Friday, November 07, 2008

Mini-Me

As per my standard policy, I only post framebuilding pictures when I have something unusual or interesting to talk about. This fits the bill - a road/touring/travel frame for my friend Casie. She's VERY small, so it's a 49.5cm toptube - probably the smallest skinny tire bike I've ever built!

Humorously enough, there are no butted tubes *short enough* to use as a toptube on this bike in combination with the couplers, so I had to use a straightgauge 4130 toptube - it's actually heavier than the downtube! Between the couplers (extra 300 grams or so) and the non-butted tube (probably 75g or so) it's quite a bit heavier than most frames this size - it'll end up a tad over 4 pounds with all the rack mounts and fiddly bits. Still, it's meant to be unkillable and capable of carrying a load if needed, so I'm not worried about it.

Building the fork for it today, and then I'll see if I can get ahold of her for a color choice. She's in Borneo right now, so that may or may not pan out.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

650 or 700? Are you building the fork also?
~E

Walt said...

Anon -

It's about as small a 700c frame as I could conceive of doing - had to design to avoid *crank* overlap on this one.

She wants to be able to use a wide variety of (cross, road, etc) tires, so 650 wasn't a great option. We thought about 26" wheels, but in the end we decided to squeeze her onto the 700s.