Winter doldrums

There's always a point when I'm between projects that I just can't seem to get myself motivated for anything. I've been working a bit on a couple of small kick bikes for the cute babies of various friends from college, but the project has been stalled while waiting for the wheels. As it turns out, no bike suppliers really deal much with tiny replacement wheels, I guess kids bikes are viewed as a piece and are somewhat disposable. I had to order some wheelchair front caster wheels as they actually come small enough to fit the tiny bikes.

Status report

I just got word back from the owner of Daruma MK 2 who has been riding his super commuter daily and reports it to be "Doing great, it's built like a brick shithouse" which I guess is a compliment given the noodlyness of MK 1. I did really like test riding that bike before sending it off. I guess I'm going to have to build myself one...

Aaron

Better shot

Finished at last, finished at last

IMG_0541, originally uploaded by aaroneritz.

Thank god almighty I'm done at last!

I finished the latest bike-- DC3 (DC meaning Daruma Cycles, and 3 meaning the 3rd one ever) and am quite pleased with the work. The frame turned out to be about three pounds even in weight, slightly lighter than the DC1 frame and it should be VASTLY stiffer with its two inch downtube and headtubes and carbon chainstays. I am also pretty pleased with the way that the hand painted bamboo groves look on the finished bike. They were pretty simple once I got the general technique down and switched to the little paintbrush. Now all that remains is to give it to the proper owner and hope that all goes well! I tried to make the bike as impervious to moisture as possible by giving it a double coat of automotive 2 part finish and putting some expanding foam inside the seat tube above the first joint. I'll post more pictures once I get the bike in some better lighting.

Painting

As has been the case with all of the bikes I've built, the final finishing process is proving the hardest part. With the first couple of bikes, I ended up using easily available spray and brush on finishes, and I was a bit underwhelmed by their durability. In looking for something more scratch resistant I've decided to use an automotive two part finish, something like a catalyzed urethane or something with a built in hardener. A teammate of mine on QCW has a couple of connections with collision specialists and has offered to paint the bike for next to nothing. Cool, though it would be nice to be able to do the painting myself eventually.

Life gets in the way

Sometimes it's a bit difficult to get myself doing everything that I need to do. Well, scratch that, it's always difficult to get all that I want to do done in a day. Yesterday my club put on the fourth edition of the Hillbilly Hustle, our annual cyclocross race. It was a great success: great weather, great course (with some serious mud this time) and a really fun atmosphere. I didn't end up finishing the bike this weekend though, something I'm a bit pissed about. I've still got a bit of spot sanding and then the gluing of various cable hangers and the like. I'll get it done soon though, hopefully very soon. Like in the next week soon, but we'll have to see.

Interbike

Interbike was awesome. As per usual, the biggest gathering of my people that I've ever been too. It's unusual to get a chance to be a minor level nerd in a big ass convention hall full of other nerds. It makes me feel a bit normal at the end of the day. As if there's nothing unusual about my 24/7 obsession with bikes. There are other people like me, and occasionally a few of them actually make some money.

Main goals were to find a manufacturer of 1.5" steerer tube forks, and a headset that can work with them, and also somebody who makes a cyclocross chainstay set for the next bike. I want to make me a cross bike BADLY.

Also, if anyone has a sweet hookup on a tubing notcher, or some lathe parts, let me know, I'm looking to tool up in the next few weeks and get this thing rolling.

Progress

I got a fork for the latest bike this week, and have also completed all of the carbon layup. Remaining to do are sanding the frame (least favorite part) machining the headset cups and finishing the paint. The bike is looking a lot like a bike, and should end up being my lightest to date. I'm hoping for about 3.25 pounds finished weight. I'm putting the rest of the pics up on FLickr

Waylaid

I've made some minor progress on the most recent bike project, but I've been really waylaid by a number of other factors, life and projects that keep coming up. My sister visited in early August, and various teammates of mine decided to crash their bikes. As the owner of my club's sponsor shop said, "These Cat 4's are going to keep you in business!" True enough. I've had to do 2 emergency repairs on frames that were otherwise cracked and un-rideable. I'm making a bit of side cash, but I really wish that I could just have a few days to work on the latest road bike uninterrupted. I have gotten the seatstays selected and started, however. That is a definite bonus.

Progress

These are the road chainstays from Edge Composites with a set of dropouts finally bonded into them. I was unsure of the strength of my initial glue bond since the internal taper flares forward and it seems likely that my glue would have been squished into the wrong place, so I made an extra over wrap of the front half of the dropout for some security and style.



I also was able to put two layers of carbon on the front end of the bike. The vacuum bag process is AWESOME! Way easier to get good results. I just have to be careful when mixing up my resin. The summer temperatures shrink my window of opportunity pretty greatly. The first layer of carbon was a near disaster as mixed resin went exothermic on me. I knew things were going to be interesting when the consistency turned from honey to silly putty in about a minute. I fortunatley had most of the carbon already laid up, so it wasn't as big a problem as it could have been. Here's a shot of the vacuum in action. The whole thing cost me about $25 for the pump, and the rest of the stuff was trash picked. I do feel a bit guilty about releasing all of the freeon into the air when I robbed the air conditioner of its compressor, but hopefully the environment will be saved by my bicycling instead.

Before
After

This is the first wrap of the seat tube to top tube joint on the newest road bike. More to come when the vacuum bagging materials and chainstays come in.

New Pics

I finally have some new pics up of the latest frame (Mark III). The main triangle is all glued together and I'm waiting for a few more pieces to come from Edge Composites. It turns out that the first two chainstay units that I ordered were designed to be track chanstays, and therefore were a bit too narrow for my needs. I called up the guys and they were amazingly helpful. Good parts, great service, I guess something that I aim for as well.

I've also got some cool vacuum bagging supplies coming this week, so hopefully I'll be able to finally get the sort of "one shot" joints that I really would like to have. Of course, I still want to stick to what I know to a large degree, so it's also hard not to start just wrapping the joints with my special high tech compression wrap (read: innertubes).

Cleaning house

Spent a lot of time over the last week and a half cleaning up and refurbishing the "shop". My basement is now slowly approaching what might be construed as a workable place. I also finally got around to piecing together bamboo and carbon for the next bike.

I ended up ordering chainstays from Edge Composites, and they're awesome, except now I have to figure out how to use them with the dropouts that I have. In an ideal world, I would probably try to fabricate some new dropouts from Titanium using some Paragon Machineworks bits and some tubing, but that is extremely unlikely for the near future as I have zero titanium welding ability.

Fit Kit

The Waterford Fit cycle at Trophy has been a godsend. Rather than going to my SketchUp drawing to figure out all of the jig dimensions, I can quite easily measure out all of the salient measurements from the Fit Cycle. Pretty cool.

We re-worked the geometry dimensions that I came up with after our initial fitting just like the pros do. Megan was an ideal client in that she bought beer for the fitting and said, "I'm open to whatever." That's always nice, though it does put a bit more pressure on me to get things right!

Right now I'm waiting for some pieces from Edge Composites out in Utah. They make a very attractive carbon chainstay kit that I'm hoping will couple with the oversized headtube and downtube to make for a stiff bike. I can rely on the bamboo's natural damping abilities to smooth out the road buzz a bit. I have really liked dealing with Edge; they're among the top composites manufacturers in the industry but still have the small shop sort of customer service.

I'll post the geometry and design specs soon.

Made to measure

While the first two bikes I made were essentially made to spec standard sizes, I have had the interesting experience of custom fitting my second 'customer'. The next person up is a woman who used to work at Trophy, and was taken with Jennifer's bike once she had ridden it. She ensured her place in the lineup with an actual deposit, something which didn't occur to me when building the second bike, but which makes a WHOLE lot of sense. Why one would front the entire cost is beyond me. Never again will I do it that way. Not that I have any doubts about being paid by my 'customers' who have thus far been closely tied to me, but it's just easier to invest in the bike when it's not your own money going into it.

Recieved

My first 'customer' received the bike yesterday. He's pleased thus far, but I'm still going to hold back my jumping for joy until he gets it built up and is riding the full bicycle. I hope he likes the ride.

One off the line

Daruma Cycles number 2 is now in the mail, winding its way to the midwest. I must say that I am a little nervous about having somebody else riding one of my bikes, but I'm also pretty confident that I did a good job with it. While testing it here, I almost didn't want to give it up, it really rode that well.

Perhaps the biggest annoyance of the whole process was the finish. I chose Spar Varnish for its weather resistance, but in retrospect, I think that a slow curing finish like that, coupled with my natural impatience caused me to waste probably 10-15 hours of time with the final finish. I prepped, I painted, I steel wooled between coats, I sanded off runs, I sanded through the finish, I repainted and then did it all over again. I'm not entirely satisfied with the final finish of the bike, but then again, that's what professional painters are for. Next time I think I'm going to go through the pros.

Testing1, 2, 5 (No THREE sir THREE!)

I built up Mark II last Thursday with parts from my cyclocross bike. The process went rather smoothly, by and large. The headset went in without complaint, and all of the pieces fit together in a very bike-like manner. Things that I had been worried about, such as the cantilever brake bosses and the front deriailleur mount were absolutely rock solid. However, in a feat of miscalculation, I made the seatmast too tall for the intended customer, and had to chop it down and remake the seatclamp. This proved to be a rather annoying task, although it's given me a bit of practice making clamps. My second clamp however, turned out to be somewhat underdesigned, and cracked during installation. Lame. Super Lame. Better here than in Wisconsin though. So, I rethought the whole area, and redesigned the seat clamp with a more standard external diameter so that I could use an off the shelf binder clamp for it. Good idea, wish I'd had it sooner! After redoing that over the past weekend, I sanded it down and actually got to head out on some rides with the bike. Overall impressions are good, but I don't want to divulge too much until the owner gets possession of the bike and makes his own judgement. I'll post some pics in a bit.

Bike number 2, closing in

I'm finally nearing the finish of my second bicycle. The bike is intended as a super-commuter/cyclocross style bike, and will soon be zooming around Madison, WI, the good lord willing. I've posted some pictures of the nearly finished bike to the right in my Flickr account. A teaser is pictured below:


I've asked $600 for this bike, and given how many hours I've put into the project, an exceedingly reasonable price. The materials cost about $400 bucks, and the $200 for labor works out to something in the neighborhood of $2 per hour. Princely sum, to be sure. As I get better at making these, and am able to refine my technique, and maybe add some equipment for vacuum bagging the frames, I hope to reduce the time by a lot, and increase my price by a little, gradually working my way towards some sort of profit. That seems like a long way off however.

Next up will be a bike for me and a bike for a woman who used to work at my shop here in Philly, Trophy Bikes.

The end of the beginning

I am approaching the home stretch on my second bicycle. This one is going out to my brother Ian's boss at Williamson Bicycles in Madison. Dave has been a willing guinea pig and has ferreted out a lot of great information for me in addition to being a patient and accomodating customer. I did get the better of him when I suggested that we just skip the standard seat clamp and use a hose clamp instead! Ridiculous!

I had a fabulous visit to a sake brewery several years ago. When I tried to refuse the brewmaster’s generosity as he stuffed another bottle in my jacket, he responded, “Ichi-go Ichi-e.”
The phrase translates as, “unique meeting, unique opportunity”. With six months grace on my student loans, I had a unique chance this past year to fulfill my dream of building a bicycle frame from start to finish.

Probably everyone in the room can identify somewhat with my farcical term “make-lust” which I define as a desire to create, plus the desire for self sufficiency, plus a little pinch of hubris that says, “I can do it better.”

After school I shifted gears, from thinking about rebuilding cities, to thinking about re-inventing a simple bicycle.

I know a number of people who had built frames of steel, aluminum or even Titanium, but the idea of making a bicycle out of something different appealed to me. I had seen immense structures built from bamboo while teaching English in Japan, and with a brief internet search, I learned that a number of people had created bamboo bicycles already.

This is where the pinch of hubris spurred me into action. I had seen some samples of the work of other framebuilders and thought, “If they can do it, so can I.”
I had the unshakable optimism of the ignorant. Bamboo was like wood, and I had made plenty of things with wood, right? In retrospect, I probably should have taken a lesson from my previous experiences in fixing our house,
But, when make-lust takes over and the ideas keep spinning, it’s hard to let them go
Bamboo seemed like an ideal choice for my project. I could build the bike that I wanted in my own basement, and without the capital investment in things like torches and steel. Bamboo is strong and light weight, readily available, and importantly, grows to the perfect size and shape all on its own. Oh, and it’s totally hot as a building material right now.

Thank god for invasive species. Bamboo grows wild in groves and plantings up and down the Schuylkill river, and I set about getting a healthy selection of culms. Though it would have undoubtedly been faster to drive out, there was something a bit more satisfying about carrying the bamboo back to Philly by bicycle trailer.
One note: Beware Main Street Manayunk with an 8 foot trailer full of bamboo behind your bike.


Preparation is key. At first it was exceedingly frustrating, but I eventually came to love layered nature of the problem.
My project was initially to build a bicycle, but each step in that process devolves into a project unto itself. To build a frame, you must build a jig to hold it. To build the jig, you must figure out how to cut a perfectly square corner in the wood. I feel great satisfaction with the end result, but each step in the process yields its own satisfaction.


Harvesting and working with natural materials provides just that type satisfaction with process.
The culms had to be dried and picked over before they would yield appropriate sections for bicycle making.
With no experience in this matter, I did a fair bit of guessing and testing to find the ideal pieces. Carving and mitering the tubes by hand, I started to get a sense for how the material should be shaped, and I re-learned the age old maxim, “Measure twice, cut once.”


Working with any material has it’s own sort of rhythm and requirements. I soon realized that I had a whole different set of skills to learn regarding the man-made components of the bike. Bamboo seemed familiar in it’s woodenness, but metal and composite structures have characteristics all their own.

Lessons Learned: Cheap epoxy is cheap for a reason, aluminum can dull drills faster than steel, and a drill press can throw chunks of metal with surprising ferocity.

As I epoxied bamboo tubes to the aluminum hard points, things started to look a lot more bike-like and I started to get a bit hasty. I have always had a hard time slowing myself down when the excitement of a project starts to take over.
I simply didn’t have the patience to wait for the glue to cure or the paint to dry throughout this project, and ended up re-doing things as a result. Patience is indeed a virtue.


If you have made paper mache you already have the basic skill-set required for making advanced carbon fiber structures. Just substitute fibers stronger than steel for newspaper for and space age polymer for starch paste and you’re mostly there.

The most odious part of the whole process was the sanding to smooth the lumps between layers of carbon. I would probably give the nod to poison ivy for discomfort, but the carbon dust was a pretty close second.



And after hundreds of hours of muddling through, and thousands of hours of thinking about the process, a bike emerged.


I sanded the bamboo and carbon bits down to a smooth finish and screwed on the final cable guides and assembled the frame, fork and parts at the bike shop one evening. I had hoped that the bike would be light weight, and was pleasantly surprised when it weighed in at a little more than 16.5 pounds


Among the last of my grab bag of new skills was trying to pick up shodo, or Japanese calligraphy in an evening. Decided to call this bike ichi-go ichi-e, as you may have already guessed. I started practicing the basic stroke order, practiced for a couple of hours on some paper and scrap bamboo and then faked my way through.


The frame was together and by all appearances a success. The bike looked good, and rode well, but it was still a first step.


At this point, perhaps in an effort to validate all the hours I spent scheming over the bicycle, I put up pictures and a description of my project online.
Within a week of its posting, the bike had been viewed hundreds of times and I had received emails from around the world asking for advice and instructions on how I had done it.
I had suddenly become what passes for an expert on the internet: I had blogged.



Expertise is developed over time, through trial and error. My initial goal was simply to make a bike, to see if I could. As with any project, I learned a tremendous amount as I went on, and I began to understand the limits of my skills. Though it is so tempting these days to answer, “Google” to every question. I realized that I needed to tap into the real, living network of people with real experience to help me in whatever comes next.



The internet is great for scratching the surface of a topic, but the internet does not generate skill or craft. People create information and people make things. I learned from a framebuilder in California that smoking the bamboo reduces the risk of cracking, and I am indebted to a machinist friend of mine who made me parts for the next jig, and perhaps most importantly, my friends and relatives have all volunteered themselves as guinea pigs in my bamboo bicycle experiment.



Process and practice. There is something primally good about creating something with your own hands, about making something that can be used. I know that chimpanzees and sea otters use tools just as humans do, but maybe the thing that separates us from the rest of them is how much joy we get out of doing so.


I don’t know exactly how far I will take the whole frame building enterprise, or how far it will take me. Chances are it will never pay the bills, but chances are, I will probably be plotting and planning about it anyway.

Making the things for making the bikes.

I'm busy now preparing a lecture to be given this Friday at the Bohlyn Cywinski Jackson Architectual firm on my first bamboo bike. This means that I'm busy procrastinating the process and putting off making slides and anything else. I'll post the whole deal when I get it done, but until then you'll just have to take my word for it that I've been busy.

Lathe it on me

IN an effort be a bit more self sufficient tool wise, I just purchased a 1950s era Sears Craftsman 109-20630 mini lathe for $140. The tool is pretty cool, but I still need to get myself a motor and some small accessories before it makes itself totally useful.
The best part about getting the lathe was the trip through the seller's house. He and his wife are art-deco collectors and he showed me through his home in which he had, and I'm just guessing here, 40+ deco clocks, 20 or so drink sets, a full, uninstalled art-deco era plywood cabinet set, originally made in Philadelphia in the 20s and lastly, had turned a room of his basement into a fully functional diner complete with Coke machine (1930s era) Cash Register (1950s) and ice cream freezer (1950s, full of ice cream).

God, if only I had had my camera!

Daruma Cycles HO!!

A first of what I hope to be many posts on the progress of my bamboo bicycle venture.