Monday, March 24, 2008

some build shots of frank's bike.






weeellll.....seems like this build is lingering on - i had to take a couple of days off due to spasms, pain, and just plain old being tired. all part of the fun world of the incomplete spinal cord injury...... some times the going gets tough. but, somehow i get the frames out, and time goes on. frank's frame looks really sweet, and it's probably one of the lightest frames i've ever built. the chainstays were THIN and it took me one entire day to get the dropouts/chainstays/stay brace all just where i wanted it. it's going to have campi cranks AND fenders, so i was trying to squeeze space outta all the urgent spots - chainring, tire, crankarm and fender clearance. also, i didn't want to do "topeyes", where the seatstays terminate in caps on either side of the top of the seattube, so i had to get creative with bending the thin walled seatstays. sooooo.....i used an old trick - shoving the stays full of brass rod to keep the walls from collapsing. it worked well, and took two of us to yank the rods back out - they were really key stoned in there. brazing went pretty well. i had to preheat allot from the insides of the thick tubes like the headtube, seat tube and the bottom bracket to keep from frying the really thin stays. brazing looks good! she's in the dunk tank de-fluxing right now. it's going to have to wait untill we get back from mexico on the 4th. of april for sculpting the brass, brazeons and detailing the fork, as tomorrow i have two frames to prep and i have to pack. thanks for reading! steve.

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