Friday, September 26, 2008

Friday morning musings...

Thought I'd throw up a couple more pics of Eric's 650b progress for ya...

There is a plethora of braze ons for this bike just waiting for a little silver lovin...

One of Eric's requests was for a bottle opener on the non-drive dropout...as there are no vertical dropouts with such a little beasty ready for purchase, I had to fabricate one. This little guy started out from a large chunk of 302 stainless. Some time on the mill and a little hand filing, and we have the rough shape below...

All welded up to the dropout, there is still a little hand filing to be done to even out one small ripple in the flat section. This little guy will be polished and masked off so that no matter how many caps it cracks off in it's life, no paint will be sacrificed ;)

I had originally built up a stem for Eric's build based off of some early conversations, but the final design ended up going in a bit different geometric direction so a new one needed to be made. I needed a 110 length, 5 degree rise with a "knee saver" design; ie...no clamp bosses on the rear of the piece.
I ended up creating a piece that recessed the steerer clamp into the body of the stem, all nicely molded together with a small silver fillet that I'm going to leave unfiled for a little bit of handmade character.
And finally, a shot of the whole enchilada coming together...
Eric's project has taken on a bit of it's own life, as new challenges and additions keep manifesting. The most recent in the challenge of fitting a rack to the rear that will accommodate the spacing necessary for disc brakes and V-brakes...a request that no standard rack can obtain without fugly add on rigging. So...a custom rack needs to be made. I'm going to fab one up that will attach using internal bosses so that when it is not attached, there will be no visual indication on the frame to detract from the clean lines. Got the material ordered up and it should land sometime next week.

I also need to construct a Ti bar for this build, so will be doing that next week with some other Ti work... hehhh (big sigh), everything always takes longer than you'd like :)

I'm in the shop early today so that I can bust out quickly. Gotta prepare for an 8 hour class that I'm teaching at the fire academy on Saturday on managing the first 15 minutes of critical incidents...is it just me or does the time required not meet the expectations of the subject?

In other news, it's nice to hear from folks who enjoy reading the blog and tune in to see what's shaking. I've added a "Follower" link on the right sidebar of the page. If you want to follow the blog and see who else is reading, please sign up. Jeff and Wes of First Flight are the lone follower right now...I'd hate to have my reputation sullied by having only those two as devotees ;)

More October bars going out in the morning...I'll post up a list of customers who will be getting the next shipment on Sunday.

Oh, big birthday wishes going out to my cuz Chris...38 on Wednesday and still riding like a teenager.

cheers,

rody

2 comments:

steve garro said...

hey, rody - are those stainless dropouts? quite the project there - are you going to carve the shifters from solid billet too? :} steve.

wESd said...

hey, screw you if you dont want me on your watch list. i was hoping for at least three fifty for reading your bull crap. wESd