Steel boost 29er frame for a local

This one is really stout and made for hard riding. When the customer told me about the kind of rides he does I decided to go with a big 44 mm down tube from Velo-Spec. This is USA steel milled in Taiwan. I think it is perhaps the most durable steel out there and the manufacturing quality is really good.

The frame is made to take up to 2.5" tires and has some fairly modern geometry with a 76 deg. seat tube and 66 degree head tube. The head tube is also made for an integrated headset. I hope that the customer does not mind a few ounces of extra beef in the frame-I want this one to last the ages.

 

Steel single speed commuter/CX/big tire/urban assault for Portland

Yeah, lots of words but it is really a fairly simple bike. All steel , it has sliding dropouts for chain tensioning and will have flat mount disc brakes. The bike can be geared with an internally geared hub or a rear der. as long as it is wireless but this customer will probably use it single speed all the time. 

There are rack mounts and external generator wire guides on the front fork. Although the rear brake is flat mount it is routed up the seat stay as the brake mount is pointed in that direction.

 

Steel CX/Grave frame going east

The rider of this frame is all legs so the top tube is very short for a 5'7" rider.

This one is pretty light at 4 lb. 3 oz. as the rider is only about 140 lbs. The customer opted for all external routing and rear rack mounts. The fork will have rack fittings as well so this will be a very versatile bike .

 

Steel gravel frame going to SF, Calif.

January is a steel month and it has mostly been frames like this one. It weighs 4 lb. 4 oz. , not real heavy as it has the lighter Columbus tubes that I use for riders under 170 lbs.

This customer came by and rode my bike without having to adjust anything. I only made really small adjustments to the fit as he looked pretty good on my bike. I hope that he likes this one even more.

 

Double-oversize steel frame with Sachs tubing and lugs

Nearly all the materials for this frame were proivided by the customer , who in turn bought them from Richard Sachs. The BB shell and the dropouts are branded as such. This kit is made for an 1-1/8" steerer and a 1-3/8" down tube with 1-1/4" top and seat tubes. The frame weighs 4 lb. 4 oz. , not that much for a lugged frame with big tubes.

The only departure was the use of a Tange seat stay wishbone , topped off with a small half-lug that I made myself. The only non-Sachs tube is the wishbone extension. The seat stays were bi-conical , making it a real judgement call where to cut them so they would fit well on the wishbone and the rear dropouts. I did the best I could , not cosmetically perfect but structurally solid. 

The frame will be paired with the customer's own supplied Enve road fork. This is a rim brake road frame to be used with a Campagnolo mechanical gruppo. I hope that the customer likes the ride quality. 
 

26" wheel rim brake MTB for bay area

2024 is off to s slow start in the shop but at least I got this frame and fork done before the weekend. I still have to build a custom steel stem but I'll get that done early next week and this all should go to the powder coat shop.

This customer has been riding the same bike since the late '80's and wanted my version of what was being built back then. Since I was actually building frames like this in the '80's I didn't have a problem figuring out the geometry-it was what put me on the map back then as a builder. The only departure I made from the old formula was to give the bike a bit more tire room if the owner ever decided to use tires larger than the 26x2.1" tires he was running on his old bike.

For rim brakes this one is getting cantilevers, not V-brakes. This rider does not go on steep hills and mostly rides around his Marin county neighborhood so pawerful brakes are not something he feels he needs. Back in the day, all of us rode some pretty challenging trails with cantilever brakes and they did the job back then, as long as it was not raining, anyway !

I tired to make the frame and fork resemble what I was building in the 1984-1990 era and I think that it looks pretty close, right down to the head tube rings.
 

Let's party like it's 1982

I set out to build a frame between X-mas and new years and do it in the style that I used in the early days of my frame building career. Here is the result . All of the materials came from the inventory left over by Hugh Enochs, a bay area bike frame builder, restorer and business owner. He came down with Parkinson's and could no longer work so all of his old stuff went up for sale. Most of these materials have been in storage since the '70's and 80's.

The head lugs are from Henry James, another company that is gone. 

The fork crown is an Everest copy of a Cinelli MC, or at least that's what I think it is-it could be something else that pre-dates the Everest company.

I'll put up photos of it painted.  I won't decal this one as a Rock Lobster - I'll hand paint on the same logo I used from 1982-1984 for the handful of lugged road frames I built back then. Don't worry, I will still be making Rock Lobster frames- this is just a side project. I have no idea how many of these I will make but I think it will be a small number.

 

Another steel hard tail

Here's another one ready to ship out. This one sports the Jen Green headbadge.

 

Steel boost 650 frame going to Virginia

If all goes well, this one will go out tomorrow morning. 2023 marks the year of the most fat tired frames for me since 1998 I think. The steel hardtail is coming back. I have more of them on order for 2024 so it looks like the trend isn't over yet.

This one is a mix of NOS True Temper , Velo Spec and Dedacciai steel. The owner did not want bottle mounts so it is a very clean looking frame.

 

Restoring one from the early years

I think I built this frame in 1989 but I would have to look at my records. It is one of the first 30 road frames I had built then and it got quite a bit of use until injury forced the owner to hang it up. Now his son will be riding it so it was brought back to me as a frame and fork to be repainted and then reassembled with all now gear.

Here is the result of all the work-I just rode it a bit today. The Columbus SL frame with cast Cinelli lugs still feels solid and the new components will probably take quite a bit of weight off of the original figure.

With White Industry cranks, BB and hubs , this is a pretty nice build. The drive train is whatever Shimano stuff I could get at the time- mostly Ultegra with a bit of 105. Only the seatpost is original. The headset is a polished 1" threaded Chris King that I was very lucky to be able to order. The owner provided things like bars, stem, saddle,pedals and seatpost - the Dura Ace post being the only original component on the bike.

I had to find the rims on Ebay as they are out of production. They built up nice and straight, the way I remember Mavic rims always did back in the day.