New Digs for Some, New Headaches for Me

So last night, I spent some time at Erik Noren’s new digs for Peacock Groove. He and Vincent Dominguez and the guys from Speedhound are moving into a larger area in their building. I was helping with clean-up and prep work. This was basically scraping old paint and plaster off the brick walls using a scraper/brush designed for cleaning your grill. Yeah. Fun times, that. Good to see the dude again, though.

My attempts at setting up a facility in the basement of my rental have been somewhat thwarted. Specifically because there’s no outlets in there. The plan was to do a “lightweight” facility for mitering and prepping the parts of a frame for the welding/cold-setting process at Paul’s. Most of my mitering is done by hand, but things like vent holes require a drill press. To be fair, I only gave things a cursory look. After my upcoming honeymoon, I’ll delve into it some more and see what I can come up with.

Webby Stuff

You may not have looked as far as the footer of this website, but we’re on a few social media sites:

• Twitter
• Facebook

Additionally, there’s two more sites that I’m involved in:

• DanBailey.net — my personal blog
• Bike612 — a forum for local Twin Cities cyclists

Improving Throughput

So I want to be able to speed up the framebuilding process somewhat — without sacrificing quality, of course — and I’m trying to identify the best way to do so. Once my honeymoon is complete, I’ll be renting space and equipment from Paul Wyganowski. However, with the drive to Princeton being what it is, I will probably have to limit myself to 2 days per week on-site.

That would normally put a pretty serious crimp on the framebuilding. However, I have a nice big empty space in the basement, which I am going to take advantage of.

My plan, once back from the honeymoon, is to set up my drafting table down there, along with some seating, and start pulling together the basic infrastructure I need to start doing the immediate prep-work on the lugs and tubes — mitering, basically. Any other work — brazing, cold-setting, alignment — will happen at Paul’s place. So that means a workbench, a vise, tubing blocks, a few power tools, and some files.

That’s phase one of the infrastructure building. Phase two will be buying the medium-sized infrastructure stuff — disc brake fixtures and fork fixture from Anvil, for example — that I will keep (or take with me) to Paul’s. Phase three, the big ‘un, will happen not long after we buy a house (or I make other arrangements for space), and I’ll add my own granite slab, frame fixture, mill and lathe to the mix.

Thoughts

I’ve been making modifications to a frame for a local rider. The frame was built by a now-out-of-business local guy whose frames have a bit of a cult following around here. Now, I know I’m still pretty new to the building thing, and I’ve only learned the methods imparted to me by my teacher, but I was highly unimpressed with what I looked at. I’m not going to name names, of course. From my perspective the things that were done were done in the name of speeding-up production — something from a business perspective is essential.

A shortcut that compromises the lifespan of the frame, however, is unacceptable. Earlier this year, in another blog, I wrote about a fillet brazed tandem that I saw that was rotting away from the inside-out, a symptom of poor ventilation strategy. The bike I’m working on is very similar. When I return it to the owner, I’ll be discussing with him the best ways to lengthen the lifespan of his bike.

I just don’t understand why a builder would sacrifice the overall quality and lifespan of his work to save 15-30 minutes. What gives?

A Rare Weekend Update

Not much bike time this weekend. Basically, it’ll be filing down some fillets on the niner, and doing the Sunday morning recovery ride with the Birchwood team. I’m fatigued and out-of-shape, so it’s going to be a struggle to keep up, I suspect. Might have to throw the race wheels on the road bike, just for a little extra edge.

Picked up a couple of bike books this weekend — Bicycling Science and Bike Snob: Systematically & Mercilessly Realigning the World of Cycling, both of which I intend to save for honeymoon beach reading.

What Up?

So the 29er is on the verge of going to paint. I built it up with the parts package and took her out for a short spin. There’s a few little quirks that are related to my parts selection, but nothing that can’t be resolved. I’m going to do some touch-up work on her fillets this weekend and ship her off for the first round of paint on Monday, where the white for the panels will be put on the downtube, stays, and back half of the top tube. I also get to pick up the paint masks on Monday, which are essential to the second step of the paint, which is the metallic black.

Right around then, I need to get back up to Princeton to finish building the fork I’ve been working on for James. It’s an interesting project, because we’re taking a frame that was build for 650b wheels and modifying it to take 700c. The frame will accommodate the larger wheel with a 35c tire — just barely. Since the new fork must accommodate a similar wheel/tire combo, it has to be designed with the frames tube angles and bottom bracket drop in-mind. The goal is to build a fork that leaves the bike stable and predictable. I’ve got the crown/steerer together and the blades raked. Next session, I’ll double-check against the blueprint and get the dropout sockets on it, along with the brazing of the fork/fender eyelets onto the dropouts.

After that, I need to get the chainstays into the commuter frame and start getting that sucker around to finished. It’ll likely be headed to Airglow in Georgia for its paint work — a white pearl finish with metallic red lug lining and downtube logo. And there’s a track pursuit frame in the queue to follow that.