Cross and MAX

Cyclocross is right around the corner and I've been working on Max bikes this week. Two of my favorite things! For those that ordered FMB tubulars, the first part of the shipment arrived. Francois finished up the Gripo XLs, Grifos, SSCs, and SSC Sprints. He's still waiting on the new SSC Super Mud tread bands from his supplier. He said that he will get them done as soon as he has bands. I'll start getting these out to you all ASAP.

I did a bunch of work prepping material for the MAX bikes. Lots of cutting, grinding, and filing ahead of me this weekend.

No fenders on these bikes.

A tale of three brakes (and bikes)

James wanted a bike that would feel great on the road, rock the dirt roads, and keep him dry during the spring melt. He also wanted simplicity. Shimano BR-650. Room for a Michelin Jet or 25s with Honjo 35 mm fenders.

Lyen wanted a bike that would spend a lot of time on dry fire roads with big tires, keep the mud off of him with slightly smaller tires on wet dirt road days, and would still feel great in a paceline. Pauls Racer. Room for something massive without fenders and easily 30s with Honjo 43 mm fenders.

Justin wanted a bike that he could mount up some 23s on for some fast road riding on up to some fat knobbies if he was in the mood for some trails. Pauls Medium Racer. Tons of room and good looks. 

Gentlemen, thank you very much to each of you for the opportunity to build these bikes!

Clean. For now.

Thank you, Matt! This was a fun build.

Ready for some serious miles

Joe rolled this out of the shop last week, and it's probably got a thousand miles on it already! You may have spotted it around the Finger Lakes over the July 4th weekend. It built up quite light for a 62-ish cm frame. Thanks again, Joe, and many happy miles!

And a dirt road bike for Justin R

catching up on the blog

Catching up here. Been cranking on fat tire bikes and haven't been keeping up here. Here are some highlights from the past couple of weeks.

Cross for Dave B.

Cross for Josh S

Road for Thierry C

Fat tire road bike for Lyen H

Thanks for looking!

zanc'n atmo

Our Men's Journal article is now online!

http://www.mensjournal.com/the-rebel-king-of-custom-bikes

We even made their home page!

The interface

UCI Approved

I paid the toll and my frames are now approved to be used in UCI categorized races and all National Championship events. Sweet.

Little Boy

Airgas arrived today with a #5 acetylene bottle. I stepped up from my previous #4 bottle. The thing is a monster. I kind of tip toe around it. And I need a new chain to contain its girth. Anyway, now I can get back to brazing.

Another big cross bike

While I'm waiting for acetylene to finish up Dave's cross frame, I started working the lugs, BB, and dropouts for Josh's cross frame. It's another frame over 60 cm. These big bikes are getting to be the norm around here! Pretty cool.

When I say "working the lugs", basically what that means is grinding and filing the lugs to get all of the fits just right so as to promote proper alignment, have the appropriate brazing clearances, and have the look I'm after. If there are tight spots between the tubes and lugs, you may get an area where the silver doesn't flow into it. On the flip side, you don't want an area where the gap is too large because the silver doesn't fill gaps well and you really don't want it to serve that purpose. The first thing I do is focus on working my lug and BB sockets. I want everything to sit nicely in the jig with no force or stress. That usually means bending the lugs a bit to set the angles. Then I start grinding and filing the lug ID so that the tubes slip in without any extra movement. That's where I'm at with this frame. Next steps will be to finish the shorelines of the lugs and filing the outer surface of the lugs to make them look the way I want. And then we'll see a mean cross racing machine start coming together.