Paint Masks Acquired

First batch of paint masks:

The paint masks, courtesy of Skaaly.

Always an important step.

Accents

There’s been a little touch of class I’ve been wanting to build for the first batch of frames, and with the 29′er completion fast approaching, I decided to hop to it. I’ve got a 2-foot by 2-foot sheet of 22-gauge T-304 stainless with a nice brush finish waiting for me over at Discount Steel. And I’ve got waterjetting arranged for. This is going to make for some classy, classy looks.

Wednesday night, I dropped off the stainless, then I head to Paul’s to get crackin’ on the last of the 29er work. It’s down to just a few minor touches, and then she’ll be ready for paint!

Minnecycle and More…

Due to my workload at the office and my wedding preparations, I am likely end up in a position where I am unable to make it to Minnecycle this year. The 29′er is further behind the curve than I’d like, and as a result, I don’t think I’ll be able to get it into a paint booth with enough time to be ready for the show. A little frustrating, but I am unwilling to cut corners on it in order to get it in front of eyeballs.

What I’m opting to do instead is to get the 29′er and the commuter done-up right, along with the other a few other projects I have kickin’ around in boxes, and take them to NAHBS in Austin in 2011. It’s certainly nothing against Minnecycle, mind you — Erik Noren runs a fantastic show, and it’s something I’m very much looking forward to showing at come summer of 2011.

So what I’m hoping to take to NAHBS 2011 is:

• the fully-rigid 29′er
• the lugged commuter bike
• the track bike
• the Bridgestone XO-1 tribute I’m building for Jim Oliver
• my personal singlespeed belt drive road bike

Head Tube Art

Please to announce that I finally drew up a logo that works perfectly for the head tube badge. Tonight, I’ll be doing a final sketch, scanning it and getting it into Illustrator for vectorization. Holy crap! Very excited about this.

In other news, I’ll be sending the paint mask artwork out for quotes tonight, too.

Website, 29′er, More

So as you can see, the new website is up and running, more or less. Some content clearly needs to be added, and I need to do some clean-up on the stylesheet to fix the typography. But all in all, I’m pretty happy with the way things have turned out. Do you have any thoughts on it? Let me know in the comments.

The 29′er approaches completion. Pretty much all that’s left is putting the seatstay and chainstay bridges in place and the water bottle bolts into the DT and ST, and a few other tiny details. A big thanks goes out to Erik Noren at Peacock Groove for the loan of his Anvil disc brake fixtures this weekend, as they were instrumental in getting this sucker done. So hopefully by Sunday, this thing will be done and ready to go to paint.

The commuter is temporarily stalled, which isn’t a big deal. I’m just focusing my energies on the ‘niner right now. Once that’s done, I’ll be turning my attention to it and completing it, hopefully only a couple of weeks later. I’d like to have them both ready for Minnecycle 2. The parts kits are basically taken care of — just waiting on a back-order from Chris King, and then I should have everything in-hand.

The Commuter

When I first started in on this venture, I wasn’t sure how I felt about lugged frames. I knew I didn’t like the aesthetic of TIG’ed steel and that fillet brazing got me all hot and bothered. Sure, lugs had their place, and that was on old classic frames. I’ve since come around, and am very enamored of lugs. This frame wasn’t necessary for my fleet — I already had a commuter bike, built around a Surly Cross-Check frame. Minneapolis, being the home of Surly, means that these frames are a dime-a-dozen, and with my dwindling storage space at home, I opted to build a frame to replace a member of my fleet.

And thus, the commuter. Touring bike geometry, lugs, and classic lines. In-progress. Should be completed later this week and then off to powdercoat.

Material: Columbus SP throught, except Columbus Nivachrome top tube; Walter lugs, Suntour front dropouts and Shimano rear dropouts
Features: internal routing of brake cable through top tube