I’ve been home a few weeks now and more time to reflect on Doug’s class and frame building. In the first post in the series I said I was not sure if I’d build more than one bike. I’ve answered that question with a resounding yes. While at times frustrating and certainly difficult I really enjoyed the [...]
Weight isn’t something I get really worked up about, but I thought it would be fun to see how much the frame I built weighs, along with some other frames and bikes I have at the house. So I borrowed a scale from my buddy Dan and then dorked out
New Frame: 4lbs 2 oz. New [...]
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
And we’re done (and I realized I never published this post).
I said earlier I wasn’t going to blog today, but we had a good day even if it did run long. Today was all about braze ons, bridges and reaming / tapping things. I didn’t get much of the latter done. I did get my [...]
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Today was a good day. I’ve got a complete (ish) bike! The main task of the day was getting the seat stays attached. First I had to cut the slot for my seat post binder and take care of all that, and before that I had to ream the seat tube to take a seat [...]
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Day 10, already, really? It feels like the pace has been picking up the last few days. I went from a pile of unconnected tubes on Sunday to a almost complete looking bike today. I had two missions today, a binder bolt for my bike, and getting my chain stays installed. Both were a success.
The [...]
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Today was a pretty good day. I got my main triangle all brazed up, filed my fork so a wheel sits in there correctly, filed and cleaned up one of my fillets. Fillet brazing is fun, and quite a bit easier than silver brazing. I did the first braze on the frame with Doug watching [...]
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Frustrating and slow to backwards progress was the name of the game for two of us today. I brazed up the first part of my bi-laminate lugs. This went pretty well and all seemed good. I started putting the frame together in the fixture and it looked well. I noticed Doug making faces at it [...]
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Day six (Saturday) was Sabbath for Doug, so the shop was closed until sundown. I took this as an opportunity to go to a movie with one of my classmates. After the shop opened up I went in for some late night filing. This included easy things like the clean up of the edges of [...]
Friday, February 12, 2010
Today was a good day. There were no major screw ups, nothing was caught in an angry Bridgeport and torn up, no one hacksawed the wrong thing, all of our parts showed up (okay so maybe there was one screw up) and most importantly, I had a really good braze on one of my fork [...]
Friday, February 12, 2010
Today was a good day I think. I started out the morning with a few more practice brazes in an old bottom bracket. My brazing is still not as good as I’d like but I do seem to be improving. Doug and I were talking this evening and he said he thinks I’ll have the [...]