Major elbow grease

I spent many hours on this frame and stem today......filing bronze fillets. I didn't used to like this job but it has been many years since I have done one like this so it was an interesting departure from my regimen. This stem is made with some new macined parts from Paragon machine works. The stuff is a little heavy and not cheap but these pieces represent a huge leap forward in quality of anything I have built stems with in the previous 26 year......that's as long as I have been building them !
Any frame builder will tell you that this area of the frame is the most labor intensive cleanup spot. I think I devoted about two hours to it. I think I did a better job than the last time-when was that ? Hmmm.........2004 ? I honestly don't remember !
Unfortunately the camera flash kicks up the glare and reflections. At the end of the day it was the best I could do with the fading light and not a heck of energy left. If I had finished earlier I could have photographed the frame outdoors.
At least this side view of the headtube came out pretty nice. There are many hidden touches in this frame that are there to give the longest possible life to this old style unique 29er. That's right......it may look like a frame from 1985 but it is a much more modern bike functionally. Frames like this are something I seldom build and are not inexpensive. I do wind up working about four times as long on a frame like this but when it is being enjoyed by the customer , it will all be worth it.

1978 Schwinn Paramount

I'll bet most of you don't have one of these. Either do I for that matter. A friend just purchased this bike from the original owner for the grand sum of $ 75. I think the pedals alone are worth more than that. The rear Der. had a '73 stamp on it but the original bill of sale was dated 1978. Perhaps this bike spent many years hanging in a shop waiting to be ridden. I guess it has sat for a good number of years but now it is getting used a bit. Other than the rotten old tires and some funky shifting , this bike is pretty choice. The front wheel is mysteriously unoriginal.....no reason given by the seller. Odd, as the entire rest of the bike is stock.

Working for my supper

Brazing a frame together is a bit of work but you are only part way done if you want to really get the joints finished out so that the frame winds up with that 'seamless' look. These shots are brazed joints prior to the finishing process that will take a good number of hours. Back in the late '80's I did so much brazing that I got to a point where finish work really wasn't needed except in a few spots. The brazing on this frame came out a lot better than I would have thought , seeing as I have not fillet brazed in about 6 years other than a short demo I did last year.
I guess once you do something hundereds of times the skill stays with you for the most part. I will not have to labor as long as I was thinking looking at some of this brazing. I'll be honest, I was sure I would be filing down big globs of bronze here and there !
Here's the whole frame, a disc brake 29er 'Signature" model -probably the only one I'll build in 2011. It really brings me back to the old days, and I do mean old days ! I'm talking first season of Miami Vice days , Member's only jackets , all that stuff.
I'm so used to welding that I think my tig technique has melded with my old brazing technique and created some bastard child skill that might be better than my old style from the '80s.
Either way, it sure is fun to build something out of the ordinary.......of course, once I start the laborious filing I might not be so chipper. At least I have new files, lots of sunshine and a newly fixed stereo to get me through it all.

Last frame of 2010

2010 ended with a tig steel road frame with a couple of nods to the past: # 1, I used some small collars on the head tube that resembled the style on a lot of bikes in the early '90's. # 2, there's a Tange wishbone seatstay casting , much like mid to late '80's road bikes. I have about 70 of these castings left over from when Bontrager in Santa Cruz got shut down. I think I have only used about three of these in the last 12 years.

The tubeset is a mixture of Columbus Nivacrom stays and True Temper S-3 main tubes. The whole thing weighs in at 3 bl. 11 oz. pretty light for a frame this size, the equivalent of a 57 cm.

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.