heard the call of the black top

1. 

Well here is some shots of my latest build

A compact road frame using Columba’s aero tube / beautiful Richie lug tips and a lugged chain stay BB shell.

I have used aero tubes for builds in the past and had both good and bad results. I have had to threw away a few early attempts with the material due to using the wrong filler and excessive heat neither of  which the thin-walled tubes  like. After  talking to other builders and thru trial and error I have worked out the nuances of the material and have come to love working with it.

Having moved my house and work shop to Wollongong a couple of months ago has really taken its toll on my fitness. due to the extra hours comutting to and from work I don’t get to ride as much as I did when I lived in the big smoke. this is starting to show on my waist line so something had to be done.

All my whips are pretty much fixed or single fine for riding around  town but it only took me a few rides to the stanwell park to realise that though there is not very many big hills along the beach road the ones that are there are bloody sharp (a couple you could have walked backwards faster than i was riding them). Then you get to the serious hills there is no avoiding them if you want to get out you need to up and i mean UP and there was no way I could even think of doing any of the roads on a 48/15 fixxie.

So it was time to  look at a (shock horror) a geared  road bike. The catalyst came from a customer’s build that I was working on. Keia wanted a cyclocross frame based on a moots psycho I had not built a cross frame before, so after doing my usual home work into the bikes and frames I was greatly taken by the concept and build I worked with Keia to nut out his frame which went from full geared to single and I thought that it would be a great bike for an aero tube set as it was not going to be used as a competition bike and not flogged hard on the trails I was confident to use the lighter tube set and the silver filler that I use on this style of  frame build, any way back to my build as Keia will get his own  frame build story

One of the issues with aero tubes is they are very tricky to cut, the thin walls and the odd shape make for a very nerve-racking not to mention noise metering experience. to this end I have been purchasing some silvr machined cutters over the years they are very expensive but are dead true and pretty much the only way to cut the tubes, so thus equipped it was machining a plenty, I like to cut a few frames at once if possible as it takes a few hours to set up the mitre jigs each time and this round it was ,this frame ,keia’s frame and my latest customer who will remain anonymous  for now but who it is a honor and a big feather in my hat to be building for. three frames cut and peeped and they all get there turn in jig to be tacked ready to lay down the fillets. I bought a new torch for the silver filler on these frames. I have a very nice hanrob oxy acetylene torch has a very precise and confined flame but runs to hot for the 45% silver, at the other end of the scale I have a straight propane torch that is a dream to fit baize on fitting but the heat is to broad and takes to long to get to temperature to work on the aero tubes, so I needed a oxy propane set up as it has the best features of both, I bought a small Harris torch from the boys at Auto Weld in tarren point they are the Dons of welding and top guys to deal with. with the new torch set up it was game on .This frame went very smoothly and stayed true, no cold setting needed after which is what you need with the aero tube frames as the material does not like a lot of  cold setting very much. keia’s frame didn’t go as smoothly, a bad choice with the tact sequence saw the DT move of  centre 1mm so it was in the bin with that tube set and back to the mitring for a second attempt which turned out  very well and allowed us to add a few things that will make it a very very sweet build when done.

One of the great things with using silver filler is the way it dresses up , you get large fillets that blend into each other very smoothly (and its a lot easier to work with) so i soon had the frame smooth and ready for the fittings.

I used a few new processes on this frame, first I found some Columbus integrated head sets in the kit of tubes and frame goodies that I bought of John at cycle underground a while ago and I have been hanging to fit a set to a frame for a few years now but there has not been a built that suited them till now they fitted together  nicely and came up very clean. Next I have been planing to make my own stems for a while and again this was the perfect build to get it all sorted I had worked out a sys for jigging up the stem on my main jig I had to turn up some fitting which took a couple of days to complete, after dry fitting everything it looked like it was going to work well. I used a set of lewlien stem lugs for the build as I really like the look of them. The stem went together cleanly and after dressing it back looked sweet.

I had some beautiful friction shifter lying around and I really wanted to use them in this build but I was not going to fit them onto the DT  to old school and not very practical. I had planed to use a set of paul components thumies but I was not sure if my shifter would work with them. After scratching my head and thinking which way to go with the shifter I came up with the idea of fitting they on the stem I had just finished I had not seen this done before and at first I was not sure if it was going to work at all. After much fitting up and playing around with cables to see if it had any chance of working , I decided to give it a go as the saying sais “you will never know if you don’t try” so try I did. It all looks sweet though there will be a bit of contact on the tt when turning but this should not be a problem (fingers X). Any way I really like the way it turned out and the position is easy to use. I give it a good run when its al built up and do an updated post on it then.

All in all I’m very excited about this bike im going for a dark metallic blue with wight panel on DT and matching color on the stem and forks think it will look v sweet. I have even been looking at licra but I don’t think I can go that far just yet.

Stay up right Tarn..

It’s a wedding ring thing

Hear is a cool little project I was asked to do for a good mate  Adam “Ugly” in melb.

Ugly rang me and asked me to do a project for him ,as i had built him a frame in the past I figured it was going to be something bike related.

So I was a bit surprised and very honored to be asked to make his wedding ring for him.

I was a bit apprehensive as I had not built a ring before and really didn’t want it to get to close to his wedding and not have anything to give him, but he told me there was plenty of time so I thought ill give it a go and if it does not work there is still time  for him to come up with some thing else before the big day.

The materials he wanted to use where stainless   and brass the same as his bike was made of , I was very much into this concept and he had the idea of fitting a piece of brass into the SS ring.

I did a lot of research into what materials to use and how I was going to join the mediums together, I was going to use surgical SS for the body of the ring but this material turned out to be very hard to come by and after speaking to a machinist mate of mine who had the SS but told me that 316 grade was much better at resisting scratching and polished out much better.  So it was a lump of 35mm 316 grade stainless that I started with, I bored out the centre to the correct diameter in the lathe  then it was over to the mill to cut in the slot for the brass insert.

I was not sure what material to use for the insert. Ugly wanted brass but I was worried that it would leave a black mark on his finger and fixing it into the ring was going to be tricky. I decided to use gun-metal for the insert. I only came across this material a year or so when I was given a tube block from an old builder, It looks exactly like brass but as I was to find out when I drilled a hole in the block it is super hard stuff (insert drill blunting hard here).  Gun metal (GM) (called so as it was used to make cannons in the 1800′s) Had all the right properties looks like brass / does not tarnish/ very hard-wearing  and polishes out to a very high luster, perfect.

The next challenge was machining a very small piece of gun-metal to fit in the cut out of the ring. This turned out to be  very fiddle as my mill is taller than me and though its very accurate it is very tricky milling a block of material 3mm x 3mm, went through  Quite a few  cutters in the end but we got there.

when I had the gun-metal and the stainless ready it was time to join the two together. This bit was by far the most worrying and hard to do. Getting the SS to heat with out the GM over cooking and burning of the flux before I could get the sliver to flow took a few goes and a fair bit of  swearing in between, the GM would get red-hot almost instantly and would not take the silver, In the end I had to lay a pool of silver in the SS ring and heat it to melting then quickly fit the GM slug in and gently wash the flame over the to till they bonded this while holding the GM slug in place with a set of pliers . I could defiantly have used a nother set of hands for that operation.

When it was all bonded together it was back to the lathe to take off the excess GM and take the whole ring down to the required thickness. With that done I polished the ring to a high luster using many grades of wet and dry then wire wool then to polishing rag and finally finishing polish.

All this was done with the ring still attached to the main SS billet, It was now time to part the ring from the mother piece this step always makes me nervous as if any thing goes wrong here its back to square 1.

It parted ways with the mother billet cleanly and trouble-free thank (insert the god of you choice here). Next I had to make up a jig to hold the ring so I could face and chamfer the parted edge, when the material is only 6mm wide this turned out to be a challange, in the end I had to turn up a sleeve that fit over an expansion bolt from a 1″ steerer nut this locked the ring in to place and I could fit the jig into the lathe to finish the cutting and polishing.

All in all it took a lot of fiddling and gave me an appreciation of how far I could take my machines, I would love to have had a jewelers mill and lathe for the job but my partner threatened me with death should either items suddenly appear in my work shop.

I very much hope the wedding is a huge success and wish both Adam and Lari all the  happiness and best wishes

Stay up right..

Arunas’s tourer

Here is Arunas”s new touring Frame and forks

The photos where a bit rushes as im still in the process of moving and setting up the new work shop, Arunas has promised to send some of the rig when it is all finished ill put them up when they arrive.

This is a very nice build with a lot of custom fitting and very nice clean lines, the frame is using a set of tips I designed for the rohloff rear hub he is using, there is a phil woods eccentric BB with pinch bolts rather than the standard grub screws, 9/6/9 Columba’s  tube set, forks are dedachi uni crown with a 45mm bend (putting a bend in uni crown forks is a chalange and a lot of care has to be taken to get the bends equal and on the same radius. a good chalange)

Next was the racks they are surly racks, if you have ever seen or used them you will know they come with an amazing array of stainless hardware there would be about 1/2 kg just in the hardware for these racks. So Arunas wanted to do away with as much of the shiny weight as possible this involved offering the rear racks up with the wheel and gards in the frame. After much fiddling and re fiddling to get everything correctly set up, the  cutting and filling commenced. these racks turned out to be a lot of work to get sorted, the powder coating on them is so thick it took a lot of burning to get them clean enough to weld and then there is the issue of the arms which are chromed and would have to be some of the strongest plating i have ever come across. after much cursing I got them all fitted up and brazed together then the went off to get painted. I  got a call from my painter a day later saying that he could not get the powdercoat of and I would have to do it and send it back to him (I wanted to get them sand blasted but the tubes are to small and there is a good chance that the grit will take to much of the steel away. Not ideal for a working set of racks) So it was out with a can of paint stripper and a really lovely day of burnt skin and a bad temper at the end of which I found that there was still another layer of powder coat under the first (how happy was I!!) . this time it was out with the oxy torch to burn the rest of he powder coating off , another half day of nocus fumes and lots of wire brushing but I finally had them to bare metal. Second time to the painters and buy all account he had as much fun with them as I did. in the end they look great but they cost a lot of $ and took a lot of time to get there.

I really look forward to seeing this bike all built up and on the road I really hope Arunas and his new wip have a lot of long and good trips together.

The Cargo Bike’ AKA the Duck

Hear are some shots of my cargo bike, or the Duck as I like to call it as it reminds me of the submersible army trucks.

This has been a cool build for me, it is my second tig welded frame and I am getting my sys down with the welder. also got to utilize the new tandem jig attachment for the build.

I have taken the bike down the coast to my new house and work shop in Wollongong , this ride is 10 min from the work shop which has a fantastic view of the escarpment from the front windows, “hard life” .

The cable steering is working very well and after playing around with different stem lengths and saddle positions the rig is very comfortable and easy to handle.

I’ll be putting it threw  its paces and getting a few of the courier crew to test it and give me some feed back over the next few months , then  I’ll be fitting a box for the new dog and my nieces to be rolled around in.

Stay up right out there ..

The Cargo bike

Hear are some build shots of  the first prototype cargo bike.

I have been planing this one for some time and it has been a good chalange and very rewarding to see it come together.

It is tig welded and the build came together pretty quickly.

I wanted to use a cable steering concept that i had been toying around with, I got the idea from a very cool frame builder Francis cycles, he uses a funky cable steering set up on his haul bike, i did a lot of research in to pulleys and cable and played around with numerous ideas that could work for the steering, they all had merits but also had some sort of limiting factor. after much to and fro I came up with the system of two pulleys both of the same diameter with the cables running between them.  what i was  trying to achieve was a very direct steering that was out of the way simple to fix and repair and looked neat, I have never liked the linkage arm that is used on most cargo bikes they are prone to damage and look crap. Next I had to work out how I was going to attach the cables, at first i was going to use some very nice super flexible SS cable they use it to make jewelery but there was the issue of attaching it to the pulleys and I wanted the system to be easy to change and replacement cables to be cheap and easy to obtain. So in the end I drilled the pulleys to accept  standard brake cable heads the cables run from the fork pulley over a small cable specific pulley that runs along the side of the boom tube  then down to a second pulley that directs the cable under the frame and cargo platform they terminate and are attached to a small turn buckle which tensions the system then from the other end of the turn buckle there is another short wire that attached to the drive pulley on the steering shaft using the same attachment as the fork pulley. works very well on the bench and pushing it around the work shop floor. I will be putting it thru its paces as soon as it is all up and running.

I also wanted it to have a low bed like the bullit frames and the dutch cargo bikes as i think this is a better place to have the wight of the load and it makes it use full for carrying kids or pets.

It’s a full 4130 front end and Columbus rear stays and tips , using my designed and Cycle Underground CNC’d  eccentric BB, the forks are a of the shelf 20″ set that I fitted canti bosses to and then fabricated the steering pulley and welded it on, I have disk tabs on the frame and later on I will be designing a disc set of forks but for this frame I just wanted to make sure all the concepts where going to work on the frame before i started designing forks for it.

Well the bike is almost ready to roll I am weighting on a 20″ rim to come in from velocity that I will be building up over the weekend and I should be out for the first ride early next week looking forward to it.

I’ll post shots when i have it all together and sprayed up stay tuned ..

Cycle Undergrounds new grind chain ring

I have the first Cycle Underground grind guard chain ring im my possession.

I have been watching these funky chain rings getting developed by Big John over the last few months, and I’ve been stinging to get this fitted and rolling.

Clocked it up today on my 24″ street monkey as i still the NO. 1 whip in my stable.

As always the fit was dead on with zero round out.

first roll home tonight and it was silent smooth and solid , now i just have to learn how to grind this thing.

They will be available in 130/144 bcd in every color as long as its black , and you can buy them from Candy Cranks web shop very soon.

stay up right ..

Yves’s Agent Orange Fix

This is Yves’ tidy new fixed frame and fork. Built using Reynolds tubing on the main frame and Columbus seat and chain stays in the rear. BSM Italian investment cast lugs, and Primate tips.

This makes for a very light frameset and I’m sure she will fly along when she’s built up.  The geo was taken of Yves’s last frame that John from Cycle Underground built for him close to 10 years ago and it’s still going strong.

I’m in the process of sourcing the components and building the wheels. I’m very much looking forward to building this whip up, with what I have in mind this it’s going to be a very hot bike. I’ll post shots when she is done.

Stay up right..

New linkages for my balfa BB7

My Balfa BB7 is the only frame I own that I haven’t built my self, I’ve owned it from new and it is one of those bikes that  is just right. I may not have taken her out for a couple of weeks but when I do she always left me with a smile on my face and the same thoughts in my head “man I love riding this bike” which is the main reason she is still in my kit. She was also known as the reliable bike, I might have a technical with any one or other of my rides but she was always ready to roll and take anything I wanted to threw at her in her stride.

So you can imagine my distress when she started making a horrible grinding noise when I was riding her home from work one night. I carry a very comprehensive repair kit with me at all times and it’s a point of pride that I am able to pretty much get anything fixed on the fly and at least get home if not fix the problem better than any shop. But this was not going to be one those nights. I pulled over and checked the rig over but could not pin point where the noise was coming from, thinking I could make it home I kept going but at 1/3 of the 12km ride home the noise was getting worse so I had to admit defeat. I had worked out where  the grinding noise was coming from. The frame uses a high carrier sprocket keeping the chain running in line with the swing arm,  the design is very efficient at killing pedal indused feedback in the suspension but the jockey wheel had shit itself. Due to the design there were very little options for a trail fix ( though I spent a good half hour trying to think of one) in the end it was a call to the girlfriend asking if she could pick me up one of only three times I have had to do so. STINK .

Well I pulled the rear end off the bike to see what had broken the unbreakable bike. I found the carrier sprocket had crapped itself in no uncertain terms, the factory system had a cool split machined alloy carrier that fits a 13 tooth rear sprocket between two alloy high flanges that are bolted together with three bolts. Looks bomb proof but the steel cog had worked loose and cut itself into the alloy flanges, latterly cutting the alloy in half. I figured this was the time to change the bearings on the main pivot as well so I took to dismantling the rear swing arm. After taking of the side plates, I found that they were ovalised on the tip, I had always thought that they were a bit light on in this area and now it became apparent where the major stress point was. Balfa has been out of business for a round 5 years now ( bought out by rocky mountain and in my eyes one of the biggest losses to the biking industry) so getting a new set of side plates was not an option not that I would have gone that way any way as if there is a problem fitting the same problem is only a bandaid solution.

So it was out with the verniers and ruler, lots of measuring and remeasuring and punching into cad and I had the template for a new side plate. The orignal plates are made of 5mm plate with counter sunk bolt holes I went for 8mm 2035 plate with out the counter sinking. First I sorted a small section of plate then with spray adhesive I applied the template to the plate. Next I rough cut the two templates out on my bandsaw, I then ran clearance holes in one plate and tapped M5 holes in the other plate and bolted them together,  fitted them on the mill and proceeded to cut out the shape, all went well and after a couple of days had every thing cut out. Cleaned up the edges and counter sunk for the fitting for the main pivot attachment dry fitted the new plates, all good. They are away getting anodised at the moment I’ll post shots when they arrive back and I get it all fitted up.

Stay upright..

The new tandem jig has landed

The  new Tandem attachment for my Anvil super master jig  arrived on Friday. I only got to have a quick look in the box before I had to shoot off to work, then it was a couple of days till I could get down to the work shop to pull it out of its timber cocoon and fit out on the jig. As it was coming from Anvil bikeworks I new the finish  quality and most importantly the operation would be second to none, and this certainly lived up to my expectations, man Don and the boys do some amazing machining in that factory. Well now I can finally start building the cargo bike that I have had on the drawing table for a while now, really looking forward to getting this build up and running I have a bunch of new ideas that I want to put into place on this build, I’ll post shots as it grows.

stay upright ..

Star Trak Alleycat