Blast from the past

I'm not sure how long it has been since I have built a fillet brazed frame....years for sure. This week I get to re-live the 1984-1991 part of my career-laying down fillets of bronze. Here's some head tube collars I modified and welded up.....they look like something you would find on an Ibis from the early '90's. I'm using a lot of these this winter, partly for aesthetics, partly for keeping the headtube from ovalizing.
This is probably the first fillet I have laid down in about 5-6 years. I do remember how to do it but I'm glad I have some nice new files to really get the finished product looking smooth and uniform. I'll be putting up pictures of the finished product next week.....it would be too much for me to think that i would have it done this week. Fillet frames are about twice as labor intensive as welded frames. It's cold in my shop and the combination of the torch and the manual labor will help keep me from freezing !

Fixie magazine from Japan

I am very fortunate to be on the comp list for Loop magazine, a fixie culture pictorial. I don't read a word of Japanese but I definitely am entertained by this glimpse into the whole take on bike culture from this part of the world. It's weird, it's wonderful and not to be missed.

Team Miyata circa 1979

For all you classic bike junkies out there I'm going to occasionally feature an older bike , some from my own collection and others that just happen to come by my shop when I have my camera handy. This one was a project I took on a number of years ago. I got it as a frame, fork, headset and derailleurs. I had to find everything else and it wasn't easy. The old Dura Ace EX equipment was not really popular and never produced in great quantity. It took especially long to find the brake calipers. I still have to put on the AX wheelset I found for the bike and I really need to find the Dura Ace stem to complete the bike. As it is now, it is nearly complete and it is one of the best riding bikes I have ever owned.
Here's that ancient EX drivetrain , the seldom seen EX crankset and really hill unfriendly gears.
The top mounted 'Bunny rabbit' shifters were actually a great invention at the time-great they were but the buying public for the most part were not impressed. Moving the right shifter actually trims the left shifter a fraction....an innovation that would foretell the direction of Shimano's 'integrated shifting system' of the future.

Road frame, fork and stem

Way back in the '70's the thing to do with your custom frame was to have a Silca pump painted to match. The paint of the day was not powdercoat but Du Pont Imron catalyzed polyurathane enamel , a paint that when sprayed on properly yields a really smooth surface and deep luster. The metallic blue was a very popular color back in the day and though this frame is a more current design, the paint really harkens back to the era when I first became aware of custom frames.
The head tube collars are also something from the past, this time from the '80's and the dawning of mountain bikes.

The color didn't photograph properly as my camera has been acting up lately but you can see that I did a little work to the fork crown to make it look a bit like a '70's Ron Cooper fork.
The customer asked for a matching stem so I built one-one of the two or three stems I built in 2010. This one is made for a 31.8 mm handlebar , pretty much the standard these days.

Another Della Santa

This Della Santa road bike was made in 1978 and it is mine. I lucked into it around 8 years ago-a friends housemate was selling it. It's pretty close to my size and it is in really good shape. It is the only bike I own built by another American builder.

Tall road frame ready to build up.

This frame may be tall but it is under 4 lbs. True Temper S-3 builds up very light. I used a lighter head tube and brazed on some collars for a little strength and style .
When a frame is this tall I leave the seat stays straight rather than put some bends in them.
The rider is 6'5" so the head tube is really long . The build will be Dura Ace with Enve fork and seatpost . I'm also getting some Reynolds carbon clinchers for it......this should be a really quick steel bike.

Big tire road bike gets dirty

After a long wait I finally got the time and resources to build up the 'Big-tire road bike' that will hopefully find its way to a magazine this winter. To prove that the bike was at home on any type of road surface, I took it out on a short ride that involved HWY 1, some dirt road along the railroad tracks and a muddy stretch of double track along the ocean where the cyclocross team trains in the late summer. Getting a bike this dirty on the first ride is probably not the best idea,especially considering that I built it with the purpose of attempting to get a review in print.
As you can see, I did get it pretty muddy in short order as the recent rains have turned the normally dry dusty conditions into a quagmire of slop . Although the Challenge Parigi-Roubaix tires are well suited toward dry dirt conditions , they were a bit slippery in some of the muddy corners , almost letting go completely and sending me into the muck. Fortunately , a season of 'cross racing has made me a little more centered on the bike and I didn't fall. The mud was sometimes so deep that I had to stop and carry the bike over sections that would have swallowed up the wheels up to the axles.
Shortly after these photos were taken I hosed off the bike and got it looking nice and new again. Now I'll get an email out to the media and see if anyone else wants to get this bike all muddy again. The whole idea of a bike like this is having the ability to ride just about anywhere without having to compromise on comfort and efficiency. This bike goes down the pavement pretty fast, even with the big tires ( 700x27c). Although it isn't a proper cyclocross rig it still handles the dirt well , if not a little bumpy with the 70 psi tires. It's a nice comprimise and a classic looking machine that will make people do a double-take when it is seen on the single track.