The itch

Totally jonesing to build a new bike. I just got a new tool post for my mini lathe, and I could not be happier with the results from that investment. It cuts, it faces it knurls, and all with much more rigidity and precision than the little runty thing that I've been using thus far. Fabulous.

I've got about 3 bikes in mind for the coming months, and I constantly wish for more time to work on them.

Bike one: potential custom frame for a bike club friend of mine. Could be cool. He's deciding on whether or not to make it a track bike or a road bike. I'm kind of hoping that he'll want a track bike, since I haven't had a chance to make one of those yet.

Bike Two: cyclocross frame for myself. I have long thought that Bamboo would be ideal for CX since it soaks up so much vibration. My hangup here is that I would want to run a tapered headtube, and I don't have a source for that yet. None of the aftermarket fork manufacturers currently offer a tapered steertube CX fork. I was also thinking that I could go with something with an aluminum steerer to avoid excess brake chatter and frame flex, but I don't know if I want to bother if I can't do the type of job that I want.

Bike 3: actually two bikes for a guy that I met through the bike shop. He has in mind some sort of upright dirt trail bikes, a matching (kind of) set for him and his wife. This project will develop a bit over the next few months I think, but I'm looking forward to trying to build two of the same thing.

Some Advice on Bamboo

Selecting bamboo: For most of the stuff that I've found around here, the best pieces are the sections closest to the ground to about 6 feet up. These have the thickest walls. Go for wall thickness at least 5 mm for main tubes, 3.5 to 4 for things like seatstays etc. The major issue with bamboo is not so much the actual break strength, but the flexibility. It's not so stiff, which is why I've done most of my bikes with carbon bits. The other issue for you will likely be finding exterior diameters that are appropriately sized. The outside fibers of the culm are the strongest, and so it's not a great idea to whittle those away too much to fit it inside of a lug. The other thing, is that there aren't any dead straight pieces of bamboo in the world, they all have some deviation to them, making it a bit more interesting to find the right size/shape. This works fine with my construction methods, but I am guessing that you're planning on taking a stab at a bike somewhat similar to the Panda Cycles model.

As far as the treatment goes, I followed a process somewhat like that in the bamboo forums website: heat treat with a blowtorch when green, then air dry for several months, or torch first and then 2 hours in the oven at about 200 degrees. Some pieces will crack for sure with this process, but that's just part of the game, better crack in the oven than on your bike.

When torching, you'll see the color of the outside change, it'll look like it's fading in sudden increments. Oil will also rise to the surface at this point, so you should wipe this off with a rag. Once cooled and dried, i take a razor blade and scrape off the outside of the bamboo, mostly for aesthetics, but also because epoxy doesn't stick to the waxy skin.

For bonding bamboo to other stuff, make sure to sand the joint and wipe down with some acetone or similar to remove excess oil. I use the West Systems Six10 glue because it's cheap (ish) and strong as shit. 3M DP 420 is supposed to be the best, but it's super expensive, and for my purposes not so necessary.

Status: busy

But not with building bikes. I've done a couple of repairs in the past month, and am really getting a lot faster overall, but have to figure out the whole painting thing. I've been looking into new sprayguns and the like, and will probably settle on something in the $100-$150 price range rather than go with another cheapo. I'm going to need all the help I can get now that I sprung for some serious paint. I got a quart of Deltron clearcoat and hopefully will find a way to put it to good use. I was looking for something a little bit harder than the $40 per quart Omni stuff that I'd been using, since bikes tend to get beat up a fair bit, I can use all of the toughness available. The Omni gives a pretty good finish, but it's a little bit soft, particularly when compared with the high quality factory finishes that I find on the bikes that I've been repairing. This makes it easy to buff out my mistakes (a decided plus) but sometimes the different levels of hardness show transition lines a bit too much between the original and the repair.

Goddamn recyclers

Nightmare scenario-

Since I'm still working a day a week at Trophy, I've been using that as a 'reliable' place to ship stuff, since they're always open during delivery hours. Last week my Dad shipped a bike from a customer of his who had broken the frame. It arrived on Wednesday, and I stopped by to check out the box. Things seemed to have arrived intact, the frame would have been an easy fix, probably one of the easier ones I've done. I hung out at the shop a bit on my lunch break, and I opted to leave the frame at work to come and get later. It was still in the shipping box, which was in the area of the floor where boxes are often received from the shipper. I knew that it would have been better to take it with me, but it was raining and I had to get back to my office job, so I left it.

On Friday I came by the shop to pick up the frame, and couldn't find it. Not entirely unusual, since things get moved all the time over the course of the day. I asked around, and nobody had any answer. I though that it might have been taken to the basement, so I checked there. Nothing. I checked in the the storage room, the bathroom, the pile of boxes outside in the dumpster, the dumpster itself and everywhere I could think. I called all of the other employees, I had them go to look in case I am blind. Nothing. The frame was gone. No one had any idea of where it might have gone. We only knew that it was gone.

The current theory is that the frame was picked up on that Wednesday, like 2 hours after it had arrived by the recyclers. It was still in a box, but it boggles the mind to think that they would have decided that an open box with a frame sticking out of it was garbage. I have no idea.

I would have felt pretty pissed if it were my own stuff, but this was not even mine, and though it was in my care, I had no actual hand in its demise. What a crap deal. I've offered to make appropriate reparations to the owner, and am still waiting to figure out what we're going to do.

Goddamn recyclers. Get your stoner asses together!

Repair Season

I've been busy doing some repairs. I have the benefit of a team full of guys who love racing, and sometimes crashing their bikes. This is a recent one referred by a friend. The seat stay was completely blown out, and there was another crack as well in the seat stay from the flexion of the break.


I've also just managed to replace Jennifer's downtube. I'm finally getting the hang of laying down a nice finished carbon layer for aesthetics. I did a good job with that on my dad's bike, and have started perfecting it now that I've got some thinner silicone sheets.

Built up

Test Report: Daruma Cycles Super Awesome Custom for ME!!

I had meant to post a quick first impressions of my bike when I first put it together 3 weeks ago, but never got the chance. Here is my moderately extended test in the style of modern bike reviews:
Geometry and handling
I designed this bike custom for myself, and that means accommodation for two things: 180mm cranks and an arch cleat position. To accommodate for these fit features, I made the top tube longer than my normal 59 cm and the bottom bracket slightly higher. I also moved the rear wheel as close as I could to the bottom bracket, the wheelbase is about 40 cm. Head tube angle is 73.75 with a 43mm fork rake, making the front end stiff, light and quick. Tubing for the bike follows my current formula of carbon head tube, down tube and chainstays. The downtube is an oversized 2 inch tube that I got on super discount from ACS composites. A bargain, and totally suited to excellent road bikes.

Build Kit
I built the bike up with a great deal of parts that I've obtained over the years, along with some new bits of componentry to complement the unique features of the frame such as the 1.5 to 1 1/8 headtube and the BB30 bottom bracket. The fork is an excellent Edge Composites tapered steer tube model with full carbon dropouts. Light and totally easy to deal with. Edge has my eternal respect. In early April I ordered up a set of Lightning carbon cranks and eagerly waited for them to come in. Then I waited some more, called them to hear that the cranks were still 2 weeks from production, then I waited some more, then I called them, and they said another week, then I put up a stink, and then waited another week, and then I finally received the cranks. While waiting through the terrible customer service at Lightning, I decided that I could wait no longer and purchased a BB30 to English bottom bracket adapter and decided to build the bike up with my Rival cranks.
Other items in the build kit include:

Campy Veloce Shifters
Chorus R. Der
Record braze on F. Der
Cane Creek AER headset
Wipperman Chain
FSA seatpost
Flite Saddle, recovered in leather that I snagged from a sofa left on the curb for a week.
Easton EC90 Bars
Cannondale C4 stem
Origin 8 super light brakes
Lightning carbon cranks

Overall, the build suited me just fine, which makes sense, as I picked all the parts. It took about a week of fiddling to figure out the fit with the new geometry, but it feels great now.
The wins: I love the ergonomics of the new Campy shifters. They're really comfy with great actuation on the brake levers. I am also totally impressed with the Origin 8 Torq Lite brakes. They work well, are super light and look great.

Here are my list of gripes with the parts: The EC 90 handlebars are not really the optimal shape for me, as I prefer a standard round drops, but they're stupid light and I got them for free. I picked the AER headset because it's again ridiculously light and I got it in a trade, so didn't need to pay for it directly, always a way to get more than you bargain for. My problem with the headset is that given the aggressive geometry of the front end, there is a bit too much stiction in the steering; particularly since at first I had allowed the teflon bushing to slip out of alignment somehow, making for the worst headset experience ever, too tight or too loose but nothing in between. After re-seating it, things improved greatly, but I still get a slightly unnerving sense of hesitation in the steering when going solo on straight courses. I'm planning on switching the top portion with the teflon bushing for a ball bearing unit this week to see if there is any noticeable difference. We shall see.
My last gripe is with the 2008 Campy shifting mechanism. Apparently there was an initial batch that had a less positive feeling ratchet design. Basically the upshift to easier gears feels pretty mushy and has not been very consistent. They have replacement guts that would do the trick, but I have not yet bought and installed those.

The finish
What can I say, I did an excellent job here. Metal flake brown, Bazooka Joe pink and raw carbon, plus walnut-brown tinted bamboo. Looks pretty damn good, as long as one is willing to concede that pink is indeed a manly color.

The ride
After about 250 miles and 2 races including one 77 mile Tour of Somerset County through some of the more scenic but less well paved roads of NJ, I can truly say that this is a comfortable bike. A ridiculously comfortable bike. Perhaps it's the combination of the A23 rims and nice tires, but the road vibration is almost imperceptible through the bamboo. Part of this may be my design: I used some light(ish) weight curved bamboo segments for the seatstays, and a full bamboo seattube, but I think it's just the organic nature of the bamboo that keeps things smooth.

Additionally, the oversized fork, headtube and downtube along with the BB30 setup produce a solid feeling of efficiency that I can't quite figure out. On one hand there is minimal road feedback, but I seem to be able to sprint with aplomb and the balance of the bike is really good. I need to build up Pinky, my Cannondale to compare head to head again. I have the feeling that the Bamboozle is nearly as stiff in the ways that count as Pinky, but I need to ride them both in the same day to figure out the truth. Hard to quantify the sensations of riding it: my current analogy is to compare the feel to listening to the radio with the treble and mids turned all the way down. It's like all of the high pitches just disappear. I have yet to send the bike out under other riders of different stature to see what they think, but I will do that for sure once I get the steering and shifting issues worked out. For me those two things really distracted from enjoying the ride for the first week or so, and I had a terrible time thinking of how nicely the frame rode in comparison to the shifting and steering problems I was having. Now that those are mostly sorted out, I'm having a much better time riding, and am truly looking forward to getting some results on one of my bikes.

If I were a bike magazine I would write the following about the DC4:
Pros: Unique frame, with uniquely comfortable ride quality.
Cons: Strangely compliant rear triangle makes it hard to quantify power output from the mere sensations of riding. Steering not as good as with a standard headset.

Buy If: You are looking for an awesomely comfortable bike that no one else has.
Avoid If: You want the lightest, stiffest bike out there.