Some inspiration and reconfiguration

Some good posts recently on Bike Rumor which have solidified my idea of making a full carbon bike for myself.  I'm even thinking that I'm going to take a stab at molding my own tubes around a mandrel.  I've done some dissecting of a Scott Addict top tube, and will delve into some other bits and pieces to get a better idea for what other companies are doing.

Also, I gotta give a shout out to my friends Richie and Max at Philly Bikesmith.  They took about 2 hours last night to fit me and go over all of the crazy details that go into bike design.  My current plan is to let them come up with a frame design for me and then build it up.  After picking their brains last night, I have utmost confidence that they'll come up with something that fits and handles well.  The rest is just up to me building the dang thing.

Lots of pondering, not much doing

I've been test-thrashing my second version of my bamboo CX bike, and in general I like it. The steering is a bit on the slack side compared with anything else I've ever done, trail must be close to 60 mm, which makes for some awesoeme high-speed turn carving ability, but some unusual sensations at lower speeds. I 'think' that I like it, but it's different enough from any of my other bikes that I'm honestly not sure. My other issue is that with my general strength imbalances, it feels like the bike pulls right. That said, most of my bikes feel like they pull to the right, so this isn't necessarily indicative of anything wrong. My hunch is that it's mostly the difference between the handling sensations and my own lopsidedness. Eventually my plan is to get an alignment table set up in the basement of our new house, but that project kind of depends on the state of the basement over there. It's not finished yet, so the granite alignment table will have to wait.


 My other recent brainwave is that maybe I want to make a full-carbon bike. I've spent much of my time thus far designing around the limitations of bamboo--it it can split, it's not as light as carbon and the torsional rigidity is not so spectacular. I read an interesting interview with Nick Frey, proprietor of Boo cycles about how they deal with these issues, or don't. I general find the guy pretty irritating, too much spin and wide-eyed optimism for my liking, but he seems to be living the dream and his grad school project did inspire me to do my own work, so hard to fault him there.  Maybe for a full on race bike, it'd be more awesomer to build a bike out of carbon fiber ONLY!  Might be on to something here, as all of the top bikes in the world are carbonium these days.  I'm trying to decide if I'm going to try to make my own tubes.  Well, specifically, my own top tube and seat tube.  I've got remnants from ENVE for all the other pieces, but nothing that strikes me as particularly appropriate for a top tube or seat tube.  If Kirklee can build their own tubes, why not me?   Oh yeah, because they do this professionally and have sunk hundreds of thousands into tooling.  Me, just twos or threes of thousands. I really enjoyed looking through this guy's photo album of how he built a couple of fantastic looking road bikes.  Looks like he got frozen out by ENVE as well.  They are capitalist bastards after all.

The incredible bamboo hulk.

Head tube

The green machine is basically done and I'm waiting for the go-ahead from Ian on the color scheme before applying the clearcoat and sending it off.  Ian was thinking of the natural bamboo color as the theme for the bike, and I have actually been thinking of that exact color theme for a looong time.  The emerald green of growing bamboo just looks fantastic and I hope that the tint I found does it justice.  Hopefully it will look even deeper in color once the clearcoat is applied.  The green on green on green is a little unusual for me, since I've always done some sort of contrast colors before, but I think it works here.  The other color I was thinking of for the text is a pearlescent orange, but that would probably just end up looking like Michaelangelo, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.  Mikey-angelo was always Ian's favorite from childhood, so maybe that's what I should have gone with.
 


If he OK's it today, I can get it clearcoated tonight, polished tomorrow and boxed up and shipped out by Thursday.  That would be just super. I think I had initially told Ian i'd have the bike done in the spring, but hey, time flies when you're in the basement.

Downtube View

Head tube/Top tube joint

Seat cluster

The whole shebang. Bamboo bike number 11. 

Brotherly Bike

I've been working on a bike for my brother Ian for the past few weeks.  It's actually a centaur of sorts--the front end is brand-new but the rear is the rear end from my attempt last spring at a new road bike.  While that bike was a flop due to some incorrect tubing spec, this should be a winner.  I've done some new stuff and really like how it's turned out so far.

Here's my idea for a head tube badge.  It's a nice reproduction of a ukiyo-e print from a calendar I had last year.  The scene was from the February month, and given that Ian was born then, I thought it fitting.  There are 11 other versions that might fit the bill too though, so I'll let him pick.

Ian's Bike

 Looks like I'm almost ready for test riders!  Really too bad that I'm not in riding shape right now, as I've got a feeling this is going to be my best bike yet.

Another view

A view of the brake bridge and seat cluster of Ian's bike. Notice the black line running along the top tube.  That's the seam where I split the tube and lined it with carbon fiber.  Stiffness should be pretty good and it should be more resistant to the ever popular handlebar smash in the unlikely event of a crash.

LITTLE BIKE DONE!

Thanks to the flying spaghetti monster for his blessing!  I finally have finished the tiny cruiser and sent it away to its owner.  Also, it actually fits, and fits pretty well. After the last screw up, I chopped out the top tube and seat stays and re-did them a fair bit lower.  The end effect was sort of a BMX looking city bike, but one that gives generous ground clearance.  I took no chances here, and am unbelievabley relieved to have the monkey finally off my back.  My only regret is that I didn't take any pictures before it left my posession.  Sometimes it might be better to forget anyway.

This is what we're going for

I'm going to cut out the top tube and seat tubes and we'll do something like this:

Helps if you measure right

So, not sure exactly why I haven't been using Bike Cad for the past few years, but this is super handy, and shows exactly why I didn't have the standover clearance that I was looking for.

Also, it helps if you've got the right measurements.  It turns out that I thought I had an extra inch to work with; my fit kit measurements taken by a guy at the shop had listed 71cm as the inseam without shoes.  With Risheeta in a pair of Crocs, I measured 68 cm.  Whoops, that explains a lot.

Carl is the Man

I've been working with ENVE for the past 5 years or so, and Carl Turner in their framebuilder services division is awesome to work with.  I'd recently ordered some tubes for a bike for my brother, and there was some mis-comunication on what size I'd wanted.  I pointed out the gripe and got a call this morning at 9:30 to work out the kinks and get the tube I'd requested.

The big bummer of the whole deal is that with ENVE's expansion over the past few years, they're no longer going to be able to make custom tubing in small batches for guys like me.  A shame, since I love working with Carl.  Such is life I suppose.

Can't f-ing believe it.

So, remember when I made that little bike that was not quite little enough?  Well, I think that I did it again.  For whatever reason, either my measurements or my brain was off, and even though I shrunk the top tube down almost 2 inches, the bike is too tall.  Risheeta can straddle it, and put both feet on the ground, but she's riding the top tube at that point.

SUPER LAME

I think that I will not be making any bikes for tiny people in the future.  I just don't seem to understand how to calculate standover height, and apparently have no ability to learn either!

The plan now is to get a road fork and add disc tabs to it.  That should drop the front end an inch, which should be sufficient clearance.  With the 2mm shorter rake, the trail of the frame and general steering characteristics shouldn't be altered too much.  Adding the bosses shouldn't be too tricky, since I'll just have to basically reinforce the whole fork leg to make sure the added force at the dropout won't be a problem.  I'll probably do  the brackets in carbon fiber plate and then do an over-wrap of the rest of the fork blade.  This all presupposes that I get enough drop out of the switch anyway.  Fingers crossed.

ON the plus side, the new purple color looks fantastic with silver accents   I kind of don't like purple in general, but this bike looks great.  Just too goddamn tall!

Getting There

I always seem to find the last bits of bike building to be the hardest.  Maybe it's just that I don't relish the detail work, or maybe the last steps of finishing are the biggest challenge. Not sure.  At any rate, tiny townie version 2 is nearing completion.