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.

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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.

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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’…