Thanks Dirt Rag

Go out and pick up the latest copy of Dirt Rag. TF and Bill's single speed are featured in the article on builders from NAHBS with some great photos.

Congrats to TF women's rider

I wanted to take a moment to comment on Claire's passed 2 wins. Twice now, she's won the Open Women's Pro Class in the TX State Series on her custom TF hardtail!

We finished this frame for her many months ago. However, she delayed in getting a build kit for it. So I took a build kit from a HH demo bike and built up her TF so that she'd have no more excuses. Then she goes out and wins her 1st race aboard it with SLX cranks, Magura Louis brakes, and other chunky components. Not too mention this old outdated steel material for a frame! ;)

Sarcasm aside, she's been riding very well this season and we appreciate her flying our colors at the races. Keep it up Claire.

Mary Ann's 29er Part 2

Fed Ex crunched Mary Ann's first frame in shipping and although we were able to straighten it to the point it was ride able, we built her a replacement frame. All that is left on it is cleaning up the dropouts, braze-ons, and braces. It should be ready to go to powder coat next week Here is a couple shots of it's current state:

Branching out. . .

Or maybe stemming out. . . not sure if that makes sense, but my desire to be punny makes me want to at least try it. Anyway, as you may or may not be able to tell from the title, TF is on the cusp of expanding their offerings. Our hope is that in the near future we will be able to offer stems to help round out the custom bicycle experience. Here's a shot of the setup:

It'll be a 1" quill stem, 90º, 25.4ø stem clamp and 120mm in length. The stem is going on lugged Trek re-furb that we may or may not be putting more braze-ons on (that's a weirdly constructed sentence, no?). And in case you didn't see it well enough in the first picture, this should let you know where the stem will eventually end up.



There's way more to tell about life in the shop as of late, but it wouldn't make any sense without pictures (which I have yet to download from my camera). What would make sense to tell you (and is probably best without pictures. . . maybe) is that we have recently signed on to compete in the Oregon Manifest Contructor's Design Challenge in Portland, OR this September. I would be doing the event a disservice by trying to explain it here, so please check out the link (as well as this one, the personal blog of the brain behind the event and the Super Relax Concept) and just know that we are more than excited to be involved in this event. More on all that (and pics of the finished stem) next week, I promise.

Travis's New SS

Anyone here want to see Travis' bike before he does? Trust me, he loves it when I do this! ;)

Once again, Travis gives me some general direction and then turns me loose to create what I'd like for him. The previous time was the design scheme on his TF "Neopolitan" geared bike. This time it's his SS. He requested something white and "ghostly", and to be honest, I think I got there by accident. I asked my sticker maker to put white stickers on top of the lightest color grey backing he had. Problem was that his lightest grey, was a dark grey. When we got the sticker kit in our hands it looked waaay too dark. I blindly convinced Travis to let us put them on and we'd try it again later. Well, I picked up the frame from the TF shop this morning and BINGO! I think we ended up with nearly exactly what he was after. This photo does not do it justice. The white color of the frame has a strong metallic component that causes the white to me tinted "off-white". The grey came out much lighter on the frame than in our hands. Overall its a very ghostly mono-chromatic scheme. Now lets just see him try to keep it clean! Yeah right.....

True Fab Roadie in race form!

Check out this pic from Scott Henry of his TF roadie the night before the Lago Vista race!

That weight is with GPS, Pedals & cages!

Not too bad!

Give'm hell tomorrow Scott!

-CJB

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you

Thanks everyone for coming by our booth. We really had a great time at NAHBS in Austin and hope you did too.

We also want to thank:  David, at NuVinci for the partnership to build Katie's city bike with the N360 CVT hub, Ian and Jorge from the Statesmen for the article and video, James at Cyclingnews for the article and pics, and Bill for the creative vision for his single speed.

We are really excited about building more frames in 2011 and came home from the show with a sweet new toy of our own, which I can't wait to get building on:

Thanks again ya'll and see you in Sacramento in 2012.