Beat

It’s 1 a.m. I’ve had a very productive night. Tomorrow will be another amazingly productive evening.

As excited as I am to attend it as a builder, I sure will be happy when Minnecycle is over.

From Humble Beginnings

The humble start. Click to enlarge.

As you’ve probably noticed from the pictures I post on here, I don’t have the super-fancy workshop that a lot of other builders have. There’s not $20,000 of Anvil fixtures laying about, nor racks full of tubing. I don’t post nifty pictures of freshly-TIG’ed titanium. There’s not a lovingly cared-for Bridgeport mill in the background.

No, I make do with what I’ve got and can afford. I’m bootstrapping myself into this rather than laying out twenty to thirty grand on equipment up-front. I work in my garage, which I’ll be doing some work on in the coming weeks in preparation for winter: expanding my electrical capacity, insulation and drywall will follow.

After that, I’ll start putting money toward Anvil equipment, a mill and a lathe, a nice drill press. The things that would be “nice to have” but aren’t absolutely necessary to build a bike with.

Someday, the TIG welder will come along, and so will an Anvil fixture. So I can start dabbling in titanium.

The most important thing in that fully built-out shop, will be a picture of my current workbench, in a frame, so I can remember where I came from. I don’t ever want to forget the time when I had to “think like a framebuilder” (as Wyganowski once told me I was doing) — using the tools at-hand to a bit of creativity to come up with amazing pieces of craftsmanship.

Two Quick Things

1. I am seriously considering doing a limited-run, semi-stock cyclocross frame over the winter. Would be lugged steel, horizontal dropouts with a derailleur hanger so you could run single or multi-geared. Would include a single-color powdercoating. Available in 54, 56, 58, and 60 cm — geometry would be fixed, but you’d have the choice to go with a disc tab ($10 extra, rigged for mechanical discs only), what color you want it, and have your choice between a 130mm and 135mm rear axle spacing. No fork, but would be designed around a common, easily-acquired carbon model. Once ten of them were sold, no more would be available. Pricing will probably sit around $1100.

2. Also thinking about sponsoring an alleycat next year. More on that as it develops.

Crazy Busy

So yeah, as you can probably imagine, things are more than a little bit crazy. Minnecycle continues to dominate my planning/needs.

In the near-term, I’ve got a few small projects that need to be tended-to, as well. I need to get up to Wyganowski‘s and get some time on his lathe, if he’s so inclined — I need to turn down and tap a mounting post for my Bringheli fixture so that I can toss it in the workstand I’ve built. I also need to turn down some sleeve tubing while I’m there.

Tonight, I’ll be dropping a 29er frame at the powdercoater’s. Tomorrow, I’ll be dropping a lugged road frame and fork with him, too. And then probably on Thursday or so, Erin’s cyclocross frame will be getting dropped-off, and hopefully done in-time for Minnecycle. I’m getting nervous about that one.

Also, at some point, I’ll be changing the look of this website. Ideally before Minnecycle, but not 100% sure on that one. Lots else to do.

Struggling for a Head Badge

The hardest part of getting my frames to “completion” has been the battle to get a head badge design done. My experience with design is as a web designer, not as a graphic artist. A gap in my skillset (for more on skills you should have see my other blog entry “Becoming a Framebuilder“), to be sure, and one I eventually plan to rectify.

I’m on my second artist now. I won’t go into details as to why I’ve switched except to say that my vision didn’t match that of the artist, and with both our schedules being crazy busy, I was falling further and further behind the curve. As it is, I won’t have them ready for Minnecycle at the end of the month. He did produce a pretty nifty rough draft of one that’s very art deco, and while I’m not 100% sure I’ll use it as a full-time badge, it might become available as a limited-edition variant:

Possible head badge. Designed by Aaron Smith.

Everyone has something on a bike that jumps out at them at first look. For me, it’s the head badge. (I also struggle with whether to type it as “headbadge” or as two separate words.) So when I commit, it’s got to be just right. I’ve asked Aaron to come up with another design, and given him a little bit of feedback re: styling and so forth. I’m hoping that he can come up with something in the next week or so that I can show at Minnecycle, and have put on bikes by the end of October.

So. I’d love your thoughts on Aaron’s first crack at it, pictured above. What’s the first thing you think when you see it?

Becoming a Framebuilder

If you’re serious about learning the craft of framebuilding, you’ve probably already done some footwork. You know that UBI offers a course, that a large number of builders will teach you how to do it, or that you can pick up the Paterek Manual and teach yourself (not recommended).

Knowing bicycle design theory, brazing (or TIG welding), mitering, and so forth is all well and good, but there’s so much more you should probably know stuff that isn’t normally covered in framebuilding courses — things related to design, running a business and so forth. I’ll break it down into three categories: Essential, Should Know, and Nice to Know.

Essentials

Math, specifically algebra and geometry, both of which are absolutely essential for frame design. In business, it would be good to have some basic understanding of how to run a business, and project management. Language skills — especially written communication — are extremely important. Also extremely essential would be understanding how to operate mills and lathes without killing yourself.

Should Know

Art classes on design and color theory would help (so you’re not producing frames that look like a drunk clown barfed Skittles all over them). Jewelery-making and metalworking art classes would go a long way toward helping you carve some fantastic lugs. Marketing is helpful, too — understanding marketing strategies and basic concepts like ROI (return-on-investment) are good, and knowing best practices for things like social media, SEM, email, etc. I could write for days on the subject of marketing. Social and customer service skills are huge — you want to find customers and keep them happy. Some applied mechanical engineering/common sense would be helpful, too — you’ll frequently find yourself wanting to make your own tools to solve particular problems that keep cropping up.

Nice to Know

Painting and powdercoating — I don’t count this as essential because there’s a plethora of providers (alliteration, see also: language skills, above) that can do it for you; knowing it, however, will allow you to save a bunch of money and will increase your profit margins. Knowing basic web design and dev work would be good for maintaining your website. (You do have a website, don’t you?)

Summation

Ultimately, this list is based on my experience thus far. It’s highly likely that I’m overlooking things that I haven’t bumped up against yet. If there’s anyone else out there who is building — whether a newbie or a master — I’d love some input on this list.

Behind Schedule

So the move to the new location went off without a hitch. I’m now in the third bay of the garage of my new house, in the south ‘burbs of Minneapolis. I realize I haven’t been posting here lately, and I missed July’s email newsletter completely. I’m in catch-up mode for the rest of this month. I’ll be getting the email newsletter out, posting some new pics, finishing some frames, and getting ready for Minnecycle.

Minneapolis Institute of Art Show

I’m not at the show tonight because I’m working at the bike shop tonight and I am preparing to move across the city next week. However, it would behoove you to go and see my compadres Josh of Three Stars Cycles and Alex of A-Train Cycles. Both are exceptional builders and great friends.

Show information.

Curious

So everyone’s got a dream bike. Mine is one of my own builds — a stainless 953 front triangle with a carbon back end, ENVE carbon everything (rims, fork, stem, seatpost), and Shimano’s Di2 for the drivertrain package. Tons of little bits from Fairwheel to keep weight down. Someday, I might even have the time to build it and the money to buy it. We’ll see.

What’s your dream bike? Share.

Cycling is the New Golf, And That’s Good

I used to cringe when I heard the title of this post spoken aloud — mostly because I visualized old retirees in Florida in plaid pants pulled up to their armpits taking short, sharp hacks at the ball with their pitching wedge and throwing turf everywhere. As you might guess, I have no fondness for golf as a sport — for me it’s more of a drinking game than anything else, and I’m usually half in the bag by the sixth hole.

The term, though, gets thrown around pretty derisively inside bike shops, and I see a lot of quiet hostility toward the doctors and lawyers that are coming in and dropping $10K to $20K on bikes. Most of that hostility seems to come from the hipster kids who are too shortsighted to see the benefits of having cycling be the new golf. And there are benefits outside of those to the riders.

To be fair, there are detriments. A lot of these guys are popping up on club and team rides, and don’t have the skills to ride in the pack. They’re camouflaged by the fancy bike, the team kit, and the ability to talk the talk, but when the rubber meets the road, sometimes these guys are causing skin to meet asphalt, too. And yeah, there’s the mindset of “buying their way in” and not paying their dues, but I think that’s generally a load of shit, when you consider the number of people lining up at Category 5 crits on $5K+ Dura-Ace equipped bikes with Zipp 404s are basically doing the same thing.

All that said, let’s look at the good stuff.

First, they’re bringing enthusiasm to the sport. I see a lot of these guys come into the sport, and if they’re with the right club/team, they end up becoming racers, and better depth of field is a great thing. They become advocates for the bike, and I love seeing people who are enthusiastic about what they do, especially when it’s cycling.

Second, for small businesses, these guys are exceptional customers. At one of the shops I previously worked at, we had a customer (a doctor) spend almost $20,000 on Trek Project One bikes in the span of two months. In a business where a small shop would consider $10K a fantastic day, and the average day in-season runs $3000-$5000, an extra $10K a month for two months is a hell of a windfall.

Third, there’s a significant segment of these guys who are going to get very badly hooked on this and spend the rest of their lives riding. For shops, that means customers returning year after year. For their kids, it means a good, healthy role model. For the country, it means more healthy people and less cost in Medicare/Medicaid. And for all of it, it means more people on bikes, more recognition that bikes aren’t just a toy, and that they have their place on the roads.

So yeah, you can bemoan the Forbes article that tells readers why they need a custom bike, you can bitch about how it’s ruining cycling, you can complain all you like — but you’re still wrong.

(Man, I wrote this at an ungodly hour of the morning — and it shows. Rambly, disjointed, and not as well thought-out as I had expected. I’m going to let it stand as-is. What’s your opinion on this whole “new golf” thing?)