So this is my first effort at putting a video on my blog. It’s my commute to work in the morning. Most will probably be bored to death and won’t watch it but that’s OK. It’s a start. Once I figure out how to get the quality level to a point which detail can be shown I’ll start putting some shop activities up. I  thought it would be cool to post vids of work on frames and stuff around the shop. We’ll see how it goes.

The following video is Bozeman from South Willson to E Mendenhall through Bogart park, behind the library, across Main and to my shop at 5:45 AM.

I  don’t have a lot to write at the moment. I had a great weekend and got lots done around the house and rode yesterday. I’ll have more to say as the week progresses. Work for this week is a couple steel frames. One is for a returning customer Mike S from MO. He’s getting a steel Cross frame with Edge fork. The other is for Scott H of CA. Scott is getting a steel road frame. I’ll post pics tomorrow.

So I’m working on Harold V’s frame right now. He was referred to my by some of my favorite customers, Jim and Barry. Thanks for the referral guys. I thought I’d go into a little more detail on the stays in this picture gallery. Some people try to make an argument about the practical benefits of S-bend stays. Personally I don’t believe they offer anything other than a cool aesthetic.  I don’t do a ton of them for road and cross but I do offer them as a free option and do use them on almost all MTB’s.

I have a bunch of patterns I’ve accumulated over the years but typically I just make them up as I go. The location, radius and angle of the bends varies depending on the frame size and tire size. If you’re a new builder things to watch out for are rotor clearance on MTB’s and small cog clearance (Campy 13’s) on seatstays and chain ring and crank clearance on chainstays.  It’s also critical to locate the apex or center of the radius of the bends right were they need to be in order to maximize tire clearance. Below are images of my process along with short caption describing what I’m doing.

I went to Moab to ride MTB’s for the first time in about 1992. I’ve gone pretty regularly since then but hadn’t been back in about five years. It was interesting to see the changes, especially along the river. We went primarily to ride MTB’s but myself and handful of others also took dirt bikes.  It was nice to be in warm air and we had a lot of fun.

Thought I’d share a few pictures from Fruita. Anyone that’s been there to ride probably knows the program. We camped up 18 mile road. Around the camp area there are about a half dozen little rides that are a lot of fun. I didn’t get many pictures out riding because I was too busy riding but here are some of the friends I was with and the campsite.