Lunch Break

Proceeding swimmingly on Erin’s CX frame. Beautiful, if somewhat time-consuming, job of slotting the chainstays. (Mental note: in 2012, invest in a slotting saw.) The work you see here was done entirely by-hand, with a knife-blade file, followed by a flat file.

Chainstay and dropout.

Going to take a quick break and get some lunch in my stomach, and then get back to this.

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.

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.