February 19th, 2009 scottk
After a brief February thaw, winter has returned to Guelph. Monday was the family day holiday in Ontario so it was a shorter week here at True North. Hugh took the opportunity to engage in a three-hour road hockey marathon while i took a trip into Toronto to check out the Royal Ontario Museum. I hadn’t been there since they added the new wing to the building, it’s pretty nice, but i think the Bat Cave is still the highlight.
I assembled Ron’s bike yesterday and it’s looking great.
We’re still waiting on the XT cranks, but here is a pic of the bike in it’s near completed state. It is a full XT build including the awesome XT 29er wheels, Eriksen Ti seatpost and DT XMC80 fork.
Slowly but surely we’re making headway into our orders.
If you need me, i’ll be at the sandblast booth for the next little while. I have a few frames to prep and then it’s paint time. The new powdercoating is working out amazing and we just got in some great new colours and a really cool matte clearcoat.
Posted in Custom Frames, New Bikes | 2 Comments »
January 28th, 2009 Hugh
It has been a whirlwind of activity here trying to master the art of powder coating as well as building frames and taking orders. The problem with contracting out the powder coating is that most of the existing businesses have only basic powder coating abilities. I wanted to be able to recreate finishes as well as Stefan has done for me in the past but with extra toughness. After many many hours of experimentation I feel that we are at that high level of quality and toughness.
This in the first customer bike powder coated here. It is single speed version of the geared mtb I built for Paul at the end of the summer. There is a previous post with a picture of that bike. This bike has a gloss black base powder, charcoal flames, and clear powder top coat. Pretty and very tough.
Pete’s touring frame has been built for a while and waiting for powder. This is the same powder the US military uses on their equipment. It is extremely tough. We tried chemically stripping a sample with no luck. This bike is being assembled with a Rohloff and mainly silver components.
Jay came and picked up his club bike last Friday. We packed up the bike for its flight home to Jordan. One of the concerns he had was the amount of sand blowing around in the wind. He will have to experiment with some different chain lubes.
I have also been working on Paul’s ti TT/road bike. The frame has the ti version of the S+S couplers. The lock nut is stainless and the couplers are made of titanium.
Paul’s frame is now ready for some finishing and cable guides. Most of the parts are here so it should be assembled shortly.
Posted in Custom Frames, New Bikes | No Comments »
November 28th, 2008 Hugh
Andrew’s fixy is finally together. It is built with sleek oversize lugs and True Temper Platinum tubing. The yellow pinstriping on the lugs turned out really well. This frame has an EBB to take care of the chain tensioning duties. I am sure this bike will turn a few heads. Once the fit is dialed in I will have a stem painted yellow to match the other yellow bits.
Posted in New Bikes | 5 Comments »
November 26th, 2008 Hugh
Brad’s 650B Mixte tandem. I think the pictures tell the story. This one was a little extra work. It is a bit of a hybrid of a current day touring tandem, 1950′s vintage race tandem, and a Mixte tandem. I don’t have a tandem specific frame building jig. My Anvil Supermaster works just fine though if the frame is built in sections. There is less than 0.025″ runout over the entire frame. I now have to add the braze-ons and get working on the fork.
If I look at this frame any more today I think my eyes will explode! Check out the blood splatter scheme on Ron’s new 29er! *This is not real blood.
Posted in Cool Projects, Custom Frames | No Comments »
