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.