Fresh from paint

Keith laid down a stunning paint job on this frameset. A straight up road machine for a good pal.. Thanks, Steve! More photos of the build HERE.

Customer Queue added to left column

Hi Folks,
I brought back my customer queue update section to the blog. It's on the left under the "Smoked Out" link list. I just dumped the initials in there for the moment, but I will be adding details and creating links to each customer's frame gallery on Photobucket. At the moment, I'm working on a bunch of frame specifications and working hard to get framesets off to Keith for paint. I just wanted to get this up since I haven't posted here in a few weeks. Drop me a line if you have any questions.
Thanks!
Mike

Busy week

The new shop is finally feeling good. Made lots of metal chips, melted lots of silver, and burnt lots of acetylene this week.

S&S Coupled road frame.

Fillet brazed cyclocross frame.

Another road frame headed to New Hampshire hills.

A road frame destined for some serious dirt road riding.

More to do...

Final torch work for the week

Off to a party here at the mill.

Chainring fetish

And these are feeding my addiction. Time to test.

38/44 Campy CT

36/42 SRAM

Methodology

I dig working in batches. That's not to be confused with doing production runs where everything is the same size. These are still all unique to their future owners. But it drives me crazy doing every single step once. It completely offends my sensibilities. It also runs counter to all of the training I have received through school and my time in industry. Granted, this is not a production environment per se the way an injection molding shop is. But still, something just feels wrong going to my tool box, getting a drill bit, getting my drill, chucking it up, drilling two holes, taking out the bit, putting it away, and then putting away the drill. Why not drill 6 more holes and then not have to drill holes for a while? You save yourself a lot of time. Yeah, it takes some planning in terms of materials and having designs lined up and ready. But it's nice knowing I've reduced the footsteps around the shop overall. And I do love getting into a groove brazing a bunch at one time. It feels fantastic when things are flowing and each successive brazing operation feels better than the one previous to it. I love having a day when I have 3 or 4 frames that are tacked, aligned, and ready for final brazing and then I just braze and braze. Glorious. Anyway, what's with the rant, right? I guess I'm grumpy because Rebecca's been away for two weeks. And I wish I was in Bend at Natz. Sounds like it is going to be a great race week. But we have Ice Weasels to look forward to here in New England, so that will be sweet. And the wifey gets back from India tomorrow. I guess I'll just watch Manning throw three more interceptions again tonight. Zing! I just lost some sales in Indy.

Here's the start of four bikes.

Good luck to everyone racing this weekend!

Ready for some Florida cyclocross action

Yes, they have cyclocross in Florida, and it's growing. I love seeing regions develop across the country. Maybe now that Nationals is in January, somebody in South Beach will submit a proposal to host! No offense, Madison.

Anyway, this machine is Florida bound to tackle some racing.

Thanks, Rafael!

Cyclocross chainring project moving along

Just got a couple of photos of a sample SRAM/Shimano 110 bcd 42 tooth outer after the hard anodizing and I am very excited with how they look. This is before the shifting pins and chain drop pin are added. With the hard ano on the 7075, these are going to be to tough as nails. I won't get many repeat customers because they won't wear out! We're on schedule to have real production ready for NAHBS at the end of February.

Di2 meet Max...bridging the generation gap

Picture it. A very attractive young woman dressed to the nines walking with a somewhat grizzled and tough looking older fella. A few heads might turn. Some just won't get it. But hey, ain't love strange?

All right...enough of that. This is the first Di2 bike I've had the opportunity to build. Let me say that Shimano has knocked it out of the park with the full internal wiring kit. I've still got a lot of work left to do on the frame, but I wanted to mock everything up and make sure that all is copacetic with the wiring before I finished up the BB area and seat stays.

The goal for this bike was simple. Make a clean layout for the wiring and make it easy on the eyes. That meant tuck the battery away out of plain view. I also wanted to drill the holes for the wiring in as many thicker cast pieces as possible rather than just the tubing. For the spots on the seat tube and down tube where this wasn't possible, I made some reinforcements for the holes. I also had to make a front derailleur braze-on. Here's the problem. A Max seat tube is very wide (approximately 36.5 mm) where the braze-on is placed. Putting a standard FD braze-on, which are meant to go on a 28.6 mm seat tube, on the tube positions the derailleur further away from the centerline of the bike compared to usual. This hasn't been a problem for standard front derailleurs. There's plenty of throw. Looking at the Di2 derailleur though, you can see right away that the cage does not go as far inboard as a standard derailleur. So what I did was make a tab and reinforcement and position it exactly to Shimano spec. This meant that the derailleur itself is very close to the seat tube but it is where it needs to be in relation to the crankset.

Have a great weekend!

Knee deep in Max

Columbus Max. For me, it conjures up images of the nastiest, meanest, and toughest riders in the peleton from 20 years ago and the bikes they used duking it out on the bergs and cobbles of northern Europe during my second most favorite time of the year...the spring classics. These guys put down the power and corner really hard, and Columbus came up with a set of pipes that was unlike anything else at the time to maximize what the riders were laying down. The bikes weren't glamorous. They looked raw. They looked massive. They looked like the perfect tool for the job.

The tubeset came and went, but there's a group of riders who love these special bikes. It's about so much more than just how the frame rides, it's everything else associated with frame and the tubes. The history, the riders, the wins, the pain, the glory. It's just so unique.

Columbus listened to requests and has brought the tubes back as a catalog item. The lugs, however, are becoming increasingly rare. I built my first Max bike a couple of years ago and I documented the build on this thread on vsalon. It's still one of the most viewed threads on the forum, and that speaks to how many people are interested in these bikes.

I've been knee deep in building more of these bikes over the past couple of weeks and I've been having a ball. Here are some photos. Enjoy!