Bring the heat!

Yesterday it was 90 degrees out and a little bit hotter in the shop. I stand between a 400 degree powder coating oven and a 6000 degree torch. Whats a boy to do to beat the heat?

MMmmmmmmm.....



...tasty fruity deliciousness.

In other news, I decided to do a little "JRA" bench testing. For long time bike shop folks "JRA" means "just riding along", and is usually applied to bikes that have been the worst kind of mangled and then returned for "warranty" work. IE-"I don't know how it cracked in half, I was just riding along!"

In this case "JRA" means "Jury Rigged and Anecdotal". Just like my stem testing this is non-scientific "beat on it and see what happens" testing.



Here your 175lb frame builder is bouncing on the head tube with nothing but the bottom bracket supporting the frame. That look on my face is me realizing that the cement floor could get closer at any second. Fortunately, steel frames are rather (reassuringly) over built in the strength department, and my "testing" didn't even change the front end alignment. Not to shabby.

And, just in case you were worried, rest assured this frame will not be sent out! It will undergo a few more "impactful"* stress tests before getting cut up and recycled.


Big things are in the works here at QB. Summer is here, and things are rolling! A few more bikes were just added to the hopper- stay tuned for more updates!



*Tee hee!- I like the double entendre and say "so there grammar police"!

10 days later...

Sweet bejeezus- its been 10 days since my last post. A big thank you to the faithful that have checked in sans updates this last week, I appreciate it.

After the weekend of birthdays that called me away I just wrapped up a visit with some friends in Seattle to celebrate a wedding. It was a great visit! (Thanks Amanda, Brian, Hayden and Richard!) Yes- that is wedding cake in my mouth.

Just before taking off I snapped a couple of shots of another home brew tool- this time a jig for holding brake bridges and such.


As much fun as it was to hang out with friends, I did get a mighty hankering to get back into the shop. I picked up work on a stem from last Friday- I hope to get it in a paint batch with a frame set this week. Below is a raw brazing shot and another showing some progress. More on flikr.

Phew!

Wow.

At the day job we did 45 bikes this week including about 6 or 7 tandems. That is 9 a day, M-F. My eyeballs are about to fall out, but it was pretty awesome to be able to do!

This week started off with a multi-party for my wife and several of our friends celebrating there birthdays. Tomorrow is the actual date, so I'll be pretty bike-light this weekend (other then riding em, talking about em, and maybe working on them some).

Monday I mentioned building a few tools of convenience. Here is a little adjustable jig I made to hold down tube shift bosses in phase with each other. I have had great luck doing these with the calip-eyes and fingcrometers, but this little widget is a great time saver!

Monday Update

The lugged frame was on a bit of a hold while I waited for some shift lever bosses. Those just arrived today, and will be on the bike asap. In the meantime, I took some time to build a few tools and to do some destructive testing on a stem.

The tools will make their blog appearances as they are used, but consist of a shift boss jig and a canti boss/ rack mount/ bridge adjustable jig. I've had great luck just eyeballing and measuring these, but the tools should make set up a little quicker.

The stem was made with 4130 .035 tubing and was nickel silver brazed with only gasflux. I intentionally put this together sloppily to see what kind of results I could get. I started off putting it in my vise with a cheater bar on the quill. I could not get it to bend enough to take a set. After exhausting myself there, I proceeded to beat on it for a half hour with a 2 lb sledge hammer. While its nice and mangled, nothing "broke". After enough whacks, the tubes started to collapse in, but all of the brazing held.

This is GREAT!!! If you take a crash, you want the stem to spin on the steerer or at worst bend, but not snap off at the joint. While it might be a bit crooked, you can ride it home. I was very pleased with these bench test results.

Pleased with the success of this crude test I also started making a lugged stem. This is not a kit stem, but rather a quill with Quixotic made lugs in the constructeur style. Stay tuned to watch this develop!

Depth

I have been going nut job bonkers lately with all my crappy frame pictures. The depth of field has been all off, and I have great pictures of crisp door jams with blurry frame details obstructing the view.

I'm a bit of a luddite, and have only relatively recently moved from a camera that works fine without a battery to a digital P&S (or POS depending on my frustration level).

Today, in a frantic button pushing session trying to change my ISO I discovered that my camera has a MACRO setting. Holy moly- I really should pay more attention to the owners manual (which I read).

To celebrate, here is my first successful macro shot showing the beginning stages of lug thinning.





*Etymology Trivia Points- Holy moly (first used by Capt. Marvel in 1943 as "holy moley") is a rhyming derivative of "holy mackerel", which was first used around 1803. True Luddites (1811) would have preferred the fish reference.

Head badges!

I have two working models of the new head badge. They are essentially the same graphic, but the background uses negative space a bit differently.

One is a bit more filled in with a positive sky and negative clouds:




The other has a negative sky with positive clouds:



I think I like the the second one a bit more. Thoughts?

Shiggy at mtbtires.com was kind enough to cut them for me out of some brushed aluminum vinyl I found. The vinyl has been a great way to do some quick and inexpensive prototyping before doing this in stainless (and maybe some in copper).

Unfortunately my camera battery died just as I was setting up to work on the current lugged road frame so I don't have very many process pictures. I did get the battery charged though, and will be picking up again now that most of the frame brazing is done. I'll leave you with a 10pm head lug picture though. The whole joints worth of silver was pulled in from the tip of the top tube point.

Working Dog?

Nope- not a euphemism for my approach to bike building.

I'm talking about Charley, my 80lb lap/shop dog.

My friend Andrew has a great blogwith a focus on his vizsla's training progress as bird dogs. Vizsla's are a very pretty red hunting dog of medium build that seem to turn out as very eager working dogs.

Charley is a classic American pound pup- we picked him up as a small black rottweiler that quickly blossomed into a large black lab. I blame the unconquerable viral genes of the labrador. They could mate with chairs and produce black lab puppies.

Charley just had his third birthday, and after quite a bit of work, here he is executing a very distinguished point.

Currently he and my wife are working on his retrieve by rolling a squeaky ball back and forth on the couch. This afternoon he will be marking cats out of the living room window. We've put quite a bit of work in on this, and he can now do it flawlessly with zero hesitation.

On the bike front I am finishing up tube selection for fully lugged road bike. Stay tuned for developments.