Here is Brett’s Custom Blend steel road frame. It features Columbus Life S-bend chainstays and seatstays. They are a very good looking and light part. When it comes to shaping and bending tubes I don’t think anyone is better than Columbus.

Scott’s frame is built using one of my favorite tubesets. It’s the Columbus Spirit. It’s light, offers good stiffness and it looks really cool. The downtube is a bi-oval that has what I guess could be described as facets. The toptube is oval and has facets too. I like to sub in an externally butted seattube and the chainstays are round/square/round with a taper. The seatstays are round at the top and morph into and Aero shape mid way down and then back to round with a taper. All in all the tubeset is very extreme and a great example of how technically advanced steel tubes really are.

I finished Larry’s MTB yesterday. It will ship to paint this week. It’s a Custom Blend steel 26″ MTB. I haven’t done a good ol’ 26″ geared bike in a while. I had to remind myself where the chainstay/seatstay bridges go. Funny how things change. Used to be all my road bikes had Mega (Shaped or Aero) tubes and all MTB’s were geared 26″. Now seems most of my MTB’s are single speed 29er’s and the road bikes invariably have round tubes.  Below is a gallery of Larry’s build.

Last week seemed to fill up with lots of random work and little actual framebuilding. With the exception of finishing Tim’s bike and shipping Jerry’s I spent most of the week doing office work and various other things that weren’t in the shop. Before I knew it, Friday had come and I  hadn’t started a single frame. Hopefully this week I can get back to work at the bench and build some frames. Today I’ll be building Larry’s steel MTB frame and once it’s done I’ll start Scott’s Extralite road frame. After Scott are Tom and Brett’s steel road frames.

Today Jared (JW Engineering) and I will spend the day further developing a specific carbon laminate that we’ve been working on for quite a while now. We have the basic concepts in place and we are continuing to tweak the process. We have developed a fairly unique design that keeps the use of material low and puts it exactly where it needs to be but it’s very time consuming. For example, where a lot of builders would use a single large ply of material over an entire area we use as many as a  dozen or more smaller pieces that pinpoint the forces we’re concerned with. It’s a lot more time consuming but it allows the use of less material. It will also leave a visible strata under the finished surface and currently we’re trying to decide if we want to hide the strata or feature it.

Also, I’m making some serious progress on Tim’s titanium road race bike and it is really coming out nicely. The size and proportions are really balanced and it’s going to be a super good looking frame. Below is a gallery of the frame so far. It’s mitered, fitted and just about ready for cleaning and welding.