Vallie Components - bicycle parts design

Quick Spring update

Sat, 11 May 2013 14:37:12 +0100

Not sure why I haven't blogged this yet. I've kept pretty busy the past couple of months building my first two bicycle frames. I know this is not a huge feat, but it took some figuring out. So a bike a month for 2 months seems reasonable. All my friends seemed to think that making frames would be inevitable for me, and I guess they were right. Its a new challenge, and with so many steps, I can now see how far from perfection any single frame can be.

VCF01 - 51cm comfort road for my wife, tall slack headtube, a mix of tubing with big chainstays and small seat stays. Its powdercoated dormant blue, which is anything but dormant in the sunlight. I built it with a modest mix of used parts, including new 9 speed Sora shifters.

That turned out alright, and I learned a few quick lessons I was able to apply to the second bike.

VCF02 - A large 650B all mountain hardtail for myself. Its designed to walk the line between xc bike and play bike.

The geometry is based around the newly released Fox 32 27.5" fork. Chain stays are 420mm, seat tube is 530mm, @ max extension the effective top tube is 630mm, and seat tube is 73°. Here's how it sits through the 130mm travel range:

POSITION, HEAD TUBE ANGLE, FORK LENGTH, BB DROP, TRAIL
max height, 68.5°, 517.5mm, 40mm, 91mm
30mm sag, 70°, 487.5mm, 50.4mm, 81.4mm
full squish, 75°, 387.5mm, 86.5mm, 48.9mm

It was definitely more challgenging to have to design it around a range of movement, rather than a static geometry. I can see how a proper full suspension bike can take years to design now. I'm pretty confident I got the angles close to ideal on this for my kind of riding, but only riding it will tell. I've got 90% of the tubes on hand to make a second revision in case A) I don't like something about the way this one handles, or B) I break it.

Hopefully I'll have it back from the powdercoaters next week. It is turning a crazy shade of mint (like the old appliances).

My fork and tires are still a couple weeks from hitting the shore however, so I won't be riding it until June probably. That's alright though, because it will give me time to savour the last few rides on my current Kona Unit hardtail before I decommision it.

I'm not taking orders for frames yet, as I still haven't proven to myself that I can weld up thin wall chromoly properly. Maybe soon though.

Another First?

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 06:12:33 +0100

With just a few thousand turns of the lathe and a few pulses of the TIG torch, I've managed to create what may be the worlds first Sram I-motion 9 compatible Gates CDC cog!

Its a ridiculously tight fit, but it works! This is going on a Civia Bryant, which is thankfully already belt compatible.

Airfoil shaped expansion wedge

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 18:55:32 +0100

Sometimes things get dark and complicated.

But then they don't look so bad in the next day's light.

Universal Stay Mitering Fixture

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 03:04:39 +0100

I didn't go to NAHBS this year, and so this past Sunday morning, hungover from a friends birthday bowling party the night previous, I set out to design a fixture that would allow me to accomplish all the major rear end mitering operations involved in bike building. Slowly through the course of the afternoon, I chipped away at a 3D model. All this while checking out photos of rad show bikes.

The fixture had to:

allow chainstay mitering at both ends
allow seatstay mitering at both ends
accomodate tube sizes to fit most bikes
accomodate tube lengths from BMX to tall guy touring bikes
accept all new fat/DH axle/BB standards.
be intuitive enough to set up, that I don't forget how to set it up

I ended up with this later in the day (click for bigger and less jpg compression):

It seemed passable, as a first draft. No need to get any approval stamps when you're also the guy who's going to cut the metal.

Monday I got started on the small pieces. Its tough to decide whether to build up something like this from the biggest, or smallest parts first. In the end, I decided to do the V blocks first, as they seemed the most complicated, and there were eight of them.

They do make a nice V shape with the 25degree cut.

Next up was a quick mock up of the basic shape. I enlisted the help of my coworker for a sizing guideline. If the stays are cat-length, then we're pretty much good to go.

According to my model, I had to drill something like 22 holes, but of course, once I got the part squared in the mill, and started tapping, I couldn't stop. I ended up doing a nice matrix of 3 x 19 M6 threaded holes. Accurate to within 0.001" over the entire cat length. The entire baseplate took less than 1.5 hours. Tappa Tappa Tappa

I opted to not put a sliding key way on this one. The sliding plates have their slots precision milled for very little play to the 6mm bolts. I figured that each time I set it up for an operation, I would be double checking the symmetry by mounting it in the mill and referencing off of the stays anyways. By Wednesday I was itching to get it all assembled and tested, so I hit up Pacific Fasteners with a specific list of hardware. No suprise, they had every single bolt I needed. Thanks again guys!

I got back and got to work making the rotary table mount, modifying the sliding plates to clear said rotary table, and assembling. I ended up having to modify the narrow end V blocks in a couple of operations as well. By the end of the day I was FINALLY ready to do a test cut, and I grabbed some scrap stays from a bent up Surly Pacer. I straightened them as much as possible, and threw them in the fixture. After setting everything up in the fixture, and having a look at it, I called it a day there. what would the point of rushing through the fist cut be if I was too tired to enjoy it?

This morning I had some CAD work to get through, so I managed to avoid the fixture creeping behind me on the milling table for like 3 hours. Finally I broke down and paid it some more attention.

Knolling out the tools needed for setup is a vital operation. It sort of a mental prep to get in the headspace. Ask any under water welder just how important it is to have everything ready before hand.

Here's how I left the stays in the jig overnight. I decided to emulate the mitre on the rear end of my new Brodie Romulus. This meant I actually had to pre-cut the stays to get them close enough before the actual hole saw mitre (not shown). After everything was clamped down again It was time to play with my newest toy. I call it "Mr Tilt Box". I'm willing to bet this little box contains the same chip that I installed on the rear axle of my track bike.

At this point I would like to break to mention how addicted I am to 44 bikes Flickr Stream. He makes all sorts of rad bikes in New England, and his shop pics are a huge inspiration to me. Follow/Add him if you have not already!

Anyways, four days later, and I'm at the moment of truth. I finished my coffee, got the coolant spray bottle handy, did a handful of setup checks, and fired up the machine. Slow and steady pressure on the drill handle is key, as you can feel the teeth digging into your work. I think I did the cut at around 450RPM, and only started spraying coolant halfway through.

Made it through! Now a shot from the underside. This is a rare view that usually only a seat tube sees:

I'm sure that after a handful of frames I'll find a bunch of flaws in this fixture, but for now, it will have to do. Next up I'm going to make a dummy axle holder so it can be used to weld rear dropouts, and to hold the stays even for BB shell mitering.

We're getting very close to the first frames out of Vallie Components! Be warned!

Parts Bin Fun

Sun, 03 Feb 2013 23:25:26 +0100

Currently building up a new cargo test mule. Being an organized parts hoarder finally pays off, in the form of a simple chain keeper system.

Game Changer?

Sat, 26 Jan 2013 17:40:10 +0100

This is interesting. Its not every day that you find yourself in possesion of a near mint piece of tooling at a good price. This Bringheli frame jig came to me by way of London. Every piece was wrapped in Guardian newspaper dating back to May 2010. Thanks Ross!

It is big and heavy. Looking at them onine, I always thought they were aluminum. Nope! STEEL IS REAL.

The first thing I needed to do was figure out how I was going to mount it. Ross had started a rectangular hole pattern on the back diagonal support. Thankfully, I was just barely able to fit the thing on my milling machine table, and was able to complete the hole pattern, for a couple recurrences up the diagonal support. Then I got to work on making a pivoting bracket to fit in my Park bench stand.

Here's what I came up with:

Amazingly, I had everything I needed just kickin' around the shop. The big bolt in the centre is an M10. I was really hoping that it would have enough clamping force to hold the fixture from slipping down under its own weight. This thing allows the jig to pivot in a multitude of directions to get those hard to reach welds.

Here it is doing its job:

After assembling all the fittings onto the fixture, its now heavy enough to flex my steel work bench a little, but strangely the wooden 2x6 riser blocks under the Park stand aren't an issue. Anyways, it works. The M10 bolt holds the entire fixture's weight without issue. As a small bonus, the fixture is completely grounded, so I can weld right onto it!

So what now? well I guess if I want to make some frames, I have some more tooling to get to work on. A frame jig does not a frame shop make.

I'm going to need some more mitering fixtures for one. Then some tubes.. and some way to align the finished product... Stay tuned for that stuff. For now, I just need to figure out a way to hang this giant thing out of my way when its not in use. Its taking up a lot of real estate in my tiny shop. Its pretty exciting though, so I don't mind having it as a centerpiece at the moment.

Oh yeah, and as far as my futureshift bicycle ECU project is going, it is still on track. Here's how it sits:

I've got the Arduino set up to log x,y,z acceleration data to a 2GB SD card. There are status LEDs to tell me what its doing, and waterproof STOP, and Reset buttons wired up. At this point I'm basically waiting on a little Lipo battery charger board that will allow me to just charge the thing via USB. I'm also going to add a Sigma Hall effect sensor to the program to tell me cadence, speed and crank position. Then I'll seal it up in a box, strap it to my bike, and start recording. Yeah its a whole lot of work to learn a little bit about my riding, but I'm just not an iphone/strava kind of guy.

Thats it for now. Back to work!

The Future is NOW

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 02:39:53 +0100

We've reached the tipping point.

Bikes are no longer just tubes and gears and a bit of leather and rubber. We now have HRMs, SRMs, GPS tracking and virtual competition via Strava, EPS, DI2 communicating via CAN-BUS, advanced FMEA, lithium batteries, wireless shifting, bluetooth tire pressure monitors and a whole buttload of other fancy tech terms and buzzwords to make your head spin, and make you feel less adequate as a cyclist.

This is the case whether you like it or not. You've got to stay on top of this stuff or you will be made obsolete.

I saw a video recently turned a servo in my head. This guy has programmed his bike to adapt to terrain, and adjust his suspension accordingly.

It made me realize that there is so much more that my bike could be telling me. So rather than pretend to be some type of handicraft neo-luddite and have the robots eventually take my job, I'm going to jump right into the pulse width modulated stream of data and grab bytes by the parity bit.

Wait, what?

I'm going to create a bicycle ECU. Or maybe its a BCU? doesnt really matter. We have the computing power now. Theres no reason not to.

My plan of attack is to first add data logging capabilities to my commuter. Heres my first baby step along the way:

This is a triple axis accelerometer mounted on a Vallie Components Street Fixed Hub cone nut. For those who want to look it up, its the ADXL345 from Analog Devices on a board from Sparkfun.com. Obviously it will be conformally coated to protect it from the elements.

Hopefully this little rascal will be able to tell me some things about my riding that I dont already know.

I'll be connecting it to a an Osepp Arduino clone and using an Adafruit data logger board to collect info from my rides. Yep. thats about it. There is some exciting nerdery ahead at Vallie Components in the new year.

The cold November Rain

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 16:48:17 +0100

All the weatherproofing I did this summer seems to really be working out here at Vallie Components. My shop floor has never been dryer in the cold November rain. Heaters are gonna heat, and I'm able to focus on work.

Back at the start of the month I had a stem body all welded up, and just needed to add some binders to it. After I receieve my Paragon M6 binders, I realized how big and heavy they are. There was no way I would put 6 of them on a stem. I guess there is a reason most people only use two of them..

This prompted me to get some 3/8" bar stock and make my own M5 ones. I made them .75" long, and they have threading halfway up them. It didn't take to long for my lathe to spit them all out. Then I mitred them for the OD of the 31.8mm handlebar clamp tube. As you can see here, I fucked up the first one, mitering a bit too deep, and exposing the threads.

After these were ready to go, I had a bit of time to kill, as I didn't have any suitable brass flux. Ross @ 78 Bike Co hooked me up though and gave me a small amount of Gasflux type B paste to get me on my way. Thanks Ross, you are too kind.

I then had to figure out how to hold 2 small binders AND 4 tiny binders in position during brazing. The two M6 binders were pretty easy, and I made a weighted plate to hold them down in the vise:

The four tiny M5s were a bit more daunting. I couldn't use gravity unless I was doing 2 at a time, and I wanted to do them all at once. I experimented with a threaded clamping jigs, and even a couple sprung ones, but it was hard to get all 4 binders perfectly aligned. Then I got smart about it. I just drew what needed to be done in CAD, and made the idividual pieces. Sometimes I actually forget I can make things so accurately. Here's the setup I came up with, of course this fixture ONLY works with this tube diameter, THESE binders with the depth of mitre I chose. I love excruiciatingly specific fixtures just as much as adjustable ones:

I was a bit spooked about melting aluminum, and galling of threads etc, but it all turned out ok in the end. After a few hundred file strokes and some emery cloth polishing, it was done. I even turned down an old Anodized purple BMX bar end plug to be a 1" specific top cap. The only thing left to do was paint it..

It always seems that just when I am feeling good about things, and looking forward to the future, the bicycle gods smite me to have a little fun.

You see, I was invited to the Premier of the MTB film 'Where the Trail Ends' and rode my trusty truckbike downtown to the theatre to see it. The entire time I was at the movie, I was thinking about my bike. How it was unsafe downtown on a Friday Night.. I was nervous in my seat as I watched what was probably the most epic Big Mountain MTB film ever made. When I came out of the theatre, sure enough, my bike was fine. What was I worried about? I hopped on, and began the ride home.

Sometime into the ride I heard a creak. I tried to diagnose it while softpedalling out a separated bike path, but couldn't put my finger on it, and chalked it up to SPD pedals. At the next light I was trackstanding waiting for the light to change. When it did, I stood up and mashed as per usual.. However my bike didn't accelerate as it normally does, and it actually felt like I had slipped on leaves.. Then my chain came off and I was left straddling my bike in the middle of Main St. wondering what happened. .. well, THIS happened:

As I sat there on the bus on the way home, I was super bummed. Not only did I have to take the bus, but the stem I had been working on was now for a broken bicycle. Immediately I got a hold of my friend Morgan, who (lucky for me) was selling his identically sized KHS Flite 100. So here's my new commuter:

While Morgan sees this bike setup to be perfect, it leaves a lot to be desired for me. I just cannot ride it like this, so I've basically got to strip it completely (even the stickers) and build it up to my own spec. INCLUDING my newly painted custom stem. This is sort of where I'm at now. I've also got got another bike build on the go too. I'm working on my 2007 Seshin Megatron BMX, trying to get it down from 27.31 lbs to a more modern 25lbs. Its pretty fun being able to attack every component on it with my milling machine.

More on this soon. I'm pretty excited to have a double new bike day on the horizon. Especially one where I don't add anything to the stable.

Stem Development

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 16:33:21 +0100

After this season of riding a new 60cm road bike, my 57cm commuter truckbike feels super cramped with Metropolis handlebars and a -5° 130mm stem. Its been bugging me enough that I mounted up the Salsa Size-o-matic fit stem to the bike for an afternoon of testing various positions in the trainer. I found that with that bar (which I love the sweep and stiffness of), my body wants a 0° 145mm stem, effectively bringing my hands up and forward a bit.

Well, the only people that really make long stems with OS bar clamping is 3T, and they're somewhat pricey, so I decided to make my own. Of course I had to go and do things the Lyle way, and make a precision stem jig first. I mean, what good is a stem if its not perfectly straight?

I started by doing a top-down layout model of what a stem jig should do, after spending some time drooling over Alex Meade's and Sputnick's designs. Basically, I wanted to make a model that I could simply plug lengths, angles, and tubing diamters into, and have it figure out the rest. Some hours later, I've got this:

The first part I physically made, was the cones. They're just turned out of 1.5" round 6061 stock, and they stack up nicely on this .5" shaft:

Eventually I made the rest of the fixture. I took my time and must have calibrated my mill really well, because it turned out REALLY square. Perfect.

Of course, having a square fixture doesn't mean what you weld in it will turn out square...(but it certainly doesn't hurt)

Either way, once I was done with the fixture, it was time to move onto the actual stem. I revisited the model and worked on some advanced surfacing techniques (thanks Mark @ Noble bikes!) to figure out the mitre lengths for the stem I wanted to make.

I was pretty satisfied with this, but found a little aesthetic detail i couldn't live with. The main shaft of the stem is 1.25", and the steerer clamp is 1.125" so the body of the stem is hanging off the sides of the steerer clamp. This would be ok if I were brazing it, and then I could fil it with brass and spend a bunch of time scalloping the extra brass to look aero. However, I had planned on TIG welding this, and didn't want to have to fill up a big gap with filler and have it look gross.

I looked at some old MTB stems for inspiration. An old Ritchey had just the feature I wanted.

The main stem shaft was bigger than the quill, and they had squeezed it down into an ellipse for the mitre, resulting in a much cleaner junction. This technique is used quite heavily in the BMX world as well, where top tubes are much larger in diameter than seat tubes.

It took me a couple hours, but i figured out how to do it virtually. Making a lofted sketch where I could control how much the tube deformed based on the equation for the area of an ellipse. In other words, if I crush one end of a tube in the X, how much does the Y deform? Not super complex to the mathy, but it was hard to get it to play nice in a CAD model. Anyways, here's how that feature looks with the deformed tube. Much cleaner, and will weld up much nicer.

Time to actually work with steel! Here's how I managed to deform the unmitred 5" section of chromoly tube:

Basically, its squished down 0.125" at one end. It doesn't sound like a lot, but its enough.

Now clamping it to mitre gets tricky. Since the tube is now the shape of a toothpaste tube, it doesn't clamp square in a V block along one axis. So naturally, I made the critically square axis the bar clamp, which left the steerer clamp subject to error. Basically, it's clamped the tall way in the V block. I was able to use some feeler gauges to actually get the thing square in the vise while doing the steerer tube mitre through the elliptical end:

Then all I had to do was flip the V block in the vise, to have the bar clamp mitre come out square.

The Lenox Bimetal holesaws make short work of the 4130 tubing at 400RPM with a bit of Rapid Tap smoke for effect.

And here's how perfect the mitre's come out:

At this point I couldn't help doing a test fit to see what the stem would look like. Excuse the weird photo angle, my camera has a broken light meter and its sometimes hard to get the subject washed in light correctly to shoot.

Next step was to drill the vent holes in the steerer and bar clamp.. and while doing vent holes, why not make them big? I also opted to go right through the bar clamp for aesthetics. And we're finally ready to weld:

This is the tricky part. Every time I get this far into a project, I think "It could all go wrong now" when I start to weld. Some calm breathing, a steady hand and half hour later I've got this:

While the welds are structurally sound, they're not Steve Potts perfect. Oh well. Its my first stem. From what I can tell, it came out straight and square. I'll just be happy if it doesn't crack when I'm jumping the bike or something. Now I'm waiting for the post man to deliver some binder nuts from Paragon. I still haven't decided if I'm going to braze or weld them on. Thats it for now.

Taking a quick brake

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 15:46:03 +0100

Here's a custom disc brake tab install on Greg's All City freestyle fork:

Not bad for half a day's work.

Fork Fixture!

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 22:39:38 +0100

I just finished my fork building fixture. It feels amazing to be able to make my own tools. I think I started doing the CAD for this on march 22nd. Pretty quick turnaround, really. I'm sure I'll find flaws in it as I go along, but I don't see myself ever stopping playing with bikes, so its not really a problem.

Basically, its ajustable from 16" mini fork length, to 29" suspension corrected mountain bike fork length, with rake ranging from 0-100mm. Also, its accurate within +-0.0005" over 18" length. Pretty freakin square.

I still might cut a large hole in it, where the back of the fork crown would sit, that way I could weld through it. And I'll probably have to screw the scales on, after the first time I torch them off.

Either way, its nice to call it 'finished' for now.

Another fun thing I've been playing with lately, has been the 'test fork' I built myself out of an old suspension crown, a derped Norco frame (thanks Nick!), some of my own dropouts, and a laser cut disc tab. The fork is about as adjustable as my fork jig, with rake ranging from 20-50mm, and quite a bit of extra length as well. Its currently set up on my Haro Extreme street MTB, where I'm testing the effect of rake and trail in high speed cornering.

I'm pretty much obsessed with bicycle handling at this point in time, and I'm trying to learn as much about it as possible through experimentation.

Decaleur Remixed

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 02:46:30 +0100

Recently I was asked if I could help make a new decaleur for a bar bag on a rather nice 650B Rawlands Rsogn. Sure. why not. Ryan had bought the Velo Orange one, and found that with his particular bar position he was grinding his knuckles into it, and it sat low enough that the bag was entirely on the front rack where it wouldn't clip in properly.

So we started with the above piece from Velo Orange. I then utilized the sophisticated greyscale .jpg to laserjet with sharpie layering technique to do the CAD for this project. (yes, its still computer assisted). The position of the original Velo Orange Decaleur can be seen here. Its approximately 80mm long. I decided to extend it out to a whopping 125mm. CRAZY RITE!?!

After the initial concept sketch was approved, I slammed some coffee and got to work. First the offending appendage was excised from Ryan's Rawland's steerer tube, then it was further disassembled via a 32TPI blade:

When ever I start a reassembling a project like this, I get Dethklok's hit 'Sewn Back Together Wrong" in my head. Not a bad thing. So I lightly curved and chopped a section of 3/8" stainless tube, and welded the original vertical tubes to them at an eyeballed 90 degrees. Then I cut slots in them at an approximate 125mm as the crow flies with my old friend Dremel. I then had to start thinking about placement. With the original pegged bracket off the bar bag I was able to line everything up to a symetric but not parallel state for welding. I knew the weld area of the ring piece would be problematic so I spaced it out with an existing thick headset spacer:

I then proceeded to stitch it all together without warping it.. HAH. Sometimes I really feel like a hack. Nothing quite as sobering as having a stainless tube play tricks with your mind. Is it straight now? Did I bend it more? Anyway, I keep the Amperage low and use really fine gauge filler rod when doing this kind of stuff. I also added a leg of the original U to make a cross brace at the front. When I was done welding I threw it on the mill to clean up the critical area where it mates with other headset spacers:

Next up I used the old U once again, and after mitering it flat on the bottom, and matching it to the tubes, added an offcut tab that luckily already had a VC stamping on it. It just needed to be tapped for the M6 barrel adjuster threads, and have the corners shaved off. I then welded it all up. Here's the final tacking setup with my super handy spring loaded needle nosed pliers on a tube acting as a third hand:

A kiss from the file and a hug from a wire wheel, Et Voila! A remixed and remastered bike part!

Sometimes these small jobs are really satisfying. I really like how this thing works with the lines of the bike. I'm also stoked to have reused 80% of the original part. Hopefully Velo Orange is cool with my creative commons approach to their materials. The great thing is now this bike is now ready to get some serious randoneur mileage! Maybe it will go to Paris.. then to Brest, then BACK TO PARIS. Who really knows just how far Ryan will take this beautiful machine..

Back 2 Reality

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 15:28:39 +0100

Well, I'm settling back into a work routine here in Vancouver. I've been back from California 2 days, and I think the NAHBS afterglow is starting to wear off.

I'm not going to pour over details of the show, or discuss all the rad bikes, but I will say this. The overwhelming positive energy, and batshit crazy creativity made it worth my while going there. It is so good to meet and talk with like minded people, all carving away at their own niche in the bicycle world.

There are photos on Urbanvelo.org, as well as Sam's blog. I really didn't take many pictures.

^Sam shot this one of Aran and I doing a quick tour of the show floor on a SyCip Trike on Saturday Morning

The trip back was exhausting. Literally.

We packed up Sam's booth into the van and were out of Sacramento around 6pm. A quick stop to visit Crystle at Applebees for dinner, and we were headed towards Eureka. We pulled in there sometime after Midnight, and picked up Sam's car, and swapped drivers. I then got to drive through the giant redwoods between 2 and 4am in the fog, with only a GPS to tell me which direction the next corner was. Straining through the fog to see was killing my weary eyes, so I swapped out at Grant's Pass, and went to sleep. Another stop in Medford Oregon's Dennys to fuel up, and we were ripping up the I-5. I swear I was hydroplaning the van for an hour straight on the way to Seattle. There we stopped to say farewell to Steve (and the Van), and froze our hands off in the snow trying to load the show bikes onto the back of Sam's Honda. (Which he acquired by trading for a frame)

Bikes worth 10x your car? check.

So the loaded Accord got us through Seattle, before we started hearing random noises. There was a bit of a panic moment as the muffler hit the ground, and we pulled over to rip it off the car before it wrapped around the rear beam.

..and just like that, I was back in Vancouver, on a bus with drunk thugs, while Sam and Aran scrambled to make the 8:15pm Ferry to Vancouver Island. That's how it goes when you are traveling with the fastest man alive.

So.. Now that I'm back with all this inspiration, what am I going to do?

1)I've got a watch model to finish for Halios Watches

2)I've got two people with Rawlands 650B bikes to make racks for

3)I need to work on my cargo bike

4)I'm going to start making some fixtures

5)I have to figure out what sort of bike to put my new Gates belt drive train on..

Yep. I've got my work cut out for me. .. but today I have to go to the bike shop and sip espresso while reflecting.

Off to NAHBS 2012

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 23:10:00 +0100

Well, after some last minute website updates, (Finally putting up the incredible product shots that Brandon Edwards did for me) I'm off to the North American Handmade Bicycle show. I'm super excited, as this is the one bike industry event I look forward to every year. I haven't gone since 2009 either!

For the past week I've been jealously reading Sam Whittingham's Road to NAHBS blog. I wanted to ride down with them, but didn't think I could swing it due to costs. This trip is already setting me back as far as equipment purchases go.

My mind is racing right now just thinking of the creative people I will get to talk with, and imagining the extra ordinary lengths they've all gone to, in order to create items that are uniquely their own. I'll probably be spending the majority of my time hanging out at the Naked Bicycles booth, so come say hi to me there.

I'm traveling light though, no checked baggage, and only the carry-on and personal item. This of course means I'll be leaving the Bialetti at home, and trying to survive on airport/hotel coffee..

(My friend Matt Sipple of Team Beer'd shot this one after a previousyl mentioned 6-chain-drop-soul-crusing-xc ride on the shore. He's going for a sort of vignetted-b/w-Rapha epic vibe..)

I've only got a one way ticket mind you.. but I am pretty sure there is room for me in the back of a Dodge Sprinter van leaving from Sacramento.. Lets just hope that the US Customs Officers believe me when I say I'm not going to the states to steal their jobs..

See you at the show!

Street Fixed Hub Set

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 20:30:10 +0100

Features:

ISO disc cog mounting eliminates stripped lock ring threads.
Dual sided (fixed/fixed) for multiple ratios
Thick symmetric flanges for a strong dishless build
Massive 15mm hollow female axle can take any abuse you can throw at it.
Japanese 6902 bearings to keep you rolling smoothly.
All Stainless steel Hardware
Beefy M10 rear and M8 front axle bolts
T25 M5 button head cog bolts
Slide on O-ring bearing collars
Accepts 44mm ISO disc cogs
120mm rear spacing, 100mm front spacing
Rear 36 or 48H
Front 32, 36 or 48H
rear hub = 393g, front hub = 307g
MSRP $500 CDN includes 2 cogs

This product is currently in soft release, as quantities are limited to approximately 50 sets.

For ordering information, please contact me directly through the webform on this site.