Heavy Duty Touring Bike

I'm in the middle of building a tough touring bike. It is basically an unsuspended mountain bike with tons of clearance, long chainstays, and all the touring braze-ons you'd expect, and then some. I wanted to build a bike that would have some bells/whistles like disc brakes but also build in the ability to use find anywhere components for when you're out in the middle of nowhere and the village doesn't carry Avid BB7 Road replacement parts. The bike has a rear disc brake mount in between the left chainstay and seatstay to allow for the use of a rack without the fight for mounting real estate on the seat stay.

For right now it will be disc brake only, but the plan is to add canti studs in case the disc brakes fail and I need to made due with what I can find on the road.



Here it is in all it's semi finished glory. 72 degree angles. 26" tires to allow for a shorter top tube without the pedal overlap being as extreme as it would with a short top tube, fenders, and 700c wheels. Built with double oversized tubing, custom picked to find just what I was looking for. It's a mix of all kinds of stuff, but the top and down tube were the hardest to find in the specs I wanted. I finally was looking through the True Temper catalogue and found that their BMX Supertherm tubing was available in double oversized with 1/7/1 wall thicknesses. The tubes were just long enough to work. I wanted to TIG weld this but in case I wanted to do a lugged version the angles and tubing sizes match up perfectly to the double oversized Slant Six lugset Kirk Pacenti offers.



The seat stays began as straight 19mm single taper stays, but I put an obvious 8" radius bend at the top and a more subtle bend right near the bottom end which I think looks very nice when you combine the two. The way the top was bent and where I positioned the stays meant that I had to not only miter the seat stays to the seat tube but also to the top tube, which is visible in the first picture.



I thought I would try something different so I added in a secret compartment for getting whatever kind of exotic drugs I might find in my travels back home. I kid, I kid. The trying something different part was true but what I really was doing here was trying to spice up the standard dimple your chainstay for clearance proceedure. I thought, what the heck, I'll just chop a bunch out, braze some stainless steel right over the new huge hole I created and for all the new bling I'm getting all I have to do is sacrifice durability and stiffness. Actually I have no idea how the thing will feel. I went too extreme on this one but I think the idea might be plausible in moderation. Next time if I decide I want to go through the trouble and this version didn't fail in 5 miles I'll use round chainstays so the chunk I take out won't be such an appreciable percentage of the whole.



Here's the finished stay. I think it looks great and will be even cooler once the frame is painted and that section is polished up.



Here is the other chainstay with clearance cut in for the crank at the pedal hole.



Here is the effect with the cranks installed. Looks good and hopefully won't ride like a wet noodle. A tip if anyone wants to try this: On the alignment table the stays will bend where you did the surgery. If you need to close the distance between drop outs, which you probably will have to since you were adding all this heat to the outside of the stays on both sides, what can and will probably happen is that you will get cracks in the joint between the stay and the stainless steel. My only thought on how to avoid this is to do the opposite that you would usually do ie space the dropouts a little wide knowing that the bridges are going to suck them in. Maybe space things too narrow and let the patching that gets done pull them out to an appropriate width. If it's too narrow even after the brazing I think the joint would tolerate spreading better than smooshing since it would be like pushing the joint together instead of pulling it apart.



A close up of the seat stay/seat tube/top tube junction. Welds look decent. That part won't break. I guess maybe the chain stays are like the break away derailleur bolts made of aluminum so if your derailleur gets caught you don't break your frame. Maybe I'm saving the rest of the frame by just having the rear triangle snap off at the chain stays. Brilliant and safe!



One last weld shot...

Touring Geometry Inspired Lightweight Road Bike

Here is my second road bike. After the insanity of the internal routing of the first I thought I would play it straight on this one. This is also the first carbon fork I've ever used. I had the fork sitting around for about a year and figured this was the one and only time I might be able to use it. My goal was lightweight and comfortable. The medium-ish sized frame weights 3lbs 5oz. It's made of True Temper OX-Platinum standard road sized tubing. I'm not much for oversized tubing.


The bars with the stem flipped up as pictured gives me about 1.5" rise above the seat for my laid back comfort. I find with this sort of set up that instead of never ever using the drops it actually becomes a fairly comfortable position to ride in with a headwind or when descending for a long time.


A close up of the welding. They are starting to turn out pretty well.


Start camera timer, run real quick, jump on bike. Was hoping to see what my positioning looked like while on the bike.

Anvil Fork Jig + JD2 Tube Notcher = Love

I've added some extra functionality to the already wonderful Anvil fork jig. I've modified it so it can used with a tubing notcher (JD2 TN100) to create the miters for the chainstay/bb junction. This was a welcome addition to the shop since I had started TIG welding and had a new set of miters that needed to be right on.

I also configured the Anvil jig/tube notcher to make the seatstay/seattube miter but the setup time was prohibitively long and required some drilling/tapping into the Anvil jig. I'm not going to detail the process because I strongly believe it wasn't a great solution based on the fact that it took longer to set up and usually still required some hand filing after the cut was made. It could be quite accurate as the fork jig was mounted in the same way that the tubing holder of the notcher was mounted and made use of the same angle markings for setup of the cut. Since I didn't mess with accurate drop out dimensions in my CAD drawings I didn't have an exact angle to set it to. Because of all these things doing the whole job by hand was quicker. It was pretty cool though...

The only thing I use the tubing notcher for is either the chainstay/bb miter or notching tubes for practice welds. If I'm building a bike I find hand filing all the other miters using printouts from Martin Manning's Excel program to be most savory.




Basically there are two holes on the fork jig that two bolts go through to hold the steerer tube holder to the rest of the jig. I've drilled and tapped two holes in the tubing notcher that correspond to these holes. They are placed so that the fork jig attaches perpendicular to the tubing notcher.

Also, I made it so that the theoretical zero of the ruler on the fork jig would be at the center of the cut that the notcher would make ie the center of the bottom bracket. This way I could use the ruler on the jig by taking a little T-square or an equivalent and dropping it down from the center of the bolt holding the dropout and I would be able to set my chainstay length. You need to use the T-square because the built in indicator on the part of the fork jig is offset to give a correct reading while doing forks but when set up this way it will not give you the correct measurement.

The other thing is that there is a little play in regards to how perpendicular the notcher and fork jig sit to each other because of the size of the bolt holes in the fork jig. This allows you to use a T-square and make sure that the fork jig is quite perpendicular to the tube notcher while you are tightening the bolts. Tightening one bolt fairly snuggly and then checking the squareness, adjusting, then tightening the other bolt has worked well for me.




Here is a closeup of the cutting area and the forward clamping mechanism. I've made an aluminum platform and drilled/tapped holes in the bottom of the piece of the fork jig that ensures that the fork blades are both the same height above the jig and that the crown is not twisted. That aluminum platform attaches to the piece that moves up and down so the height can be adjusted. That means you can offset or center the miter. You could have the chainstays sit lower than normal on the bottom bracket or higher if you wanted. I tapped another hole to attach a small piece of aluminum on top of that platform with notches cut out for the chainstays to rest in. Another tapped hole allows a bolt to pass through a small piece of square tubing that keeps everything in place. The notches are a fixed distance apart but you can bring the chainstay ends closer or further apart from each other (ie sit closer to the middle or more towards the edges on the bottom bracket shell) by sliding the whole thing forward or backwards. I check how close to the outside of the bottom bracket shell my chainstays will be by using a set of calipers and measuring where the hole saw will cut through the stays.




Another picture from the top




For the rear assembly I've bolted a dummy axle from my frame jig to the same spot the Anvil axle sits. I used the Anvil fork axle at first but it was too specific to a fork and didn't work well. Too many spacers and thing and the bolts that attach the drop outs are very small. Using the other dummy axle gave me a sturdier grip on the drop outs and required no spacers to bring the spacing up to 120 or 130mm.




The part that the dummy axle attaches to slides up and down so, with the up/down adjustment at the front clamp section, you can adjust your chainstays to be parallel with the fork jig and be able to set your chainstay length accurately. Also, you can see in this picture the measurement indicator that faces the ruler that runs the length of the fork jig. This does not read the right length when set up this way. The correct measurement will be directly below the center of the dummy axle.

On the off chance that someone stocked their workshop with the Anvil fork jig and the TN100 tube notcher like I did hopefully this may be of some use.

Aitor Throup

Just in case there was any question about whether fashion is (or can be) art or if it's just some handbag with a logo repeated 1000 times...




Aitor Throup is an English designer fresh out of school and already making some incredible art. The picture below contains part of an article about his collection "The Funeral of New Orleans." The collection tells the story of 5 musicians in New Orleans trying to survive Katrina and ultimately sacrificing themselves to save their instruments. It's pretty amazing.

I highly encourage you to go watch the video (make sure your sound is on!) of the outfits of the five musicians transforming from protection of self to protection of the instrument.

Good Sky at the Velodrome

Encino Velodrome on one of the open track days. Great clouds great day.




The great clouds turned even greater as the sun set. The photo doesn't do it justice though. The sky was more red than the light pink.




Motobecane Champion Team track bike in the sunset. I did get a little bit of riding in when I wasn't in "dude, the sky is amazing!" mode. Yes I was that guy and no I'm not proud of it.

Opossum Touching

This guy was on my porch.




And I touched his tail. I touched his back too but then he made bitey face.

Carrying Heavy or Awkward Stuff Home on your Back/Bike

Don't think you need to borrow a car (or drive your car if you own one) to go pick up a vacuum cleaner or some lumber. All you need is a roll of packing tape, strong legs, good balance, and a good back. I always keep a roll of packing tape in my bag just in case. My latest heavy transport was an office chair from work.




Here is a full sized upright vacuum and a paper shredder that came home from Target.




This came from a lumber run I made to Home Depot. This was probably the trickiest because the ends of the board would start vibrating and oscillating when I rode which made balancing very tricky.

Shaping Lugs and a Track Crown with Brass

These are details from a bike I made a couple years ago but never got around to sharing. I wanted to give a larger radius to the joints of the Henry James lugs so I filled them with brass and then silver brazed the bike together.




This first picture is the top tube/head tube lug filled with brass and with a head tube extension added to give a more comfortable bar height while riding. I talked to Tom Kellogg at NAHBS #2 about extending the head tube which I have seen on his bikes and mentioned that Spectrum had started by using Henry James lugs and brass brazing an extension on, but this would end up cracking eventually at that junction. Then they tried tig welding the junction but with the same results. The solution that they came up with to avoid the cracking at the junction of the lug and the extension was to have their own lugs made with the extension already built it. No more cracks.

PS- By crack I don't mean doom crack. I think what Tom was saying was that the junction was just a flexy point and the two lug pieces would come unattached to each other but would stay in place due to being brazed to the head tube. The head tube remained intact.




Here is the seat tube lug with the same effect. The cap on the seat stay was made my filing the tops of the seat stays to accomodate a small piece of 1" tubing and then brass brazing them together. Then the whole thing would be silver brazed to the seat tube cluster. It comes out lighter than a braze in solid steel cap, and you can use whatever diameter tubing you want as the cap for different effects.




And again...




And again...




I also filled in an Everest track crown to have a totally new look. The Long Shen track crown that takes the 24mm round blades is pretty much the same design if you are familiar with that. This was a pain and a waste of about 500psi of oxygen but kinda cool. Wouldn't do it again.




You can see that the normal concavities that exist between the fork blade zone and the steerer tube zone have been filled in to give the crown a more oval shape when viewed from the top. I also did away with the pointies on the outside of the crown and made a flat area with a small slot remaining.




Here is a picture of the original from the Nova site.

Fireplace Screen

This is a fireplace screen that I designed and built for my friends Melanie and Dave's new house. This was a long project because I work slow and I'd never done anything like this before. I kept having to stop and find solutions to problems I didn't even know existed until I ran into them.




Here is the money shot. Below you'll find a description and more pictures than you ever wanted to see of this thing being built.




Here it is with it's doors open. I designed it with the thought that if I kept the upper edge straight and made the bottom curved I would get an interesting surface out of the screen, which happened for the most part. I originally conceived of something a little more wiggly where the doors come together instead of a straight line but the screen material would have had to have been much more flexible and the hexagon pattern was well loved by all so we decided that this was the best thing to do.

The doors fit very snugly into the frame, so much so that they won't stay all the way closed unless you hole them closed somehow. While I thought this was a problem at first I realized that it was actually going to work out well. Either you have doors that want to stay closed and you need a way to open them, or you have doors that want to be open and you need to find a way to keep them closed. Since my doors wanted very much to be a little bit open all I had to do was make a simple latch at the top of the firescreen to hold them closed. This enabled me to skip handles or other opening devices entirely and maintain a clean, smooth surface on the piece. Just pull on the little latch and the doors pop open by themselves enough to get your fingers in and open them the rest of the way. Thankfully the doors stay cool enough to allow this to work without burnt fingers.




The entire screen is made of 1/2" steel angle iron and 3/8" square steel tubing. The bottom part of the frame is the first bend I had to make. It was bent by hand using the vice to secure it.




Here is the base of the frame being welded to the vertical pieces. Originally I had intended to have the vertical pieces twist, which would allow for no gap at the connection point. The vertical pieces of the doors would twist to match but I realized that the hinges would be off center from each other if the frame twisted making the door unable to open.




After giving up on the fun twisting idea, I patched the gap by welding some scrap metal to the joint. This is looking at frame from the bottom.




With the frame completed, it was time to start bending what would become the bottom of the doors. This piece was bent by hand in the vice just like the bottom of the frame. It took a while to get the bends to match but it turned out well.




Now the outside borders of the door were complete. The next step is putting in the upright sections where the doors will join in the center.




Here is the frame with the outside borders of the doors nested inside of it.




In order to get the vertical sections in the center of the door I had to figure out exactly where to cut the door piece in two. Finding center on the top was easy but the bottom required a T-square on the center point of the top that was extended down by some more measury stuff.




Saw saw saw saw saw...




After the cut was made to separate the door the two vertical pieces were cut and fitted to the doors while they were in the frame to make sure they would remain the right shape and size.




At this point I got the first look at the interesting shapes the firescreen makes when the doors are open. Going with the straight top and curved bottom worked out well and I was glad I didn't go the WDCH wiggle route. Unfortunately once the hexagon mesh was put on the effect wasn't quite as striking, but no mesh, no fire prevention goodness.




Here are the doors complete with the mesh brazed on. The screen is finished except for hinges and whatever handles will be attached. Originally my thought was that the mesh would be riveted on. When it came time to do it however I thought about the little bumps that would be all over the place and decided that silver brazing the mesh all the way around the perimeter would give the door the clean look I wanted it to have. It was a lot of work and the screen is fairly delicate so I came pretty close to melting it in a couple places but in the end it was the best way to do it.




The first hinge is being fit to the door. One of the problems I ran into was how to attach the hinge to the door when the door frame was buried beneath the screen. I thought about this a lot but ultimately it didn't need much thought because there was only one thing I could do. I sliced a little hole through the screen just big enough to pass the hinge though. The screen is still enough so that it kept it's shape just fine. Here I have the hinge held in place with a clamp and a piece of the 1/2" angle iron attached to create the correct space for the frame when the doors are attached to the frame.




A close up of the hinge welded in place and how it is passing through the screen. There are two hinges on each door.




Here is one of the doors with both hinges welded on. This one is ready to be attached to the frame.




Here's the setup for welding the door to the frame. I had to clamp the doors together and to the frame in the top center because the fit was very tight and they kept wanting to pop open. I needed the doors to be held in place just like they would be when closed later so the hinges would be welded on in the correct position.




I'm not sure why I decided to weld the hinges on to both the door and the frame. If they wear out they are going to be a pain to replace. The hinges have removable pins at least so the doors can be separated from the frame if need be. I think I didn't rivet them because access to the hinge attach point was very limited due to the screen being in place so I just had to sneak the TIG welder in as best I could.

Upright Internally Geared Bike for Dad

My latest bike is based on the design of my commuter but built for use with a Shimano Nexus 8 internally geared hub. My dad used the Look stem until he found a comfortable position that didn't bother his neck. I've since made him a stem to match the way the Look stem was set up. The integrated rack on the back was unfinished at this point because I needed to see if the seat height would accommodate the bag fitting part way beneath it or if it would have to sit behind the seat entirely.




Here is a close up of the fastback seat stays. All the TIG welding I've done so far has been without the pulse function on. Now I am trying to figure out the pulser. It's taking a little getting used to. Update: I gave up on the pulser.




Here is the finished stem.