Here's another one, the third for this week. The total batch will be six and I hope to have them all done next week with only two to go.
oddly enough, the last name of this racer is Crossley.....turns out that his name is perfect-he can motor at 'cross.
Here's a close-up of my new innovation,err...band aid.....hmm......solution to a rare problem. I don't want to have any problems and neither do my cusomers.
This frame features the new gussett that will be a new part of all my aluminum and scandium cyclocross frames. The goal of this small triangle of plate is to re-enforce the area of the bike that tends to fail the soonest. Now perhaps the rider will get an additional few seasons out of the chainstay......or the bike will break somewhere else-I guess time will tell. I don't have a big problem with chainstays breaking on bikes but the few I have seen got me to thinking that maybe I could do something about it and save myself some work in the future.
Increasingly people are asking for road cable routing on their cyclocross bikes. I'm not one to argue with what people want as long as they are sane, or at least sincere. I have known some insane people who are very ethical .
Here's another view where you can see the new feature in all of it's tiny glory.
No, that was not a typo-this frame is really going to Malaysia just as soon as the brakes and fork arrive. I have sent some frames to Singapore, Taiwan , New Zealand, Australia , Guam but this is the first to the island nation.
The customer wanted a scandium team bike, paint and all so that is what I built. I even got to use my last US made NOS scandium tubes out of the stash I had been saving. This was the right size frame for what I had and I hope it works well on the other side of the planet where it is going.
I still have yet to prep and install the r. Der. hanger, seat collar and a BB cable guide.
This frame went together without a fight.....not to say that some are a pain but there are frames that keep me at work later than others. This one went together nicely and it allowed me the luxury of a twilight 'cross ride-good for the morale this time of year.
Nothing out of the ordinary here, just a good workhorse race frame from mostly my dwindling stash of US made NOS Easton 7005 tubing. I think by the end of 2012 I'll be out of this great material forever.
I'm trying to build three of these this week to complete the last 7005 frames of the year. Next week it will be a few Scandium frames and then back to steel for the rest of 2011.
Yes, that's Portland as in Oregon. I guess the customer for this frame decided that lugs, stainless logos and a two year wait were not in his case a selling point. I hope he likes what I built for him and I hope that he gets to thrash it in the incomparable sticky mud that is the regular track in Portland cyclocross racing.
No extra stuff here, just a bare bones steel racing machine with the only extra being the white painted on panels. There also is a matching fork but I didn't get time to photograph it. Suffice to say that it is a straight blade unicrown made to take some serious abuse.
This frame is unridden. Long story, suffice to say that it is all USA made GX-2 scandium, the best tubing that I cannot get any more. You can get the frame with an Edge fork for $ 1250
A customer came by with this nearly mint condition 1974 Raleigh professional. I figured that people needed to see it in all its glory.
The drive train is super clean.....not many miles on this bike at all.
This fork will go on an older Merlin MTB. The blades are NOS Tange and should have a very nice ride. The length is the same as a Rock Shox 'Mag-21' from about 1993. The bike is old enough that it has a 1" steerer. Nice to know that a nearly 20 year old Merlin is still in effect.
The internal top tube and fender eyelets were a special request. It doesn't rain much in Bakersfield but you never know.....climate is changing.
The brake bridge has a little boss for the fender and is some 3/8" cro-mo aircraft tubing.
this frame should see some hard duty in the coming months. I also built a fork to go with it but didn't get a chance to photograph it.
This frame is nearly the same shade as one of my guitars. I had to take a photo of the two of them side by side to show the difference.
The color of the frame looks a lot lighter when photographed outdoors but the photo shot inside my shop gives a more accurate representation of what the color looks like in person.
The frame is a cross-country frame for the most part but it can take a 100-120 mm shock .
Nearly all the tubing is made in the USA, nice in view of the difficulty in finding material actually manufactured in this country. I'm glad that there are still some people out there who believe that we don't have to import every D#$%^ thing from China.
This frame is for one of the former editors of Cyclocross magazine. I always like to get industry and former industry folks on my bikes.
This is pretty much the straight-up Euro chassis with fender eyes and bosses on the bridges.
You might ask " Why such thin tubing on the bridges ?" When you run out of the fatter tubes and the fame has to get done , you use the thinner stuff. I change the guage of the bridges once in awhile to get a different look. In this case it is a pretty graceful touch and since the bridges are only there for fender support, they don't need to be larger. The .049 wall tubing is stronger than it needs to be anyway.
I finished up two steel 'cross frames and built these two forks today. On frame will go to a rider who is all legs. The other smaller frame is going to a man who has some new shifting system that will be debuted very soon, like in a few weeks. I'm hoping that our team gets a few sets to try.
This is the taller frame. Both are my tig Euro model and they weigh about 4 lbs. each and are made from a mix of Reynolds 725 and True Temper OX gold and platinum. Light and solid is what I hope these will be.
I kept the rear stays pretty straight on the taller frame as the thinner tubes do not like to be bent very much. Also, with such a tall frame not much of a bend is needed in the seat stays.
I had a little more poetic license with the smaller frame as I used some thicker wall seat stays that can take a couple of bends without buckling. The frame was still pretty light at 3 lb. 15 oz.
