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.

True Fab photo shoot this weekend

This passed weekend we got the TF tribe together for a photo shoot. This is the first time we've done this and it went well. We got some great photos to be used on the soon-to-be-updated website. It also had the unexpected outcome of being a mini-reunion of sorts. People brought their bikes, their children, and everyone was all smiles. Below are some highlights from the shoot.

Two Weeks Out

Till NAHBS in Austin and it is crunch time for us. A few bikes back from paint and it is time to build them up while getting all the booth stuff together. I think this year it is really going to be big, may even eclipse Portland-busy as it was in 08. We will be there this year in booth 1306 with a few new rides, t-shirts, hats and maybe a few goodies for all. Please stop by for a visit.

http://www.2011.handmadebicycleshow.com/

Ready For Powder

This past weekend we wrapped up a tapered 29 fork for TB's single speed. Here's a shot of it.

Some Texas Quarters for the fork leg caps.

 

And a shot of the frame:

TB please harass Cody to get it to powder for you =)