Wow, it's been almost a month! Time flies when you have kids!
Over the past 3 weeks, I have added seatstays, slotted seattubes, reamed and faced various parts as well as polished the skin off my thumb several times!
When we last were together, I had just brazed the stub to the top of the wishbone and paired the legs up.
After that, I brazed the legs onto the wishbone to create a single seatstay unit:
Once this was done, I did several measurements to ensure the legs were in the same plane and symmetrical. This was highly focused work and there are no pictures.
The next step was mitering the wishbone/seattube junction. I started down the path of using a fixure I created for exactly this purpose but, because the stub is so short, I decided that I would simply miter by hand. I cut the angle, and went at it with a file. Because I was very careful about cutting the seatstays equal length, I was able to simply drop them onto the dropout stubs and worry about the top miter. I thought. It turns out to not be that simple. The first one took more than 2 hours to get where I wanted. The next one took 20 minutes and each following one took a couple minutes less. Eventually, I was happy with their fitment and fired up the torch. I used Fillet Pro for the wishbone to ST joint as I had used silver for the sleeve. I used brass preforms for each of the other joints in the seatstays.
Then there was a week and a half of finish work like sanding, polishing, slotting and such. Every time I looked at one, I saw something I wasn't satisfied with. I swear, I could spend another 3 months doing the finish work and still would find little imperfections!
The full squad, out on the patio!
Test build - The cranks are some old road cranks and the bar/stem are from my track bike. The stem the bike was designed around is 70mm long so the bars are quite a ways out there on this test build.
Finally, I sent my test pilot out for a spin. His first time riding fixed gear, 700c wheels and drop bars. He said it was fine but he didn't like the bars. :
Next steps:
Components came in from FSA/Vision (
Vision ) today. I will pick them up tomorrow to do a dry install just to make sure everything fits together.
Then it's off to Seattle Powder Coating
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Seattle-Powder-Coat/103037239763205 for a really nice deep 2 part metallic blue.
I have to still order decals as well (with new design!).
I'll post more photo's when they come back from coating.
Aside:
Now that the building part is done, I'm feeling a bit of withdrawal and find myself dreaming of my next project. The kids always need new bikes so, I think it's going to be a really light road bike for my test pilot so he can join me as I start riding again.
I do have a commission from a former racing team mate who would like something special. She's about 5'0" tall (with cleats on) and about 98lbs so, that could be fun.
I also want to make myself a 24" or 26" BMX cruiser sort of thing. Maybe even have it chrome plated - for old times sake. I have a super sweet old school ESP BMX stem that is just itching for a bike and that would take me back to my roots...
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...20667074582243
Thanks for following along!