The MAX Project

One of the projects I am really excited about finishing is the MAX bike I am doing for Stephen. We were lucky enough to get our hands on a Columbus MAX tube and lug set complete with the original fork blades and seat stays. We used a nice Walter MAX fork crown and Long Shen dropouts to round out the build.
The first step was to give the lugs and BB a little personality. As you can see, the stock lugs are pretty chunky. But hey, this tube set was all about building a race machine for big, strong dudes. Aesthetics were likely not too high on the old priority list.
There wasn't much real estate to work with on these lugs. They were short and stubby. But there was one particular feature I liked. The top tube and down tube are ovalized where they meet the head tube. With the long axis of each tube on the vertical plane, it created a broad, flat area that could be carved. I also knew I wanted to remove as much meat from the BB shell as I could.
Here are the lugs and BB out of the box....

Now for a little "Z" treatment....

And now the fun begins. I wanted the design to be simple. This is a race bike. Clean and nothing over the top was the order of the day. After a lot of drawing on the lugs to figure out what I liked, this simple design came to me and I ran with it.

And I added some cable guides to the bottom of the BB.

More tomorrow....thanks for looking!

FMB and Zanconato

Francois at FMB makes the nicest tubulars in the world by hand in France. I am deeply honored that he chose to include a Zanconato on his gallery page. I will be doing another order next spring. Please get in touch if there is something you are interested in.

http://www.fm-boyaux.fr/galerie.htm

Happy New Year

It's chilly here in WI. I'm excited to be headed back to MA for the month of January to finish up all of the remaining frames. They are all in process with at least the tubesets mitered and ready to be tacked. But they will all be done and ready for paint by January 23rd. Then back to WI for my spring semester at UWM.

We will be moving back to MA at the end of July and I will be building full time in 2010. A new website is in the works. But for now the main focus is getting the last 10 or so frames off to the incredibly patient folks listed to my left. I am going to do a bunch of photos while I am in MA, so stay tuned for next week.

Thanks and Happy New Year!

Movin' on up...

I truly believe things happen for a reason. Faith, religion, call it what you will. But it took an act of God to push my landlord to make a move. Well, not quite an act of God. More like "It took God making the roof leak for us to start looking for a new place". Most of you know that I have been sharing space with Toby at Hot Tubes for the past five years. The old shop on Webster St in Worcester had its "charm" in an old building kind of way. Well, after 17 years, Toby decided it was time for a change. Say good bye "old-world-charm" and say hello to a modern manufacturing facility. And for all of you who visited the old shop, rest well knowinig that we now have incredibly well-kept bathrooms!

Here are some pictures of the space. We are now in Shirley, MA at Phoenix Park, an office and manufacturing park just off of Rt 2. The space has just been renovated. We now have beautiful brick walls and a nice diamond plate steel floor. We started our move a couple of weeks ago and things are coming along nicely. Toby just bought a new paint booth and we will be installing it this week. The electrician is wiring us up for 220V this week and with that we will also get our air compressor running. So air and power by the end of the week! I anticipate being back at my bench next week building frames again. The new space has really inspired me to design a great work station that will be ultra-efficient. I can't wait to get going!

The outside of the building is very nice brick. And it has 2 large bay doors with tons of parking.

Our new entry brings you into the center of the room. The frame building area and alignment table will be the the left of the door from this angle. The back corner to the right will be where we place the bead-blaster and paint-prep area.

The frame building area will be on the right near the windows and lots of natural light. We are going to build an office on the left side of this wall.

The new paint booth will be in the center of this wall. The lathe and Bridgeport will be to the right of the booth.

Our first trailorload of stuff arrives!

I will post more photos as we go. But more importantly, I will begin posting more updates on customer bikes as I get up and going again next week. Till then, happy riding. And thanks for reading!

Someone is psyched for Dwars...

It's Classics time. Bill wanted a special paint job for his new cobble gobbling monster to coincide with this special time of year. Thank you for your order, Bill. It was fantastic working with you!

Say hello to Monster

Bill came to me looking for a machine that could tackle roads, dirt roads, cobbles, pot holes, and almost anything else that crossed his path. He wanted to use 28 mm tires with short reach Record calipers. The fork length and seat stay bridge height were set to their maximum so the pads were at the near-bottom of the slots. Chainstay length was stretched a bit and the seat tube angle was shallowed out a bit. Neutral handling would help in the 9th hour of the Deerfield Dirt massacre. And the final request was a full compliment of Mr. Sachs' castings and forged frame ends. This was a very enjoyable frameset to build and I thank Bill for his order. Wait until you see the paintjob. You will certainly understand the inspiration for this bike. And it comes at just the right time of year...

New blog feature

I have added a new feature to the side bar of my blog. I have added all current customer orders and I will be updating these with progress and timing. The updates will be labeled as:

Specification development - currently working with customer on final frameset and position specs
Specifications complete - specs complete and frameset is ready for fabrication
Tube set in process - tubes are being machined and prepped
Tube set complete - all tubes have been machined and are ready for tacking. Braze-ons have been added wherever possible. I typically do these in batches of 3 - 10.
Fork in process - fork is being fabricated
Fork complete - fork is fabricated, aligned and ready for paint. I typically do these in batches of 3-10.
Frame tacked - frame has been tacked and aligned
Frame fully brazed - frame has been fully brazed and aligned again
Brazing complete - all brazing is complete including all braze-ons
Frame machined - all threads have been tapped, head tube and seat tube have been machined and alignment has been checked one final time
Ready for paint - frameset is complete has been handed off to Toby at Hot Tubes for paint
Paint complete - back to me for final prep and photos
Ship date - xx/xx/xxxx - ship date added

As deliveries are confirmed, the frames will come off the list and everything moves up one. There will be dates on each step so that you can keep track of the last activity. Hopefully, this will help everyone keep track of progress. As always, please contact me with any questions.
Thank you!

How I build a bike, part 3

Yikes, It's been awhile. We left off in the last installment with all of the tubes coped and mocked up in the fixture. There is still some work to do before we tack the frame though. One thing I try to do before tacking the frame is braze on as many..errr...braze-ons as possible. Why? Well, when you heat things, they expand. Now, picture a nicely made frame. It's all aligned and happy. Then, you go in with a torch and heat up small, localized sections of the tubes with abandon. Things will get squirely on you. If you add the braze-ons beforehand, the tubes have done their thing and you can move on to tacking and brazing the frame straight without worry of undoing all of your hard work later. That was a run on sentence, wasn't it?

First up are the brake bosses. The frame is in the jig and my handy Henry James jig has an integrate bridge and boss jig. The bosses have been machined to fit the stay very tightly.

Next, the parts are cleaned and placed back in the jig. Flux is then added (the grey stuff). Flux is an acid that becomes reactive at around 900 degrees F. It gobbles up all of the oxides on the surface of the steel and promotes the silver to "wet out" on the surface of the steel. This is a special flux I get from Fred Parr. It resists burning very well and is very easy to rinse off after the joint has cooled.

The joint is heated, the water in the flux boils off and the flux becomes powdery. Hotter yet and the flux liquifies and begins to work its magic. At about 1150F, the silver filler rod is added to the joint. If all goes well, you will be left with a joint that appears to be covered in ice. Good heat control = no burnt flux.

Next come the two cable guides on the seat stays. This is a cross bike with top tube cable routing, so the rear deraileur cable runs along the right seat stay.

Fluxed...

Brazed...

The front derailleur cable is run down the backside of the seat tube, around a pulley and back up to the derailleur. This is the boss for the pulley.

Fluxed...

Brazed...

Next up are the triple stops on the top tube. A witness line is used to be sure the stops are on the top dead center of the top tube.

Fluxed...

Well, you get the idea...





So, if all has gone well in your brazing and you haven't gurnt your flux, a quick dunk in hot water is all that is needed to remove the flux.

Notice the areas of clean steel where the flux was and the discolored areas just outside. If the flux had not been there, the silver would not have adheared to the steel.

Next up, final tube prep and tacking...