Allright. New start. It got to be more than a year since the last update. The 650b is doing fine and I’ve really enjoyed it both here in Norway and on a week long holiday with Pure Mountains in the Alpujarras area in Spain. I’ve managed to finish two more frames during the year. Both Elisabeth’s and Øyvind’s finally came together. Øyvind reports that he’s really, really happy with his singlespeed:
I’ve done numerous repairs, alignment checks (and some bending – or should I say heavy manipulating?) and modification. The most interesting one was a Colnago with a severely twisted, bent and broken off derailleur hanger. It took some thinking and quite a bit of work, but I turned it from being on the edge of becoming landfill to becoming a full functioning and nice looking frame.
The next weeks and months will most likely be filled with three projects. One classy urban commuter bike, one hardcore racing hardtail and a singlespeed for myself. I also have to find room for my new Bike Machinery Hydra frame fixture. I stumbled upon this when a Danish bike manufacturer moved their production overseas. Quite excited about that. It’ll complement my Anvil Journeyman fixture nicely, and will allow me some flexibility to work on two projects at the time.
As a part of the deal I also bought a new, more precise and larger alignment table. Both items should be on the way from Denmark tomorrow, so I’m really looking forward to getting them into the shop.
Well, that’s it for now. Oh, I just put up a page with some hard to get tooling information. Mostly for reference for other builders, but it might be interesting to have a look at for others as well.
Here is my 650b in the fixture. This was a project I started out with in may last year, but due to a number of things it was put on hold until now. It’s designed around a 130mm White Brothers fork and the frame is a mix of Columbus Life and True Temper OX2 tubing. The seat tube is a 35mm Life top tube with one butted end removed and sleeved to take a 31.6mm seatpost (to be able to run a Crank Brothers Joplin quick adjustable seatpost for long descents in the Alps or the Sierra Nevada). Geometry is a 69 degree head angle matched with a 73 degree seat angle. This is a degree steeper than I usually like to build my frames, but due to the 20mm set-back of the Joplin post I end up sitting in almost the same sport. That means that I need to dig up a rigid post with 20mm set-back as well.
I did finally find some time to finish up this Rocky Mountain Blizzard that needed to be updated to disc brakes. A fairly standard operation by now (I must have done nearly 20), but this one had a small variation that I tested on a beater bike a while ago. Instead of using new hose guides on the top tube, I opted for a solution where the cable guides that where once for the brake cable is drilled out and then the slot is brazed up. So in other words it’s just turned into a tube. A wee bit of work, but it’s worth it. Especially on a frame like this where the original braze-on is of the two-cable kind.
There’s a few other things happening in the workshop as well. I’ll try to post that later today.
For those of you who follows my flickr-stream as well, this is old news (well, two days old at least). I picked up my new decals on tuesday. Three variations of the logo in two sizes + two sizes of the headbadge. They turned out pretty darn nice, I have to say. Now I just got to get the frames that are ready for paint delivered to the painter. Next week perhaps?
Today an envelope with parts for my workstand turned up in my mailbox. And finally I can use my workstand. That was one of many projects that where just “hanging” for a while, but now that’s done. Another thing that turned up in the mail today was an original draw-bar for my Blomqvist lathe. That means that all the nice collets I got with it can be used (the quick-spanner arm is missing some parts, and it’s actually of no use for one off’s in a small workshop like this). There’s a couple of pictures of that in the flickr-stream. Soggy weather these days, btw. Snow, then rainy and mild. I really look forward to spring.
It’s 07.24 AM the 19th of December when I’m writing this. Elisabeth and Sofie are still sleeping. I have fresh coffee and radio. It’s dark outside. Up here in the north we’re basically at the darkest time of year right now (it turns in a few days), and we have proper daylight for only a few hours a day (9am to 3pm perhaps?).
This autumn has been one of the busiest ones I’ve experienced, and thus the progress in the workshop has not been what I planned. Two fieldworks in faraway locations, and a few additional trips meant that weeks and weekends got reduced to what feels like just a few days inbetween packing for a new destination. And when I finally was through with that in late November it turned out that my dad is sick with cancer. So that took away quite a lot of energy as well. For the last couple of days my sister and I have been running my parents hardware store while he’s been in for a thorough medical examination. The results from that was really positive. The cancer is located in one specific area. Threatable, but he’s going to go through a rough period with radiation and chemo.
On the positive side, I’m more or less finished moving into the workshop. Things are finding it’s place, tools are on the walls, and frames are hanging ready for paint. The next plan now is to put up a wall by the door to give me a wee bit more wall-space so the bikes can hang just by the door, and the drillpress and grinder (that will make it in here soon) can have their own space.
There’s quite a few pictures from the workshop over at my flickr-site: http://flickr.com/photos/planetjohnsen/ – as well as pictures from my travels this fall.
That’s it for now. I’m going to grab another cup of coffee. And I hear the girls are waking up, so there goes my quiet morning!
Merry Christmas!
Ex head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Jan Egeland was interviewed by the most serious of our Norwegian newspapers (Aftenposten) yesterday. As some of you might know, Norway is a big oil exporter and have thus profited a lot on the high oil prices that we experience these days. Egeland speaks up for a doubling of our yearly humanitarian aid donations, and states: “”I think it’s completely distasteful that we now should be sour because the gasoline price has become more expensive … We’ve never had greater reason to be generous.” For the whole interview (in english!) click HERE!
I’ve been to busy to build to get time to post here lately. Things are chugging along at a speed I wish was a tad higher. Should have finished my own frame by this week, but that seems out of the question at the moment. But I will have three frames ready for paint next week. That’s something at least. Hopefully I’ll be ready with my own main triangle before we head of to Hungary and Austria as well. There’s quite a few new pictures over at flickr. Check them out here: http://flickr.com/photos/planetjohnsen/
