All will be revealed

 
Soon we'll get to the cool part!

Holy crap it's been a while

 


Finally getting down to business and putting some paint on. Too bad it was a hundred degrees all weekend, nothing quite like paint that dries before it hits the frame!

The smaller frame requires a bit more sanding and filling after the first primer coat, but the large one for Vinod. is just waiting to set up and get some finish sanding and logo painting. The effect we're going for is that of aged laquerware. Hopefully it won't take too much work to reveal the underlying black paint. With Risheeta's I'm going for a similar effect but with dark brown bamboo, and kind of a coppery gold over black. Should look pretty good when all is said and done.
And I haven't even shown off the headtube badges yet! Not my handiwork, but spectacular!

Progress, slow progress

No pictures to post at this point, but I'm still making good, though slow progress on the pair of cruisers. I should be at the point of doing rivets, eyelets and the like by the end of the week. I figure that I'll pick up a Blackburn rack for use with a Co-Pilot kids seat and model the upper eyelet location off of that. The dropouts from Civia have a disc tab that I'm not going to be using on this design, and I figured that I'd be able to use this as the mounting point for a Burley trailer hitch as well. These will be some functional bamboo bikes, that's for sure.

New jigger

 
I've yet to find a piece of bamboo that is straight. Sure, a lot of them LOOK straight, but really, there's always half a degree here, half a degree there. The most annoying ones are crooked in 3 axes at once. I try to avoid that as best I can, but sometimes there's a perfect piece that needs taming.

The seat tube on Vinod's bike was massively stout, and I had to find a way to ream the insides out to fit the seatpost. That would have been problemmatic, since this was one of those 3D curves (though subtlely) and by simply following the inside profile of the culm, the seatpost would have been cockeyed. Enter this jig: with a piece of my tube notcher, and some select hole saws, I was able to construct a jig that will ream out the dead center of the seat tube every time!

Aside from me forgetting that I'd left the cotter pin in the spindle when I first used the thing and smashing a bloody gash into my second handiest finger (right index, in case you were wondering) it worked great.

More progress

 
Headtube joint laid up, and strong as I've ever made. This one went together really well, though I have to remember that when the air temp is 84 degrees, the epoxy comes out fast, and hardens up quick. I almost ran out of time to put the layers on the headube as the cup of resin I'd mixed up went exothermic and started setting in about half the time. In the winter I have to hold the saturated sheets in front of a heater, but today, no need.

Seatposts go in here

 


After a bit of careful reaming and sanding with my new tool, the seatpost sleeve goes in nicely.

BB joint

 
The seat tube is a fabulous piece of aerodynamically grown bamboo. It's got an ovoid cross section and is super stout, which will make for an excellent end product. I was able to miter the downtube/seat tube junction so that the rear portion of the tube overhangs and will mesh nicely with the square section of the chainstay unit. It's gonna be swell.