Black Friday Acquisitions

So last Friday, I did the unthinkable. I ventured forth and did some Black Friday shopping. God help me. During Thanksgiving Day at my mom’s place, I happened upon the Home Depot ads, which showed a 26-inch, 9-drawer roll-away tool chest for $149. The store opened at 5 a.m., so I got up at four, got my shit together and rolled over to the Shakopee location. I was around 20th in line when the doors opened, and the line stretched back 100 people or so. I bought the chest and got the heck out of there.

Around 8 a.m., I decided the deal was too good to pass up and went back and purchased a second one.

Two new tool chests.

I tore up my knuckles while installing the casters, and then spent some serious time organizing my shit. The one on the left is all framebuilding — tubing, components, welding equipment, and metal fabrication tools. The one on the right is all bicycle-specific tools — my old Park AK-32 kit along with all the other stuff I’ve acquired since I bought it in 1999.

Pretty glad I went and got these. Yeah, they’re inexpensive and their quality isn’t what I originally had in mind, but combined they’re still less than half the cost of what I had been looking at, with much better total storage volume.

Greenlight!

Very excited to announce that my CFO (Chief Financial Officer, AKA “Wife”) approved the project to upgrade the electrical in the garage and to insulate/drywall the whole thing. By the end of October, I should have a very well-appointed garage — extra electrical, insulated, drywalled, with a huge copy of the headbadge painted on the wall. And new workbenches, but I’ll be doing that on my own dime.

Pretty stoked. Got to give my father-in-law (master electrician) a ring.

Preparing for Winter

So tonight, after the office, I’ll be making a Home Depot run. It’s amazing how often I’m there, being a new homeowner. I do think there’ll be a day where my number of visits begins to drop, but man. Not soon, I suspect. Tonight’s run is so that I can pick the brains of some specialists on the nature of insulating and drywalling my garage, so that I can work through the winter.

The other prep work I need to undertake is getting my paws on some good winter gloves, and some winter riding shoes. I think that with Murphy-Hanrehan being so close to the house, and the singletrack open all winter, that I’d be a fool to not try riding it. The trainer is going to get cold quick. And I’ll need a break from the Sufferfest videos.

Those of you that live in cold-weather environments: what do you do to enable outdoor riding in the winter? Or do you just suffer through other indignities cross-training indoors?

The One in Which I Whine About Things

1. Do you have any idea how tough it is to justify building yourself a Pugsley/Moonlander bike when it’s highly unlikely you’ll ever really ride in the cold/snow? Man, it’s tough. A past history of frostbite and hypothermia rendered me highly susceptible to cold injuries. Even having to do things in gloves here in February can leave my hands hurting so bad it feels like they’re being crushed in a vise. The chances of me getting a fat bike out in the snow are pretty low. But I still keep thinking about it.

2. I really, really need to stop looking at the workshop pictures of other framebuilders. I get envious. I know I should be thankful for what I have, and I am. But man, I look at some of these setups on Flickr and all I can think about is how much awesome stuff I could build in there. The name of the game is bootstrapping, and that involves patience. I’ll get there. Eventually.

From Humble Beginnings

The humble start. Click to enlarge.

As you’ve probably noticed from the pictures I post on here, I don’t have the super-fancy workshop that a lot of other builders have. There’s not $20,000 of Anvil fixtures laying about, nor racks full of tubing. I don’t post nifty pictures of freshly-TIG’ed titanium. There’s not a lovingly cared-for Bridgeport mill in the background.

No, I make do with what I’ve got and can afford. I’m bootstrapping myself into this rather than laying out twenty to thirty grand on equipment up-front. I work in my garage, which I’ll be doing some work on in the coming weeks in preparation for winter: expanding my electrical capacity, insulation and drywall will follow.

After that, I’ll start putting money toward Anvil equipment, a mill and a lathe, a nice drill press. The things that would be “nice to have” but aren’t absolutely necessary to build a bike with.

Someday, the TIG welder will come along, and so will an Anvil fixture. So I can start dabbling in titanium.

The most important thing in that fully built-out shop, will be a picture of my current workbench, in a frame, so I can remember where I came from. I don’t ever want to forget the time when I had to “think like a framebuilder” (as Wyganowski once told me I was doing) — using the tools at-hand to a bit of creativity to come up with amazing pieces of craftsmanship.

The Traveling Framebuilder

As you may (or may not) know, my framebuilding is primarily done in two location — Paul Wyganowski‘s workshop (where I pay monthly rent for use of the space/equipment) and at Josh Kruck‘s, where he is kind enough to allow me to hang out and bum torch time off of him. I’ve been scraping together the cash to get out of that situation for two reasons:

1. While I love working with Paul, the rent plus the cost in wear-and-tear on my car is taking a toll on my finances.
2. While I love working with Josh, my ingrained sense of guilt (genetic, due to a Catholic parent) is taking a toll on my conscience.

Two weeks ago, I started ordering equipment. This week, I started going balls-out. I have pretty much everything I need — except oxy-acetylene tanks — to accomplish about 70% of my work at-home. And I’ll be working to fill that gap in the coming months.

This is not to say that I won’t work with them both in the future — because I totally will. They’re both awesome dudes, and I love talking framebuilding with both of them.

Workshop, More

So this past Friday, I started ordering/buying equipment for my workshop, so that I can stop paying rent and start kicking ass in my own facility. I’ve broken the build-out down into phases, where I’ll be adding the equipment gradually over time. I’m very much in Phase 1 right now. I placed orders with Enco (workbench and fittings), Paragon Machineworks (tubing blocks), purchased a used torch kit from Vince Dominguez, and dropped Bob Brown a quick email about getting him to lathe me a BB post. I’ll be buying some more stuff on the 30th of March (bike shop payday), and the 1st of April (other job payday).

In other fun, I’m working at a bike shop again (no big surprise there), what’s been fun about it is that I work with Alex Cook of A-Train Cycles. Alex is a UBI-educated builder and has a lovely lugged KVA stainless bike hanging on the wall at the Bicycle Chain that is amazing to look at. He’s a talented builder and a nice guy and I’m going to get bike-building knowledge from him and he’ll be getting marketing knowledge from me.

So my brother’s lugged road frame should be in a paint booth soon. Thank the gods. There’s only a few small items on it that I want to address (mentioned over in my personal blog) before that happens. Andrew’s 29er frame isn’t far behind — just some fillet clean-up, seatstays, and cable guides/bottle bosses. Justin’s is a little further back, but I’m pretty pleased with how that’s coming along, too.

Getting to be an exciting time here. Much more to follow!