Bill's Done on to Scott's frame

Finished up the clean up on Bill's over the weekend and I think it came out great. We should be able to ship it out this week for a special paint scheme that I know Bill is working on.





Up next will be Scott's road frame, which will have a slightly sloping top tube, a pear shaped down tube, a sleeved seat tube, and some new mini paragon Wright dropouts. I pulled all the tubes and prepped them for the build. Mo will start on mitering them tomorrow.

More Clean Up

I spent most of the day today working on further clean up and shaping of the braces and dropouts on Bill's frame. I was able to get both the seat stay and chain stay braces completely shaped and sanded.





I was also able to get three of the four dropout joints cleaned up. These Black Cat dropout are a really nice setup, but do take a bit more clean up then our typical dropouts.







I also did get the cable guides to run under the top tube in the mail, but did not get a chance to braze them on yet. A little bit more cleanup work this week and the frame should be ready to go to paint. Up next after this frame is a road bike for Scott.

Still cleaning things up

Still working on clean up on Bill's frame. Here is that side shot you requested Bill:

Clean it up

Spent this weekend getting all the braze-ons and braces brazed-on Bill's frame. We used 56 silver for all of the braze-ons and Fillet braze-pro to braze in the braces. Except for the three cable guides under the top tube, which we are waiting on from Paragon, all are brazed in place. Now it is time for the clean up, in which we clean off all of the crusty flux, clean up the braze-ons and shape the braces. It is a lot of sandpaper, green scrubby pad, wire brush, and file work. Here are some shots of the clean up in progress.

Bill's frame moving along

This week we were able to focus on getting the rear end of Bill's frame both mitered and then welded up. Here are some shots of the rear end.







We have braze-ons and braces to work on next for the frame. Bill if you checking this, please get in touch with Cody for a few questions on the braze-ons.

More Andrew road bike pics

I know these pics are earlier in the build process but I really wanted to show the steel road fork.

Andrew's Road Bike Delivery

After a good mountain bike ride on Saturday morning, Mo and I spent Saturday afternoon building up Andrew's road bike. Andrew went with a Campy Chorus 11 speed group which is really nice and a custom wheel set built by a friend of his up near Dallas. The bike went together well and Andrew and Anna drove in from College Station on Sunday afternoon to pick it up. Here are some images of it (sorry for the dark photos, it was a rainy Sunday):






With Mother's day this weekend, we did not make much more progress in the shop besides getting Andrew's bike built up. We make it up this week working on Bill's and then I believe start Mary Ann's 29er once the design is approved.

Quick update this week

Although it took a bit longer then a traditional frame, we got the front triangle all mitered up and welded together this week. While I was welding the frame, Mo was able to braze the Black Cat dropouts on and miter the chain stays. Tonight we set it all back in the jig and tacked on the chain stays. We now have 2/3 of a frame.



Up next for Bill's frame is bending and mitering the seat stays. We also will be building up Andrew's road bike, which he will pick up this weekend.

Weekend Update

Another busy week for all of us at our day jobs, but we made good progress this week on several things. First, our frame painter needed a good stand to hold bikes while he painted so, with some tubing, a couple items from Park, and a late model Chevy flywheel I put together a stand for him. Here is the flywheel base and height adjust:



The top with Park clamp arm and internal seat tube expanding frame holder.



Complete stand with Andrew's Road frame in it:



I hope it will work well for Taylor. Besides building the stand we were on to working on Bill's frame. Bill's getting a 29er with a new request for us, a curved top tube. If you remember the post from the previous week with Mo bending tubes with our roller bender, well that was our first attempt at bending tubes and we found that although it did bend the tube, it also flattened the tube because we were using rollers that were a little large in diameter. Well then we constructed that large wooden bending curve for our second attempt at bending the curves. Today we mounted that bending curve on a platform and got too bending. Here is the curve mounted on the platform with the strap in place.



Mo with the 1 1/8" .49 4130 tube packed with sand and ready to bend:



After Mo has put all his force into the tube, he is pleased with the smooth, sweet bend on the tube:



While Mo was working on the bending the tubes I was welding up Bill's bottom bracket and seat tube joint:



Here is a close up of the joint:



We then both focused our attention on getting the rest of Bill's tubes mitered and setup in the jig including that curved top tube. Cutting the miters on the top tube was interesting learning experience which took a bit more hand filing to fit then cutting in the mill. Here is a shot of Bill's frame with the tube set in the jig (We still have one more miter to do on the downtube)



With the curved tube in there, I think the frame is going to look great. Next up this week, is to finish that last miter and get Bill's tubes set in the jig for tacking.

Lots of photos in this post, lots of progress made. I will try to get back to more frequent updates this week, if my day job will coorporate.