The largest thing I have ever built

This structure made from square 6061 aluminum tubing is 16 feet tall. I welded it up for Rope partners, a company that services wind turbines. This is to be a trade show display with a t.v. monitor and a covering of graphics. There's about $ 1,500 worth of tubing in this monster.
As you can see, It all breaks down and fits in the back of this not particularly large truck. There's a lot of un-bolting to do in the dis-assembly. It took three of us about 20 minutes to get it all apart. This project has been in my shop almost a week but it is gone now and I'm back to just bikes.

Rock Lobster # 046WB

Every once in awhile someone will come by with one of my older frames. This one is from 1988 when I first opened my doors as a fulltime builder. I built the frame as a trade for some photos that still adorn the walls of my shop. The owner is a professional photographer and has kept the bike for 23 years. Now he intends to sell it to buy....guess.....tools to build frames. He wants a torch and tanks to start brazing so don't be surprised to see this bike advertised for sale somewhere like MTBR classifieds or ebay.
The frame is fillet brazed , built before I had a tig welder . The model is "Team Issue" so the fillets are unfiled. I had done a few repairs and mods on the frame but it still rides and has some period correct parts here and there.
This frame was built right around the time I was building my first single speed frames and it shows the same type of construction-hand bent wishbone seat stay, internal gussetting and True Temper tubing. I went away from that tubeset for many years but have come back to the brand and use it a lot. This is an oldie, primitive but still rideable and a piece of my obscure history.

Tom's ride 2011

Here's my race bike partially transformed into a quasi expedition bike for the ride. I made a bracket for the seatpost to hold a third bottle. There's no water available for the first five hours of riding.

An old friend of mine who was a real legend of cycling here used to get folks together once a year to do an epic ride in some desolate country south of here . The friend was Tom Cuthberson , author of many books and probably one of the first people to bring the notion of cyclocross to Santa Cruz. Tom was a real adventurer and he was always looking for new places to ride, both paved and in the dirt. For years on his birthday he would get a few folks together to do this mammoth loop ride of 73 miles, 6,700 ft. climbing that was about 30-40% dirt. I used to get a call from Tom urging me to join on the ride but I always had something in my schedule that got in the way.
In 2004 Tom was diagnosed with Pancreatic cancer. He fought it valiantly for nearly two years but it took him at age 60. A couple of years after that, one of Tom's friends and someone I knew from Cyclocross told me that Tom's ride would be happening again around the time of Tom's birthday. This year I actually made the time and went on the ride , really wanting to see this special place that was Tom's favorite place to spend a whole day on the bike.
Six of us, half on 'cross bikes and the other half on mountain bikes left King City at 8:45 a.m. on a Saturday morning. All the folks on the ride had done it numerous times, I being the only new addition.
The first climb was all dirt and I found out that my gears were too high for the steeper pitches. I suffered along until I stopped to take a photo of a meadow about 2/3 of the way up.
Here's the group at the top of the first climb getting ready for the downhill.
This is a view from just beond the top of the first climb.
Riding down the long valley road there were some dramatic rock formations on either side. The photos fail to capture the impressive sight.
Here's another view of the paved valley road that followed the dirt road with the climb. This road had a climb as well but not as steep or as long.
At the end of the pavement there was a campground and the start of another long dirt section.
Not far into the second dirt track was a good spot for lunch, a small river with a nice swimming hole.
Since the next place to get water was about two hours up the road my riding compatriots brought and used a filter to purify the water from the river.
This is a view from the final dirt section , mostly a side-hill road with a pretty long climb up to 2,800 ft. The views were dramatic and the downhill to the next campground seemed to go on for a half an hour. It might be the longest dirt downhill I have ridden in California that wasn't in the Sierras. As I rode I thought of Tom and said to myself on a few occasions " Thanks for showing me this ride, Tom. " This was one more way to remember the man and his many contributions to the cycling community in Northern California and elsewhere.

It's rare....

A customer requested a bar/stem set. I have only built maybe four in my life and not one like this. It is all German 4130-it isn't that I specifically ordered tubing from Germany but it was stamped 'Germany' on the side. It seems straighter in the lathe than the cro-mo that I normally get. It welded up nicer as well. I'm not opposed to making a few more of these if folks want. I call it " Javier Barstem".

Almost old school but not quite....

Sometime about 7-8 years ago I came up with an idea for a disc mount for single speeds. They were pretty popular until the advent of the sliding dropouts and now the swiveling dropouts. Everybody has a different way to deal with the same problem.....on a single speed, the wheel can be in different places in the dropout depending on the gear being used at the time. The disc brake needs to have the ability to adjust to the changing wheel positions. i came up with what I still contend is the simplest solution to the issue-and, it might be the cheapest.
So yes, this idea is not from the previous century but it pre-dates most of the other stuff. Yeah, it is a bit caveman style but i'll bet that you won't ever have an issue with the setup. It is as simple as it gets.
Just think......a no charge disc option on a custom frame ? -blasphemy ? I'll be torched at the stake by my contemporaries-that is , unless they are welders. In that case I'll be electrocuted at the stake. Hmm, maybe my blogs are starting to cross-pollinate.

Here's how I use my rear triangle jig

For all you folks interested in the process, here are two photos of how I line up my rear triangle jig. A lot of frame jigs hold all of the tubes in place. Here at Rock Lobster, we work a little differently. I build the front triangle on one fixture, then I use the device in these photos. The lower one shows how I use my fill scale drawing to line up the jig and clamp it to the frame. This step gets the axle at the right height relative to the rest of the frame.There's a hole in the jig that accepts several types of axles. When the hole is empty, it can be used to sight the axle center from the drawing. The upper photo show how I use a frame alignment stick to center the the jig so that the center line of the rear wheel is the same as the center line of the front triangle. It works really well and I designed the contraption myself. I have not seen another one like it .

The gift of steel

This frame is a gift though not from me. I am pretty generous most of the time but I do have to put food on the table. This road frame will be used for centuries and other long road rides. It seems that the rider who will be the owner of this frame has really been captivated by spending all day on the bike. I just rode for nearly seven hours yesterday so you won't hear a dissenting voice from me. The frame is designed to eat up the road shock with a generous wheelbase and a slacker head angle. It should rool the flats and rip the downhills. It is pretty light so I imagine it will be o.k. on the climbs as well. Maybe this rider will get the randonneur sickness that I got about 1992-2003. The only cure is to ride it out of your system , 100's of k.m's at a time. I still have my medals and P.B.P. parephanalia from 1995. I don't regret any of it at all.