What's Cooking in the Shop?

I had to bust out the vegetable oil and the ol' camp stove in the shop the other day.  Having the lathe around is awesome as it lets me work towards executing some ideas that have been back there for a while instead of just thinking about them.  This is the first step in what will hopefully be a game changer in the bike packing world....at least for my customers.  Paraffin is on the stove in the double boiler and the inside of the tapered steerer is oiled to allow the extraction of the mold. 

With the molds extracted I can now see the exact inner profile of the tapered steerer and measure transferred IDs fairly accurately and match the taper angle on the lathe.  Think back a little ways to the days of quill stem technology.  Confused yet?

Having the lathe around has changed the way I look at recycling.  Now its more like repurposing.  This old Phil Wood front axle sitting in the trash was too good to pass up.  Its already a nicely  machined piece of aluminum, though stripped threads rendered it unsuitable for further bike duty.

The threaded ends were parted off and the shoulders cleaned up, the fat parts turned down to 15mm to make some truing stand adapters for thru axle front hubs.  I should probably have thought to make the other side to 12mm, but since one of these hubs has yet to pass through my shop I just didn't think of it.

The Viking gave me this rusty old broken driveshaft of 2" OD.  Solid steel and about 25 lbs in weight.  Drilled a quick 15/16" hole down the length and got to work cleaning up the surface, turning some shoulders, and increasing that bore to 24mm.  

With the shoulders accurately turned to provide a width of a shimano bottom bracket with appropriate (and unfortunate) plastic spacers, I now have a dummy BB for mock ups.  This is for XT/SLX configurations and others that use that setup with the spacers.  Road and Sram stuff would have to be configured differently.  But no more threading and shoving to mock up the drive train and check for clearances.  

The last one is just a part of solving a problem I've been trying to work out on the Henry James Jig for a while.  I made the dummy tire from an old Jeep roll bar that's been sitting around the house since I moved here.  The bigger problem is how to hold the stays, both chain and seat for accurate tacking.  With the hand curved and hand mitered stays, fixturing them usually comes down to splitting the difference in the inconsistencies in the bends and cuts to where the eye can't tell if they're not exact.  I've been using the bridge and boss jig to accomplish this fixturing along with some tubing blocks and a piece of half inch rod, but the mounting point of this aluminum arm is inherently flimsy and poorly toleranced.  So if there's no great way to tell if it is centered, it makes the stay mock up out in space particularly difficult.  The dummy tire is probably a step in the right direction, but really what's needed here is a solid arm from the main jig plate.  Guess its time to buy a mill and start finding some aluminum block.  The machine era sure is sweet though, and the practice projects here turning out functionally is good promise that the real upcoming projects will be a success.

Enter The Machine Era

Adventures in Craigslist volume 4.9.6:

The ad went something to the effect of "Pop's hobby shop for sale..." and was fairly non-descript.  The listings of its contents, however, were thorough and included the magic word that was triggered on the search engine....."lathe."  I have been looking for one for quite some time and apart from one occasionally popping up in Phoenix or Cottonwood for well upwards of $2000, it looked at that moment that the nearest lathes were in Texas or California....the closest one that looked like a good buy was in Tennessee.  Yeah, that's not exactly feasible.  I decided to do the Craigslist search and turned up the ad from Sedona.  A lathe in Sedona?!?  The next day I was on my down the canyon way for a look figuring that at worst I'd at least get in a good ride.  

Here I met Gary, an older gentleman who had reached the time in his life to disband his workshop.  His work revolved around saw repair of all types and the tooling associated included many sorts of precision grinders, cutting, and welding implements.  In the lightest corner of the low ceiling basement shop set the lathe, a Grizzly branded Taiwanese unit from the mid-late 1980s.....of (not knowing too terribly much about machines) adequate size for most things bike......and.....calibrated metric.  It appeared to have seen little use in its life with Gary being its sole owner.  With all chucks, a variety of tooling, taper drill bits, regular drill bits, live center, steady rest, and a plethora of geek literature.....SOLD.  Now for the new problem....how to get 1400 pounds of import steel out of Gary's basement and up canyon to Moustache World Headquarters.  I left a deposit and my word to extract it the following weekend. 

Now this, folks, is reason number 367 why it is good to have redneck friends.....equipment for any task.  I called The Viking and his father, The Graydog, and let them know the task at hand, and bribed them accordingly for their muscles and equipment.  Just so happened that The Viking had a machine dolly sitting along side his garage, and his pop has a rock extracting dump trailer with a 10,000 pound winch and a rig to pull it that just needed the miles put on.  How cool is that?!?  Two full carpentry sets were also in tow, as was one lovely set of extra hands and associated muscle.  It would have bummed me out to see old Gary move a muscle in moving this thing, so we came equipped to best improvise upon our rough plan once we got on site.

First up was to rearrange the shop to allow for the hoist onsite to access the machine.  Then to rearrange the structure of the machine car to fit the constraints of the space and allow its casters to be positioned 1). for maximum function within our small amount of accessible basement floor space; 2). for maximum stability during the transport up canyon.  Cart and machine would be strapped as one unit in the trailer for the trip to Flagstaff. 

Careful rigging of the machine to Gary's hoist allowed us to float it effortlessly, with near perfect balance, though with tight clearances in the small shop, and position the machine on our newly modified car.  Now:  up the stairs and outside.  We rigged a snatch block (pulley system) to the dump trailer to make the first winch pull up the 16" of stairs and tugged the car up ramps and onto a plywood covering of an otherwise gravel landing.  An automotive jack on wheels helped do the fine positioning and get the casters over the bumps of our ramp.  

Our plywood insta-floor allowed us to turn the machine and car in place using the jack without having to deal with a more difficult surface.  This eliminated the need for overly complicated trailer backing.  With a simple backing and a tilt of the trailer hydraulics, we matched the ramp's grade to the edge of the trailer and a second pull had our carted lathe on board.  Rigging was carefully devised to protect the more fragile parts of the machine, and three hours after our arrival, with a minimal amount of hiccups, we were on our way back north. 

The trip would give this machine a glimpse of the varied and rugged terrain its products would soon see.  I doubt many other machines have made this trip up Oak Creek Canyon.....why would they?  Machines don't really exist in Northern Arizona unless they're associated with the railroad or timber cutting.

(insert your favorite too cool for school, Men in Black, Matrix, Mission Impossible references here)

We dumped the trailer car assembly easily in the garage of Moustache World Headquarters and left it for another day...or maybe three or four of positioning, repositioning, setting, aligning, and overhaul.  I figured my first foray into machine life should be involving myself intricately into all of its parts, moving and otherwise.  She was disassembled in a late night, and reassembled in the coming days.  Somewhere in the meantime, the shop was prepped with wiring and rearrangement.  Despite what I normally post here, the whole real reason I keep the shop alive is so I can rearrange whenever the whim strikes to acquire something new or do something different.  This time I've maxed out my electrical sub panel.  Everything acquired from here on needing 240v will need to share a circuit with either this machine or the compressor.....otherwise a new circuit and wiring off the main breaker will be required at the cost of.....??  That should be fun.

The lathe is up and running now though.  Nothing like throwing yourself right into machine work.  It is fascinating for sure.  I'm looking forward to some bike projects on this thing and seeing how it can be setup in the frame shop!  Stay tuned folks!

Garage Sale

I'm trying to fund some new projects so a little garage clean out is in order.  I'll be adding to this list as long as there is stuff to sell.  If you want anything here please email me at the address listed in the contact section of this site.  Click the tab at the top of the page to see the goods...

Arizona Trail Ride - Picketpost to Kelvin

I got a chance to get out and ride with some great regional trail stewards and advocates for a ball-bustin' day on the AZT.  The group of eight assembled at the Picketpost trailhead under overcast skies for a morning departure on a 37-ish mile ride that promised some 5000 feet of climbing and ended up 1000 feet lower than we started.  Riders representing four mountain areas of Arizona including Flagstaff, Prescott, Sedona, and Tucson were present, many of whom had never met before.  Throughout the day conversations tended to focus on advocacy and interests within mountain biking with the hope that through our varied interests we could see all preserved and accommodated by management agencies.  In an interesting time where cities have begun to recognize the value of recreation tourism to their areas,  it seems that the interest of urban accessibility lies at the forefront of recreation managers within federal lands.

Our ride was anything but urban accessible.  Most of us drove in excess of three hours to arrive here, and unless you live in Superior, Arizona and ride a mountain bike, this one can be reached in one of about two ways:  (1). You drive here and ride this as a shuttle or an out and back; (2). You ride here via the rest of the Arizona Trail.

As we were southbound from our start the land covered in this expanse of trail included the southernmost of the Tonto National Forest, some BLM land, and finally land formerly held in State Trust but recently purchased by Asarco mining company.  This is one of six major mining outfits that the Arizona Trail currently passes through and at this point mine expansion is planned to remove and relocate the section south of where our ride ended.  We encountered a pair of hikers out to observe and chart the aesthetic impact of what would result from that expansion.  Specifically, this expansion would see the tailings of the Ray Mine dumped in the Ripsey Wash feeding the Gila river valley pictured toward the end of this article. Counterpoint to this statement:  These are copper mines.  Arizona is the Copper State.  The products of this undoubtedly destructive process are used by nearly EVERYBODY who uses electricity or plumbing.  The Arizona Trail Association works with these mining outfits to ensure passage, often through land trade, though the process is not always amicable.

Personally, my interest in this section started nearly seven years ago to the day while leading a crew for the conservation corps known as Pluto is a Planet.  We were sent to the south side of Picketpost Mountain for an unprecedented (in our world) 14 day trail work hitch.  At that time the AZT was more of a route and a concept than the ribbon through unforgiving lands it has since become.  We were there to help realize the vision.  Our days included much digging and filling, hiking and hauling, and of course the occasional cactus through the glove.  Great conversations of that day centered around how the world would be different upon returning from our two week absence.  I emerged to find my sister got married to a man I had never before met.  Our work on that section of trail was to me the capstone of our time and work together as Pluto.  It was something that would have lasting impacts into generations current and yet to come.  Below rider Lee Blackwell pilots through Pluto's hand built section seven years after construction, and nine years after he helped pioneer the AZT mountain bike route.

The lands beyond our old spike camp were as foreign to me as the trail that now navigated through them.  This country is remote and inhospitable.  We meandered back and forth through flowing drainages with ominous lands around us that hinted at major topographic relief.  We seemed to climb without reward.  It came into sight around a corner and that sight revealed what we all had come for.  The Alamo Canyon traverse was accompanied by breathtaking eeriness.  We were met with a drizzling winter rain that cleared the dust from my eyes and brought the true smell of the desert.  Looking down into the canyon conjured images of the lost, and a hike through its bottom would surely tell that story through the remains of whatever had not survived.  The group of eight pedaled on without error.

We met our reward for the day as we popped out of the canyon traverse to a cold and windy saddle that revealed the Gila River Valley below.  We were bound for it, though not even halfway through our day.  The descent was riveting, and a welcome warm to the cold drizzle we had faced through the canyon.

The Gila Valley brought new terrain to the ride.  The sandy side washes poured across the trail route nearly as often as the trail took a curve, and made fresh winter legs work hard for distance earned.  The sight of water in the desert, however, is always a welcome one, even if its too cold for a swim.  By this point it was a free-for-all for all eight.  Grind it out.  Remember those days you have suffered the hardest and know that this does not compare.  The trail ribbon provided frequent changes keeping my brain focused on where I was going, and fortunately not on how badly I was suffering.

 A loose, challenging climb from the river valley brought signs of civilization into view, and though the last downhill was punctuated with climbs, our vehicles, and the snacks within were a very welcome sight.

Devolution

...as in De-Evolution.  This concept was brought to at least a few willing listeners starting in the seventies as the band DEVO became known in the music world.  Those that saw beyond the satirical production of the live show that later became mostly spectacle by the time of MTV and "Whip It" could begin to understand that at the foundation of what came off as abrasive, communist, and down right ridiculous was the fact that, yeah, it was meant to.  Their view was that mankind, particularly in 1960s/1970s America had ceased to evolve and had instead begun to backtrack, to be herded by whatever they were told, hence the name.  People were sheep and had increasingly begun to lack the ability to think freely.  Most of the band's music played off this premise one way or another, and eventually the band went away citing that the world was just not ready for DEVO.  Maybe their disappearance in the late '80s after some less than well received albums gave the world time to process their message before their return to the production in 2010.  The world was deemed ready. 

Really this isn't meant to be a history of my favorite band, but more to serve as a background to a parallel I would like to try and illustrate:  the sort of thing I think about when I'm doing this bike building.

This thought can best be summed up by a conversation I had with a friend this week asking the specifics of what is this bike he saw in my shop.....you know....what wheel size is it?  

"Its a 26," I said

Response:   "Whoa they still make those!?!" 

Note the placement of the ambiguous "THEY" and what connotations it may have.  Trek, Giant, others have all but abandoned 26" wheels entirely for 2014 and I'm sure its not hard to trace these decisions back to some notion or premise based in marketing or sales or capitalism that this is in essense "BICYCLE EVOLUTION".  Even Yeti has abandoned on what was as of 2013, their best selling bike of all time - the 26 inch wheeled SB-66.

The unfortunate thing here is that these discontinuations are not based in offering a better bike to the consumer, they are based on selling more bikes based on fads and perceptions (or misconceptions) through marketing and through keeping up/competition.  And the backlash of this "evolution of the bicycle" will inevitably see certain parts options and standards becoming harder to find, just like that suspension fork with canti bosses. 

However, the one who really loses here is the rider.  26" bikes fit smaller riders great.  They allow an active ride that is somewhat more advanced....and some people want to make the moves themselves instead of having a bike able to compensate.  They make a more playful bike than their big or even their mid wheeled brethren, and its how we got to be better riders in the first place.  AND, they're easy to accelerate as they have less rotational mass and carry less inertia.

Now I understand that someone wanting to get into mountain bikes may not want to deal with this learning curve of making the moves, and that's fine.  YOU have options (bikes with brains, i-Bikes, e-bikes), and YOU are probably finding my rant redundant by now anyway, but old riders need new bikes too and why should we have to be victims of "evolution."

Sheep follow Sheep.  

Fortunately the people of Flagstaff tend to identify more with the Goat.

This project started from the concept of Shawna saying she wanted the DEVO bike.  And in that, I thought a Tyvek color scheme would likely be in order, but it really did fall into place.  A 120 mm Fox Float showed up following the early discussions that Shawna wanted an updated geometry similar to her Redline cruiser singlespeed.  I do love making Flagstaff bikes.  

Making the DEVO bike to me meant keeping lines simple and angular, while meeting all the riders demands (2.5" tires, geared or single speed, rack mounts).  The rear mono stay runs the cables through the stay to keep it looking clean...simple on the surface, complexity through depth.  The tubes are a custom blend of NOS '90s Tange Prestige acquired from the devolved, 4130 aircraft, and True Temper stays mated to Paragon Sliders and the big head tube.  That head tube will make another argument for 26" wheels...its only 90 mm long and will not get much in the way of headset stack either....and I absolutely refuse to ever make a bike that looks like a Cannondale with the stem pointed down (yes, that's where "bicycle evolution" has you headed). The tubes fell into place based on what would fit to that head tube and provide the strength in application.  While not the biggest rider, its still a big-ish fork on the front that'll be slammed and levered down the rocky trails of Arizona at speeds yet unknown to its rider.  That old Prestige downtube is ovalized and tapered to provide a big external "butt" at the head, and represents the pinnacle of Japanese bicycle tubing.  Think Samurai.  I am fortunate to have been gifted some of it.  It is very clean on the inside, cuts nicely, and takes well to brass. 

When I realized this is bike #029 out of my shop I had to stamp this into the other side of the BB.  Of course number 29 has 26" wheels.  Light and stiff.  Old and new.  We Are DEVO.

So in response to the statement above about 26" bikes:

I don't know what anybody else is doing these days, but...

I STILL MAKE THOSE!

....just like Gerald describes in the only video ever likely to make this blog.

Head South

....Like a goose in flight. I didn't mean for this disc tab to turn out looking like airborne fowl.  Funny thing is its the second one this week.  The first one being at the carpentry job and presenting itself as woodgrains on some tongue & groove siding.  Unfortunately that one would not likely see it into production as the one above, since when you turn the siding vertically it looked more phallic than avian.  Anyway I'm following the goose this week with the bars below in tow to fix up my mom's bike.  She's been asking me to do this for all too long.  Given that she's 67 and still wanting to get out I thought I'd take a bit back on the original remake that it was given ten years ago that essentially turned my old '94 GT Tequesta into a flat bar road bike.  I fabbed up some uber comfy bull moose risers for this new incarnation.  I hope she likes them.  I had no measurements to go on and only a ten year old educated guess.  

On that note....don't build yourselves into a hole out there folks.  I had to cut up my home made jig to get these bars free.  Went too fast in coming up with the clamping and forgot that you have to get these things out of the jig.  Guess it'll be time for a new one.

Kramp-Stache Complete...

....So here comes another rant!  Mr. Walker and I started scheming this ride on an overnight bike trip to the verde hot springs last spring and made his intentions official last June so I have the better part of 6 months in this one....not of actual labor just thought investment and the delays that come with having to pick up a project and set it down between jobs, trips, backorders whatever.  Not to mention its a lot of bike with a lot going on in the design and parts integration, so that alone is a lot to wrap your brain around.  All in all I think it comes out to just about everything you ever wanted in the '90s (some of it you didn't even know you wanted.

I spent some rides on Mr. Walker's Krampus (he was an early adopter) and walked away unimpressed, feeling that they missed the sweet spot of that ride by forgetting that it is a rigid bike.  It felt more like a downhill bike relying on a basketball for suspension.  First step...design the front end around its use.  Mountain bike first, touring bike second, snow bike.....maybe sometimes.  Dedicated rigid...yes.  The fork is something I'm quite proud of as its been in the works for going on two years, maybe more.  I've been wanting to do a raked unicrown for a while as the straight blade units (Salsa/Surly) have what is to me an unacceptable amount of brake chatter when paired with the necessarily long blades of big wheelers.  The curvature of this fork greatly reduces brake chatter as well as provides a little damping if the rack is removed.  Building the bender for these blades (the bars are also bent on this bender) took at least three efforts of picking the project back up after giving it the corner box which amounted to the majority of that two years.  I don't know if its reached its final stage yet, but it is easily adaptable to new parts or modifications and if you want to see it you can....in person.  A standard butted steerer tube didn't seem like enough for this application so I made an externally butted steerer tube using two lengths of .058" tubing.  The steerer is straight 1.125" so the first length, with a shorter piece of 1.25" that extends to just above the crown race sleeved on to where the 1.25 blades join at the bottom of the steerer forming the butt.  A third piece of 1.375" x .058" is sleeved to this assembly at the same time the legs are brazed to form the crown race seat....So not a tapered steerer per se, but an externally butted one.  The rack mounts are made from drilled out seat binders to take an M6 or .25" bolt with a backing nut so if you ever have to replace one, you can find it anywhere.  The added girth of the seat binder (5/8" tubing?) allows enough space for the backing nut to sit over the hooded dropout without interfering with the hub or disc rotor (see the picture in the previous post).

 All this mates up nicely with a Cane Creek zero stack 110 headset (very nice unit) and a monstrous Paragon head tube to position the bars to seat height with some room for adjustment.  Think comfort cruiser.  This bike goes slow!  The rack uses only the fork drops for bolt on attachment and is otherwise slip fit onto the steerer for the third and very stable attachment point giving the whole package that truss fork look without fixing it in place.  The upper stays will serve as more than adequate anchor points for strapping on a dry bag (and your backpack when you get to that extended dirt road section).  It'll also fit panniers if so desired.  Front loads are great, y'all.  They stick your front wheel to the ground in whatever situation you encounter, just keep yer load tight to the rack so you don't get steering lag.  I'm not talking about low riders either....they barely have a place on a road bike.  While it does not have an official load rating I sat on it when we finished it up and Mr. Walker said he could see it flex.  I figure that's a good sign.

The rider position and fit is not overlooked either.  The bars are 20 deg sweep 735mm wide and should offer a number of hand positions.  Paragon supplies the steerer clamp and the jigging for the pipes changes every time I do one of these things.  Moving rearward, the seat positions the rider more rearward than the Surly, though the stays remain about the same length.  The bottom bracket drop is about the same as with any regular 29er as low pressure tires only add size to the areas not taking up the load.  I used a plate yoke to accomplish the balance of mud and chainring clearance.  Yes, that's a granny gear.  Why would the bike with the biggest heaviest wheels not have one of these?  You got me!?.  To make this happen we went back a couple decades and mated an old XTR crank to a Phil Wood BB spindle of appropriate size to allow for the granny ring chain line to not interfere with the tire.  The rear wheel is then dished to an offset of about 6.5mm to the drive side to equalize spoke length/tension and compensate for the wider chain line and asymmetric chain stays hold it in place.  A direct mount front derailleur minimizes clearance issues with the big tire and will shift a 2x or 3x setup....yes you can run a big ring just fine on this bike.

Some facts:

7 benders were used in the production of this bicycle (two of which I don't even own)

Phil Wood and Cane Creek make very nice products

9 speed is still readily available

Square Taper XTR cranks are still the best cranks ever made

Ice Tech Brakes are the best brakes ever made

WTB Original Trail Grips rock!

Mr. Walker's former favorite mountain bike was a 1992 Stump Jumper

Surly rims do not even approach the best parts ever made list

The obliged happy customer photo!

On a side note I think we should start calling these things what they really are....Monster Trucks.  What about a bike like this isn't reminiscent of a monster truck?  Just imagine how many regular bikes you could stomp crush on one of these.  This one is more of the swamp buggy edition.  Taller, skinnier, geared down.  I went down to the (supposed) phat (fat?) bike demo that was said to be going on a couple weeks ago just as a nice fresh first layer of snow was falling and you know what I saw....myself and my two friends riding our bikes in the freshly falling snow.  I looked around and saw a 26,  a 29, and a 24er.  It was phat.  I guess you have to drive those bikes around in a phat van.  Well, when you have a monster truck you have no excuse.  I was kind of thinking that doing one in a BigFoot theme would be pretty cool....any takers?