Jumping the Gun

In talking to people online this weekend, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not at a point where I should be offering frames for sale yet. I’m grateful to those people for pulling my head out of my ass, and have come to some conclusions about how this should be approached. First off, I am not going to be offering frames to anyone who wants one. I’m going to use the next year or two to hone my craft and get to the point where I can offer a well-crafted product.

So I’ll be setting up a prototype program with people I know. They pay for tubing/parts, paint, and maybe a little bit for my time, and I build them a frame that’s considered a “prototype” — they get to keep it, of course, but I’ll be asking them for feedback on the build, and for time to look at/analyze the frame every so often. I’m going to hash out the fine details, of course, but I do plan to use this as a springboard into more awesome stuff.

I currently haven’t decided how many to do in the program, either. It’ll be a good-sized number, though.

Weekend Update

So this weekend I got a lot more bike stuff done than usual.

• Most notable is the addition of the email list. Subscribe now, and you can get $50 off your first purchase of a frameset (note: does not apply to custom racks, custom forks, or repair work). SPECIAL OFFER NO LONGER VALID.

• The most exciting news is that I got two inquiries about Reynolds 953 custom cyclocross frames. I’ve sent out quotes on both, and am waiting to hear back. Reynolds 953 is a fascinating material and I’m toying with the idea of building myself a lugged CX frame out of it, too. Would be an awesome ride!

• My bride-to-be had her bridal shower on Saturday, so while the house was filling up with women, I made my exit and took about 90 minutes of riding time on my Cervelo. Unlike a lot of steel builders that I’ve met, I don’t have a problem with carbon — or other materials, for that matter. It was a pretty good time, despite the stifling heat. I didn’t leave the Minneapolis city limits, but still had plenty of time with minimal/no cars.

• The niner frame is basically finished. The perfectionist in me is screaming about tweaking the fillets, and I probably will this week. I’m only waiting on waterjet parts before I can ship this sucker off to paint, really. Which brings us to…

• …waterjet parts. Skaaly’s doing his best to rectify the situation, and I respect that.

• Stopping back over at Peacock Groove tonight. I owe Erik a set of front dropouts and I have them in my grubby little paws. He hooked me up a couple months ago when I was building the fork for the 29′er.

• Minnecycle 2 is this coming weekend, and I won’t be showing there, which is fine. I do plan to corner Chris Kvale and talk to him about his paint work. Definitely want to ship the 29er to him, along with future work. (The lugged commuter is probably going to go to Airglow in Georgia for its work.)

Chugging Along

The 29′er frame is essentially finished. I need to lightly brush over a few of the fillets with some sandpaper, remove some of the surface rust with hydrochloric acid, and she’d basically be done after that.

Today, I should be getting the re-do of the waterjetted parts from Skaaly. That will encompass the head tube badge and down tube logos, which I’ll silver-braze to the frame next weekend. After that, the frame will be ready to go to paint.

Upcoming, I’ve got a custom fork project for a local client — a lugged cyclocross fork to go with his Croll frame. The parts are en route to me now, so I should be building that sucker this coming weekend.

I’ll be adding a price list for custom forks (and my frames price list) to this site in the near future.

Communications Blackouts

Got a call yesterday about doing a custom fork (possibly two) for a couple of old Croll cyclocross frames. Yeah, I can do that. I’ve pulled together a quote, but now I have to call the guy back because the email address I have for him isn’t working. Thank God for the iPhone’s “History” function.

…

Unrelated to building cool custom stuff out of steel, the impending shutdown of MplsBikeLove in favor of a different format of site with a more national scope and a business model had me thinking. I have had bike612.com for a couple of years now, and decided on a whim on Tuesday night to set up a new forum over there. It doesn’t have a ton of traffic yet, but it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out once MBL shuts down on the 24th.

I’m sure there’s some people who think that this was a really dick move, and they might be partly right. To clarify, though, I don’t have anything against Jeremy Werst — I think he’s an awesome guy and I think that his creation, MBL, is a great, vibrant community, which is difficult to build. However, I’m disappointed that the focus of the new BikeLove is going to be more of a nationwide thing, rather than focused on the Minneapolis area. I think that the focus on the Twin Cities area is what made MBL so great in the first place. So, I put up the site. And we’ll see how it plays out.

…

Still on the theme of communications blackouts, there’s still no word from Skaaly on the waterjet re-do, nor on the frame he wants me to build for him. I’ll probably give him a call mid-day tomorrow if I don’t hear from him soon.

As for my next session in the shop, I should give Paul a call today and see what’s shakin’…

Production, Paint and More

Things have been progressing a little slowly over the past few weeks, as I’ve had a lot of wedding commitments that have required attention. I hope to be back at full production rates later this week. If you’re at all curious about what’s been transpiring, I offer you this short list:

1. Wedding planning, which requires entire weekends out-of-town.
2. Wedding planning, which occupies entire evenings.
3. Dental visit last week, which requires follow-up this week.
4. Weekend-long social engagement with family.
5. Etc.

So there you have it.

On the actual business-side of the Great Life Equation™, there is good and bad.

Good: I have a general agreement with Skaaly, the guy who does my waterjet work, to build him a custom track frame (for real velodrome use). We’ve discussed the details — stylistic details, geometry, paint, and all that good stuff, and I’ve given him a quote. At this point, I am just waiting on a deposit from him before I can order the tubing and make with the building. His design is going to be fairly similar to the pursuit frame I am building for myself, so I will probably build the two concurrently.

Bad: I had been planning on using local painter Dominick Austin for the work on the commuter frame. I knew about his longer lead times and so on, but I think that based on this article in the Star Tribune that I’ll be holding off. I hope that Dominick can rectify the situation to the satisfaction of the client and to the people that are castigating him. As for me, I’ll be watching his work and his progress as a businessman, and hope that there’s the possibility of doing work with him in the future. For the time being, however, I will be going elsewhere.

So that, kids, is where things currently stand.