Rob picked this wicked color for his frame, it looks crazy in the flesh they’ll certainly see you coming with this one Rob. I really enjoyed this build, it was very challenging (and some what frustrating at times) builds like this keep me on my toes and the end results are well worth it. She’s getting boxed up and will be on her way to NZ very soon. Hope you have as much fun riding her as I had building her Rob.
See previous post on Rob’s bike being built.
I thought I should nurture my inner child so I decided to build my self a 20″ bike.
It’s a goal of mine to build every type of bicycle out there and that my personal collection of bikes are all of my own making, ( as to the first I’m doing pretty well, I’ve achieved the second and the collection keeps growing )
I designed the 20″ sitting at home one night after a few beers and a visit to the boys at Hell on Wheels earlier in the day was enough to convince me that a 20″ bike was what was missing from my collection. After a few hours on The Oracle (internet) and I had a hand full of dimensions from a range of frames that I liked, then it was a matter of pulling out the numbers I wanted and feeding them into my bike cad program and tweaking it till I had what I was looking for. With frame building it’s always a balancing act between what’s wanted and what is possible. There’s a hell of a lot of variables with any frame build and one small change will have an effect some where else, I call it the bicycle butter-fly effect, finding the symmetry is always a good challenge.
I had originally planed to TIG weld this frame but there was a delay getting the welder and the I had all the tubes mitered and ready to go, I couldn’t wait. I get pretty excited about new builds and my eagerness to see a frame progress sometimes gets the better of me, so it was out with my torch and laying down some fillets.
I used a set of shroud vertical tips I’d designed and CNC’d for a custom build a month earlier. For chain tensioning I used an eccentric BB, a double cup design from the guys at Brooklyn machine works. It runs a press fit bearing for 19mm profile cranks, I have several sets of these so it was on with a 165mm set of chromed profiles with the TI axel .
I used 4130 on the front triangle and Columbus single bend seat and chain stays. The build went together very cleanly, though the shroud tips are always a bit of a challenge as they have to be hand mitered. There are three angels that have to be cut into the stays to make them fit, this requires lots of small cuts filling and dry fitting to get the perfect fit, but the effort is worth it I really like the look of the tips on a bike.
I built the forks for this bike a good six months before I had even thought of drawing up the frame. I was going thru some stock I’d bought from John at Cycle Underground when I came across these wide solid cast fork crowns, I spent a bit of time thinking what bike build I could use them with. In the end I thought they would make a cool 20″ fork, definitely different from anything out there so with a bit of fitting filling and some brass I had a tidy set of forks. They sat in the draw for the next six months waiting for their time, I would often pull them out and think about the frame that needed to go with them.
The last thing of note for the build was the bars, I had a set of 4130 cruiser bars in my stock they didn’t have a cross brace but the height and angle was good so I mitered a cross brace and tig welded it in. I stripped them back and gave them the rattle can treatment they came up very nice.
Next up it was off to Star Enamellers for some color, I didn’t go all out with the paint job for this one, just a single color no decals no clear coat (I did fit a carbon head badge afterwards). I pay particular attention to laying down clean welds and spend a lot of time dressing the welds to get the shape and clean lines on the joins. This shows up in the finished paint job which can make any imperfections in the filets stand out when no filler is used to blend the welds. Nothing hiding under this one just smooth workmanship.
Build wise I have a Chris King head set with a devolution step down to 1″ steerer that I was running on the forks, azonic stem, syncross post, old settee royal saddle, tektro brake lever and lizard v brake calipers. For the wheels I had a pair of campy record hubs, old screw style on with a cassette rear. I stripped them down dug out some new axles from the huge stock of after market axles I have in storage and rebuilt them with velocity aero head rims. Just waiting for some tyres to come is and will be out hitting it up soon.
My inner child just keeps counting down how many sleeps till I can ride bmx bandit style again.
Here are a couple of shots of my newest build the 24″ street monkey. Go here to check out the write up on the build
A while ago I was fortunate enough to be gifted ‘The plate jig’ from John at cycle Underground. He had used it to build all of his frames and before that it belonged to and was fabricated by Frank Phillips, it has some serious history behind it and has built a hell of a lot off beautiful frames. Originally I fabricated a flat bench on wheels that the plate sat on horizontally. I have used it this way for some time now but it was never very practical or easy to use in this position so I decided to build a new stand for it. Due to space restraints where the jig is housed I also wanted to have it mounted to the wall the other requirement was that it be able to rotate 360 deg. To this end I had taken a very large bearing from a screw jack system that was fabricated for a job but never used, we threw out the screw jacks (a real shame as they where beautifully made with machined brass screws but they were far to big and heavy to be practical) but I could not bring my self to throw out the bearings, even though I had no idea what I was going to do with a 95mm race and 10mm dia ball bearings.
I was toying around with how to mount the jig plate to the frame I was going to build, John originally had it mounted on a floor stand and the plate rotated via a bolt thru the back of the frame into a taped hole on the centre of the jig, this worked fine but was always a bit cumbersome to use as the friction of steel on steel and the placement of the bolt made it awkward to undo it while holding a lit torch in one hand and rotate and lock off with the other. I pulled that big bearing out of the draw that had been collecting dust and scratched my head about how to weld the races to a piece of plate steel.
The issues I faced where the weight of the plate it is VERY heavy it would be in excess of 120 kg so I certainly didn’t want it to let go any where, then there was how to attach the stainless steel bearing races to the plate steel I was using for the backing plates, and lastly how I was going to mount the unit to the wall.
The first thing I need to do was see if I could fix the bearings to the plate, as if this proved to not be able to be done then I would have to redesign and come up with a different approach to the problem. I talked to a few of the guys I work with nutting out whether to tig the races on but I was worried that the intense heat would warp the races and this was what every one else thought as well. The air conditioning guy who also happens to be a master welder told me to use a 15% silver rods and braze the rings on to the plate. 15% silver is not common or cheap but I use it when I build fillet brazed frames with very light weight tube sets. So it was out with some sticks of silver and much flux. At first I tried to heat the plate steel from underneath to get it hot enough to take the silver thru the stain less on top (stainless gets a hot a lot quicker than steel and carries the heat a lot further so less heat is required) but even with my biggest torch I could not get enough heat into the piece, so after soaking the flux off and cleaning and prepping the pieces I had a go from the top this time went much better cleanly washed in and with no distortion to the race, repeated the process on the other plate and race .
Then I had to find the centre of the bearing so that when the unit is mounted it runs true. To do this I measured the ID of the race drew up a round template on auto cad with a centre mark, printed it and cut it out placed it in the ring, I now had my centre mark. I drilled to size then to make sure the other race matched it I put the bearing together and ran the drill thru to mark the second race centre. I then trimmed the excess steel from the plate that was going to mount on to the back of the jig to a round shape, roughed the shape out on the band saw then fitted the unit in the lathe and machined it to size.
From here it was a matter of taking some measurements to work out how high from the floor the unit needed to sit, that done and I was docking steel to size, drilling a lot of mounting holes and then welding the pieces together. I had planed to tig the unit but I had a big heavy fabrication job coming up and I was planing to using a new to me stick welder so I thought this would be a good test for the unit. It turned out not to be the best decision as the welder was not running properly, it laid down more than enough metal for the strength of the weld but was not very clean and thew a lot of spatter around the sides of the weld. I switched to the old faithful oxy torch ( or the gentlemans welder as I call it ) laid up the rest of the frame with nickel bronze (strong stuff).
With every thing welded and cleaned gave it a coat of kill rust, then a lick of black paint, fitted it together and marked out where I was going to fit it on the wall. 6 holes later and with the help of two big mates we lifted it up while another mate fitted the bolts. (bloody thing sure aint light, there was much cursing from my mates and promises of the rounds of beer I was going to buy to make up for making them sweat like this) .
It is all in place now and im just mittering up some tubes and ill test it out over the next few days.
Well I got some cool new tools recently, picked up a very sweet milling machine. I’ve been hanging for the right machine to come so I was well excited when I found it. It was a big job getting it out of the old work shop, I had to do some funky rigging and creative door removal but it all went well and she is sitting in the new work shop. I haven’t not got to know her yet but I’m looking forward to a long and beautiful relationship.
I’m getting a tandem attachment for my jig which I’ll be using to build cargo bikes as well as tandems. I’ve finished designing and drawing the first cargo bike and I’ll be starting the build as soon as the new jig is through customs.
I’ve also bought a new tig welder and I’m working on a 24″ tig welded fixie, I call it ‘The Street Monkey’. It should be a lot of fun and super tight through the traffic, plus it’s got loads of bar spin room up front, I’ll post shots as it comes together. I’m finalising the design for a 6″ travel duel-y with a funky suspension system, I’ve got a bit of tweaking to do but it’s looking sweet so far and I’m looking forward to building this one.
Design wise I’ve got a bunch of new rear tips designed for Candy Cranks frames and some Rohloff specific tips for a custom build I’m working on at the moment. Well that’s about it for now, I’ll put some shots up of the products and bikes as they become a reality, this lot are of the tig and the back purge system set up on the jig.
This is Robs custom 24″ was a very challenging and rewarding build with super tight rear stays I had to do some creative notching and capping, it all came out very nice and looks sweet. She is off getting a hot lime green color scheme I’ll post when she gets back.
Ronnies frame is built up and running very nice, build spec for this one.king.fox.thomson.bling.bling.bling. I designed the tips and we cut them on the Cycle Underground CNC machine. They’re cut from solid billet 4140, very hard stuff . It took 20 mins to cut each nugget and prep it for welding, have fun on it ronnie..
Ronnies ECC SS mtb, the tips are custom designed and fabricated in house, sexy little buggers. The frame is columbus 8-5-8 main Phil Woods, ECC BB she is very light and looks well hot. Getting painted at the moment, it’s going to be a very sweet ride, will put up shots when she is rolling.
Here are some shots of my first international build for Andrea in Canada, Eh..Custom fixed frame and forks, clean lines, tight geometry, smooth color, enjoy riding it Andrea. I had fun building her.
