The next seven frames I’m building are all titanium. I just received a big order of material and spent some time Monday cutting and splitting out all the tubes. I ordered small parts from Paragon and now I’m ready to get to work. They are all road bikes and five of the seven will be complete bikes.

Here is the first of the bunch, it’s for Corey M. from OR. It’s just about ready to weld. I expect to have it pretty much done by the end of  the day. I’ve ordered some custom decals from Victory Circle Grafix that should be here next week, I’m putting together custom wheels for it this weekend and will assemble and ship late next week. This bike will be featured in my main road gallery as soon as it’s done.

Here is short article about Tejay’s first Grand Tour, the Vuelta a Espana. Finishing alone is a great accomplishment and he was right in the  mix for most of the race. Nice job Tejay!

http://velonews.competitor.com/2010/09/news/van-garderen-pleased-with-vuelta-a-espana-debut_142536

Many of you know I have an apprentice, Erik. He’s been with me for two years now per his agreement. I rarely take on apprentices but when I do I require they stay for an agreed amount of time. The reasons are that it takes a certain amount of experience before they’re ready to go out on their own. Also in return for my training I require them to work in the shop for me and it takes time before they can be productive enough to offer value. When I take an apprentices I do it for two reasons. First is that it allows me to give back. The second is that I always learn from them. I learn from the knowledge they bring and I learn through the process of teaching. You never realize how much you do that you don’t even think about until you have to pass it on to another person. You also don’t realize how much you forgot and what you stopped paying attention to until you are teaching and working with an apprentice. Working with Erik has stepped up my game and made me a better Framebuilder.

When I take on an apprentice I look for a couple of key attributes. I look for a good solid personality with well developed social skills first. It’s tough to make it in the business and the first thing any builder should have is a good personality. If you’re a bit weird, off, aloof, arrogant or negative you may be able to make Framebuilding work, but you’ll be fighting and uphill battle. More importantly, I don’t want to spend my days around someone unless I like them and they are fun to be around. The second thing I look for is talent. Believe it or not this job takes talent and it’s something not everyone has. It shows up in how you deal with people, if you can learn to weld, designing bikes, working with tools, inherent mechanical aptitude, business savvy and managing time. Everyone has different strengths but it’s being strong at every aspect of the business that is going to determine if you make it. When I send an apprentice out the door, it’s my goal that they are ready to run a Framebuilding business not just build a frame.

So with that said, Erik has been buying the tools and equipment he needs to build frames from his own shop space he is now renting in Haily Idaho. He will be moving into that shop next week and for the first time he’ll be in business building frames for himself. I wish him the best of luck and expect great success from him.

If you haven’t already, you can visit his blog at http://alliancebicycles.com/ and I’m told a full commercial site is on it’s way.

Every year I give a couple frames away to local events. Each of the events can then raffle the frame and raise money for their cause or event. It’s a great way to give back to the community and be part of events that we want to see in our community. One fund raiser is for local trails, one road race and one MTB race. I donate the frames in the form of a credit so the winner can come in and go through my full design process and have the same custom experience a paying customer would.

At this years Gallatin Valley Bicycle Club (GVBC) road race Tour de Bozeman put on by several local race teams the winner of the frame was Phil Ballard. Phil opted for a steel stage race frame and decided while he was at it he may as well get it built up with Sram Force and an Edge 2.0 fork. Below is a gallery of Phil’s build. It goes out to paint today and I’ll post it once it back and ready to go.

I’ve always been a big Columbus fan. The first frame I ever built was Columbus Genius, a very thin and for it’s time sophisticated tube-set. It was the last tube-set a newb should be building with but I didn’t let that slow me down. Columbus has always been an innovator in alloy, tube wall manipulation and tube shape. I don’t know that any other tube company produces the beautiful shapes that Columbus does. To this day almost every bike I build has some Columbus in it. Below is a cool article about Antonio Columbus and his life in the cycling business. I thought you might find it interesting.

Rouleur-Columbus.pdf