Waiting for months and months for your new frame can be painful. You make the leap, pay a big bunch of money for a deposit and then just sit there and wait….and wait…. and wait. While I can’t do anything to speed up the process I do everything I can to make it as fun, interesting and painless as possible. One of the ways I do that is through a series of benchmark deliverables. The first thing I do is when you place your order we start the design immediately. That keeps us engaged and you don’t disappear off my radar forcing me to relearn who you are and what you want months down the road when your turn rolls around. The other thing I do is give you two, what I’ll call deliverables that help break the process up and keep it exciting. The first is your blueprint. Once we have the design developed I start producing blueprints. This is fun because it lets you see what your  bike will look like and things start to come to life. The blueprint usually comes about a month of so after you place your order. The second is pictures of your build. I shoot images of every customer build and put them on  my blog. So now we’re about three months into the wait and you can actually see your frame and what it looks like before paint.  Then of course about a month after that we deliver the bike. So all in all we break the wait up into trimesters and hopefully that makes the whole wait a lot easier.

Below is David’s Custom Blend steel geared 29er. This frame will be getting a painted and then it ’s off to Madrid Spain.

Man has the weather been good around here lately. This weekend it was in the upper 80’s. Not ideal for cross racing but great for BBQ’s. It’s suppose to be in the mid 70’s for the next week or so with little to no precipitation. Being a Bozeman person I know that can’t go on for much longer. We usually get our first “real” snow by October. When I say “real” I mean get out the shovel and get to work snow. So right now Loretta and I are riding all we can because once Winter hits we’ll spend most of our time riding on trainers.  The upside to Winter is that I get a lot of work done on, in and around my business. I’ll be adding to my website, making some tools and developing processes. The long dark days make it a lot easier to focus on inside activities.

Below is a gallery of Kale’s build. It’s a Custom Blend steel road frame.

Good friends ours started a really cool company about a year ago. It’s called Ruff Rollin’ and they make wheelchairs for dogs. They are a great family and they make an awesome product that adds a ton of value to a dogs life and in many cases can save the dogs life. I thought I’d give you a link to see their Facebook page and website. They have almost a thousand likes so go visit their Facebook page and put them over the top.

Ruff Rollin’ Facebook

Ruff Rollin’ Website

BTW, that beautiful dog posing in the chair on their Facebook page is ours:) She doesn’t need a wheelchair but she was a handy model.

So I’ve been working on this order form on and off for years. I’ve just started using it and I’m very excited about it. All the information is entered in my web browser and the data is stored in a data base so I can search any of the fields.  I currently keep all the same info on file but it is hand written and pretty hard to read. One of the great features of this new from is that I can create an output and give it to my clients. That way they will have every bit of information about their purchase they could want and more. From measurement and geometry info to tube specs, individual parts and braze-on’s, they’ll have it. You can see a sample here: Order Form

Fall is the best time of the year in Montana. Temperatures start to cool and it’s almost always sunny out. For the next week it’s suppose to be in the mid to upper 70’s. So I’ll be riding my bike every chance I get because soon the snow will fly and I won’t be able to ride nearly as much as I’d like until Spring. It’s also cross season and while I’m not much of a racer these days I do plan to do at least the Halloween race that’s put on by Team Muleterro because it’s always a lot of fun.

Around the shop things are purring along smoothly. I’m currently implementing a new order entry process that captures a lot more detail and is database driven so I’ll be able to track everything, search for any element within the order from individual parts to tube specs or even frame geometry. It will also create a really nice looking output that I can give to my clients so they have every single detail of their order for reference. And the best thing is, the new system will increase accuracy, reduce redundancy and speed up my record keeping efforts. I’ll post a demo “Order Outline” soon so you can see what it looks like.

I’ve also just finished up Jeremy’s Custom Blend steel cross/road frame (gallery below) and am starting Kale’s Custom Blend steel road frame today.