Sunday, February 28, 2010

We now have a good understanding...

...of how bad I suck on the track. 1:27 Kilo, bitches!

Of course, that was my first attempt at such a thing, and I drifted WAY up above the red line a few times - need to work on the start, too. 1:20 or bust! Yes, that's right - my goal is to be at the bottom end of mediocre.

Thanks to Charlie and Nick for the encouragement and timing.

In other news, 2 hours on the track is freakin hard.

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Speedy delivery!

Well, not all that speedy. Sarah is volunteering over at Community Cycles today, so I thought I'd drop by and bring some "one man's trash" treasures with me.

-Dropoutless frame (but with a nice 1" headset and fork).
-Who doesn't love Rynolite 700c rims? Free extra-short spokes included!
-About 15 pounds (no joke) of headsets and bottom brackets of various kinds.
-Container of homemade cookies.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Community Cycles, they are a kickass nonprofit who provide all kinds of help/services to bicyclists of all kinds. Check 'em out, join them, or just donate a few bucks - it's a great cause.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Track frames

I have been having a great time riding at the track lately, and I'm planning to start working with Nick to build his new track bike soon, so I thought I'd do a quick post announcing that I'm now officially in the custom track bike business.

Custom track frames (that's custom geometry and custom round tubing) will run $950. Why so much cheaper than other frame configurations? Well, track frames are simple, to be honest. Design work is much easier than other frame types, there are no brazeons or brake tabs to worry about, etc. I do less work, quite simply, so I can charge less.

Custom steel track forks will be available for the standard $220, or I can order you a fork from a variety of sources. Parts kits are as always available as well.

Keep in mind that we're talking about a round-tubes/sprinting type bike here. If you want a super crazy airfoil TT bike, I would charge you a lot more money, because it would take a much larger amount of work. Got questions? Drop me a line.

If you'd like to try out my personal bike (it's a 55cm toptube, and I have a variety of stem lengths available to fine-tune the reach) and you are certified for open riding at the Boulder track, you're welcome to borrow my bike anytime I'm not riding it. Just call or email me to see if you can use it.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Tape! Tiny frames! Couplers!

Yes, you can see all of those things in this picture. Explanations below.

Tape: I use tape for all kinds of things when building a frame. In this case, you can see 2 of the common uses - blocking off water bottle boss holes (to keep the argon inside when backpurging) and holding seatstays in place to tack. Yes, you can get a fancy add-on (though this particular fixture might be too old) for the Anvil Journeyman to hold your seatstays - but if your miters are good, and you've got the taping skills, you don't need it. Easier with road frames than mountain bikes, though. I also use old Cateye computer sensor magnets to hold things in place quite often (bridges and small bosses that will be welded rather than brazed, most often).

Tiny frames/couplers: This is Jennifer's 650c wheel roadie with S&S couplers. It is so small (front center of 535mm!) that while butted top and downtubes exist that are (just barely) short enough, once you add the couplers in, it's a whole different story. The only butted tubing that will work, in fact, is *external butt seat tubes* - in this case 28.6 and 31.8 x 1.2/.6/.9mm ones from Nova. This means that if you look very closely (not in this picture, but when it's powdercoated) you'll be able to see that the front of the toptube and downtube are oversized by just a little bit (about 1mm in both cases). I should come up with a catchy name for this "feature" and charge extra...

And yes, I could have used .028" straightgauge 4130, but the weight savings would only be a couple of grams (literally) and the bike would end up a lot weaker. I'm not a fan of anything thinner than .035" in straightgauge 4130, so this was the route I ended up going.

Long story short, the couplers make the bike quite a bit heavier than you might expect in this case - beyond the additional weight of the couplers themselves, I'm forced to use much thicker tubing than the .7/.4/.7mm I'd probably otherwise use. So this is a tiny frame that still weighs about 4.2# - it would be quite a bit lighter (though less useful) without them.

Your waitlist questions - answered

Got a couple of questions about the waitlist that I thought I'd address here (warning, content to follow is very boring, no pictures).

-"Why does your waitlist say 6 months? There are like 10 people on it, and if you do one frame/week, that means it should only be 10 weeks!"

3 reasons. First, the one frame/week is when I'm actually here - sometimes I go on vacation for whatever reason (in case anyone was confused, I did not pick this occupation to get rich). So recently, for example, I was off for almost 3 weeks for the holidays and a trip to Arizona. And yes, I could probably put my nose to the grindstone and build faster - but I've found that if I rush through things, I don't have much fun (nor do I get to ride or socialize much) and I tend to do a crap job. That's not what anyone wants.

Second, my design and construction time isn't the only factor in how long you'll wait for your frame - the powdercoater can take anywhere from 1-5 weeks (though 1-2 weeks is normal) and shipping can take several days/up to a week as well. So add that time.

Finally, I don't like to promise something I can't deliver. If you look at the waitlist (as of today, 2/24/10), you'll notice that the bikes at the powdercoater were ordered on 10/9/09 and 10/20/09. So assuming they're done by the end of the month, and take one week to ship, we'll be at about 5 months total wait time (from deposit to the box dropped off at the front door). I'd say that's about typical - I'm 1-2 months ahead of schedule most of the time.

Of course, there are plenty of cases where something goes wrong (I screw up, powdercoater screws up, FedEx screws up, family emergency, whatever) and having that extra month or so of spare time can be very helpful in those cases. I *hate* failing to deliver on time, so I like to be very, very conservative about making delivery promises. The custom bike world is full of stories of bikes delivered months (or even years) late, or not at all - I don't want to add any involving me to that extensive canon if I can help it.

Finally (I guess this is reason 3.5) I've found that if I have a long waitlist, and am upfront about how long it will take to get a customer her bike, I get much better (more patient, less crazy) customers who are fun to deal with and understanding if something is delayed. Cool people who plan ahead and don't mind waiting for what they want, many of whom end up becoming friends, are exactly the kind of people I want to build for. If I promised 3 months, and it took 5 or 6, I would get annoying, hurried customers who would end up unhappy. So I try to underpromise and overdeliver. It's that simple.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

The Stevemobile

While building this frame, I came to a really strange realization - it had been something like 6 weeks since I built a hardtail. What with the holidays, a vacation to AZ, and several people in a row ordering full suspension bikes, I found my chainstay mitering fixture covered with dust - crazy! I think that might be the longest I've gone between hardtail (or road) frame builds ever (meaning, in the last 6 years, since I started doing this silly framebuilding thing).

So anyway, luckily I still remember how to do it. This is Steve's new 29" setup, with some rack mounts and nice relaxed geometry. Built beefy, not light, but to be built up with a full XX grouppo (whew!) and King/Arch wheels. Should end up being quite fast and light even with a pretty burly frame.

As a side note, some of the more geeky readers may notice that the rear brake hoseguides have been TIG welded in place, rather than silver brazed. The powdercoat guys were having a lot of trouble getting the flux out from under the guides, which resulted in a lot of resprays and delays. No fun for anyone. So now I TIG 'em, which is a pain, but means that they stay clean and don't cause problems at the powdercoat end. The old style cable guides (they look like this) from Nova didn't have this problem because they had far less space underneath the guide to get gunked up.

So why change to the new style guides? Simple, they're the same price, weigh about 1g each instead of 5g (yes, I know, that only saves you 15-20g for the whole bike, but it's free... I'll take it), are *stainless steel* so that when your hose rubs through the powdercoat (which it will) they don't rust, and best of all - they can flex a little bit, meaning that you're creating a far less gnarly stress riser where the guide is attached to the frame (or fork). I get them from Kirk Pacenti's site . Kirk only sells a few items, but the stuff he has made is all very creative, fills a needed niche, and is probably worth having. He also was responsible for bringing 650b offroad tires, rims, and forks to market, which is a huge deal. A great guy.

I probably buy materials, tubing, brazeons, and various crap for building frames from at least 30 different suppliers - if you are just ordering stuff from Nova, or whatever, you're missing out on lots of good stuff. A big part of being a framebuilder, believe it or not, is staying on top of this kind of thing and surfing supplier websites (plus bitching and moaning to get them to make the part you want) in search of the cool new stuff.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Enough with the freakin' winter, already!

It's late winter and as usual, I'm feeling whiny. We've had a solid 2 months of alternating slush/snow and mud, with nary a dry day NOR a true snow day thrown in. In short, I'm sick of the weather.

Capping that off, I was going to ride on the track today, but thanks to the incompetence of the staff at BIC, I wasn't able to reserve a slot in time. Doh.

In my dreams, I get one house in Crested Butte and another one in Tucson or Las Cruces or something and then find someone who really like cold winters and hot summers to trade with every 6 months...yeah, right.

Thanks to Tison for the nice photo! I'm off to the climbing gym.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Thursday, February 18, 2010

SRAM XX thoughts

I know, I know, I'm about a year late with this. But I am finally getting serious interest from customers in putting XX on their new bikes, so when Craig asked for my take, I thought I'd type it up and use it as a blog post.

My take is that if the goal is to move away from making lots of front derailleur shifts (which suck) then it's good - with a 26 or 28 or whatever as your smallest ring, it should be easier to shift up and down, as well as harder to suck the chain, all things being equal, as compared to a 3x drivetrain.

On the other hand, if the goal is to save weight, it's stupid - replacing a 22t aluminum chainring and 4 bolts (assuming you're being a weight weenie about it) only saves you maybe 30g. Adding a big fat 36t cog adds at least that much, especially when you consider that you could get the same gear ratio with a 22t in the front and a 28t in the rear. A fancy 11-28 road cassette would be way, way lighter than an 11-36 (especially if you used all the silly machining tricks they're doing on the XX cassette). Couple that with a 22/32/42 or whatever, and you've got a huge range of gears at a very light weight. But you have to shift the front end a lot, which is a bummer.

The direction they're going, though, which I think is a good one, is eliminating the front derailleur altogether. Lots of racers (and other folks) already run 1x9 with 32t or 34t cassettes - 36t will allow more people to ride without a front derailleur (or shifter) which is a pretty huge weight and performance (no front shifting!) advantage.

Of course, only some folks are fit and/or masochistic enough to want to run a 1x whatever. 36t is not *that* much less gear than the 34t that we've got now (about 6%) so it's not going to convert every weekend warrior to a single front chainring. But it will somewhat increase the capability of the single ring setup, which is great. The price, though...whew! I'm not about to drop 300 clams on a cassette!

I have no particular feedback about the brakes, since I have yet to even see them, and as far as I know, they're just really nice light standard Avid disc setups. I'm guessing they're great, but nothing really exciting. Likewise the XX fork lineup.

So bottom line: good stuff and a step forward, but not worth buying until the ideas trickle down to cheaper stuff, unless you're loaded and have to have the newest thing. I think you'll see 10speed XX-like versions of XO and X9 next year, that's what I'd probably get.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Thanks to Ed for the pictures!

...couple of shots of Nick and Redcoat at 24 Hours of OP.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Want to ride DH at Eldora?

We all know that Eldora is the perfect location for mountain bike activities - connected (somewhat indirectly) to the great Magnolia area trails, located on an RTD bus route, and close to Boulder. Until recently, they have refused to even consider allowing bikes in the summer (and in fact I've been yelled at for just riding up the service road to get to the pipeline/Rollins pass). But it seems they USFS requires them to update their master plan periodically, and the BMA thinks they may be sympathetic to opening up for bikes in the near future (that means a few years, not this summer). From the BMA:

Eldora Mountain Resort is in the process of planning out their next decade and BMA is pushing to get some great summer use out of our favorite local winter ski resort!

Because of the ski area sits on USFS land, Eldora is required to have a master plan and periodically update it.

As part of Eldora's plan to make their resort a more desirable day use ski area, they are hoping to replace the two main front lifts with a high-speed sixpack that would get skiers up to the top faster and safer in high winds (or as they called it "breezes"). These high-speed lifts can be mounted with bike carriers in the summer, which is great news for us. Last Wednesday, several BMA members went to an open house at the Boulder Public library and lobbied for summer biking at the resort. It seems our Action Alert has already had an impact with a about 100 separate comments asking for summer programming. The officials we talked to said that they were going to take a look at the economics side of having a summer biking park there!

Although it will be several years before Eldora secures financing and implements the new lifts that make summer biking possible, one cannot discount how HUGE this is for mountain biking in BoulderCounty. If hopping on a lift and bombing some great trails sounds like a blast to you, please go to this link and fill out their survey! At the bottom of the page, in the "other comments" box, type in something about how you'd be willing to pay $$ to ride the lifts at Eldora and eat something at their cafeteria after some hard riding! Maybe, we'll all get our wish!

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Nick and Redcoat are winning...

....admittedly after only 4 hours.

See the standings here.

Update from Nick: Had 2mechanicals. Mikes was major. Totally shredded rear tyre and bearings on front hub are shot so ge walked 4 miles. So since we arent on the podium any more we are both going to bed for 6 hrs sleep and will start again in the morning.

Forkin A!

So while Sarah is off doing community service this morning (don't ask) I'm building forks... more forks. I'm starting to think I'm actually a custom *fork* builder who occasionally also builds a frame or two - I must do 3 or 4 forks a week these days (for those who are curious, most of these don't appear on the waitlist, because they're built for other framebuilders or bike companies who don't want to be listed there).

Doing some rough calculations, I've built about 350 frames over the past 7 years (a decent number of those before I started selling them). For the first year or so, I didn't build any forks, but once I started, the ratio was about 1:1 (this is again an estimate, based on a quick tally from my records) - some people got a frame/fork, some people just got a frame, and some people just got a fork. So if that had continued to the present day, the frame count would be about 50 ahead of the fork count.

But in the last few years, I've gotten a number of contracts to build forks for other companies (mostly small ones) as well as increasing interest in custom forks for all kinds of weird projects - I think it's safe to say the ratio of frames:forks has averaged more like 1:2 for the last couple of years. And it seems to be moving more and more in the fork direction - this winter, I've probably done 3 forks for every frame (though I'm still trying to crank out frames at a rate of about 1/week - luckily with experience I've gotten a bit more efficient, so I still have time to do my chores around the house and even ride my bike sometimes).

A rough estimate of the tally stands today at 350 frames, 400 forks. And I'm trying to make it 350 to 403 by this afternoon. Fork! I wish the weather was nice enough to go ride...

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

The best way ever to get a 6pack from Redcoat...




...alternate title: there is a (TIG) welded solution to any problem.

Tuesday, February 09, 2010

The beast... actually rides. At the actual Velodrome.

Went for a 2 hour session with Nick and Redcoat this afternoon (if by "rode with" you mean "was repeatedly lapped by and laughed at"). Wow, I suck. But wow, my bike rocks (at least for me). It might look like a ladder with wheels, and I might be sitting up a foot higher than everyone else there, but it's fast and comfortable and stiff enough for the 4.2 watts my stick legs can put out. A+.

A 2 hour session completely wiped me. I am going to be very sore, but I think this is perfect training for the Boulder short-track series (which is my "goal" for the season this year).

I wish someone had taken pictures of my bronzed, olympian form racing around the track, but the doppler correction on Nick's Iphone was on the fritz. Heh.

Monday, February 08, 2010

Weekend Recipe. Also: come get your d*$! Peugot!

The salad that the Zaludsons and Sarah made last night was one of the best I've ever had - due in large part (though the salad itself was excellent as well) to the dressing.

Sarah's Spicy Szechuan Dressing

2 tbsp sesame oil
2 tbsp rice vincegar
2 tbsp orange juice concentrate
1 tsp Chinese hot mustard (go with more if you want more spice)
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tsp grated fresh ginger
2 tbsp sliced almonds

Mix it all up, baby! Great stuff!

Second, if you're the young lady who dropped off her townie to have the brake bridge replaced, it's done. It's been done for a while now, but you have not called, and I don't have your number... if it's not gone by next week, it's going to community cycles. Fair warning!

Sunday, February 07, 2010

Interesting day on the 1st

Sarah and I went hiking yesterday to let her try out her new trekking poles (which worked out quite well) and walked by the base of the first Flatiron - which for non-Boulder folks is a big 1500 foot chunk of rock just above town that people like to climb on. It's about 5.5, but it's a giant slab, so it's kinda freaky if you're not used to that sort of thing.

In any case, we saw a young lady about 100 feet up, clinging to a little tree and looking totally terrified - she apparently had been "bouldering", and rather than jump off when she was unable to reverse the first few moves, had continued up in hopes of traversing off higher up. Not a great plan.

Long story short, I'm glad we use old daisy chains as dog leashes, and that I've spent a lot of time scrambling around on the flatirons - I was able to basically put her on belay (using a loop of webbing as a chest harness) from stances and talk her down, section by section. Quite an exciting day for everyone, unfortunately I didn't get any pictures.

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

650b tandem weirdness

This is a candidate for weirdest fork I've ever done. 650b *road tandem* fork with a 20mm through axle and _82mm_ of rake (look at the curves of those fork blades on the original!) It duplicates the geometry of the original (from a ~50 year old tandem) but is set up for a big fat disc brake (tab not installed yet).

In the next couple of weeks, this sucker will probably get knocked off the weirdness throne by a motor-hub fork I'm going to be building, but for now... it's pretty darn goofy.

Monday, February 01, 2010

Fuentes vs. The Rock - 2007

Fuentes never told me about this, but he's been riding this bike for more than 3 years this way now (including onto the pro podium for the MSC series). Yes, it's 2 inches long, an inch wide, and has completely flattened the tube. Yes, the bike is still (as far as anyone can tell) safe to ride. Can't imagine doing that to anything but a steel bike and riding away - he says the rock was the size of his head, and bloodied both shins as it bounced off the downtube.

Crazy.