Back on line.....finally!

Hi all,

Well, the ol' computer decided to self destruct around Christmas (an e-bay induced meltdown?) and I lost a whole series of build pics for this frame and a fork blade bender in the process. I hate modern technology- gimmie my files and a torch anyday, they never let me down.

So back on the net means I can at least post up the latest frame- it's Joe's single speed cross bike.

It's a sweet Prestige OS tubeset (the last one I could find), 7/4/7 and 8/5/8 walls, hand bent s-bend seatstays, lugged fork, custom ss bridge in the Coconino style, and big time tire clearance. Yahoo for work that doesn't require software!

"Talk" to you soon!

And I would ride 5000 miles.....................

Wow, it's almost been a month since my last post...time is flying this time of year. I have three frames in the works right now and should have something to show this weekend. In the meantime, a bit of a Live Wire Cycles milestone was reached a few weeks ago- Jeff Kerby took his Live Wire 29er past the 5,000 mile mark, in less than 6 months! That's pretty impressive for any cyclist, but consider that 95% of the miles were off road, the bike was always loaded down with some kind of cargo, and it's a single speed. He's been throwing down 300 mile weeks lately as prep for the next GDR too!
It's pretty cool to see a Live Wire bike getting thrashed on a daily basis and keep coming back for more.



ps- I shouldn't have written the post title like that, I can't get that song out of my head now....damn those geeky Australian twins. And why would anybody want to get "heavered" to?

At the feet of the master......

A couple weeks ago, I took a weekend trip to Flagstaff for some framebuilding fun at Coconino Cycles to hang out with Steve Garro and to watch the master at work. It was a great time! From a surreal 11pm visit from a horde of drunken cyclists (yo Big Johnny!), to trying to hang with Denise on the trail, to running the mill and using the Anvil fixtures- this was my kinda vacation!

I can't believe how much that short trip added to my building knowledge. Thanks Steve for the hospitality, the tubes, and most of all, the salsa!

Here's Steve perfecting the dt miter on a super burly bike that's going to be ridden across Mongolia! Mongolia!

Gotta love the curved tubes, eh?

Tacking it up.

Speaking of curves, here's a frame I brought to work on (it's gonna be Jeff's GDR Racer.2) as it sat in the HJ getting the chainstays fitted up. See? even though I haven't been posting, I've been building!

Getting bent!

Here's a couple of pics showing how I've been bending the tubes on bikes like the NAHBS (not) 29er and the GDR frame from last summer. Influenced by (ok, ripped off from) Steve Garro. It's about as low-tech as you can get, which suits me fine. First you get the right size piece of chromoloy, pack it full of fine sand, cap the ends with duct tape, and then pose for a pic while invoking your inner Dio. This part is most essential, if you can't contact your Dio, there's no hope for you.

Now strap that sucka onto a mandrel and heave! The bending in this pic (ignore the date, it was really last May) made both top tubes for the GDR bike as well as the seat tube for the fixie that's coming up. The key to bending like this is to make sure the radius is large enough- 24" in this case- and the tubing is the right diameter. Any thin wall tube larger than 1 1/8" really needs a pro tube bender to curve it without kinking. Smaller tubing like seatstays can be bent the same way on much smaller mandrels and you usually don't even need the sand.

Gonna be doing a lot more of this soon, seems everyone wants a sexy bike these days!

As close as it will ever get to Portland.....

How small is too small? Well, as far as part time framebuilders are concerned, I got my answer today. It had been my plan to combine resources with Dab Cycles so we could have a booth at the North American Handbuilt Bucycle show in Portland this year. Turns out that you can't share a booth unless you get the big 10' x 20' space. We figured we could swing the 10' x 10' registration between the two of us, but that was about it. What can you do? Sell more frames and hope to have the extra scratch next time around, I guess. I sure am glad we didn't register before we found this out!

Well, with all the whining out of the way, here's a frame I'd hoped to debut at the show- might as well post it now. I tried all sorts of settings, lighting, etc and these are best pics I could get with this color. It's a curvy sexy SS 29er with a Sabrosa Cycles inspired "lugged" fork. The graphics are a dark "bass boat" blue- understated and glittery all at the same time! Hmmm, that description sounds like about half the population of Santa Fe. Not that there's anything wrong with that...........

In the close ups, you can see the pearl in the black base coat. Here you can just make out the lightning bolts that extend off of the inside of the fork lugs. The crown is 1 1/8" .049 chromoly and the sockets are .058 while the legs are beefy 1" round True Temper offerings from Henry James. I did build a prototype crown and tried to break it- holy shnikees is this configuration strong!

As always, a parting dropout shot. Paragon perfection, baby. I love the way these look right out of the box.

Green..........GO!

Here's a few shots of Pete's bike after paint by the inimitable Mr. Porter. Here it is showing off the polished "PM" seat stay bridge. I wasn't sure about Pete's choice of color at first, but after seeing it on the frame, I'm loving it! So much that my next fixie will be the same.

In case you forgot where it was made, we put on one of Dave's very cool "made in NM" decals. Nice lugs, eh?

In this shot you can see the Porter touch on the silver tt protector- it had a turquiose stone inlaid and everything! It makes this frame very unique, and very NM.

Pete has ordered a full DA group for this bad boy, I'll be sure to get some pics of that too
Man, I learned so much building this frame, I can't thank Dave enough for opening up his shop to me.

A parting shot of the drops. Pretty bitchin, wouldn't you say?

One sweet ride

That's right baby, check out this ultra compact(tm) geometry hot rod cruiser! It should be all the rage in pre-school this fall.......

Anyway, too much job/kids/life going on to build all I need to. Got some cool stuff coming up though. The SS 29er should get done this week and my Morroni CJE is ready to go and I'll use it to do a curved seat tube fixie frame. More posts and pics soon- I promise!