WERK!

Back home, rapidly catching up with my ladies over the weekend. Nice to be home....although visions of weld pools still haunt my sleep, with no outlet to be seen...yet!

First things first are to get Lori's ride parted up for action....so it will be back to bike mechanic mode for me for awhile. But stay tuned for the official launch of my brand of mighty Ti steeds....

I'll post up some photos of the finished frame back in my shop soon.

back to the grind!

Almost there..

Sorry for no new pictures. I was tuckered out last night after a long day of wrestling with the final welds to the frame. Got it done, so now it's down to the details today and tomorrow, then home!

HI MARINA & ELENA! And congratulations to both of you for graduating this year. Marina is now a 1st grader, and Elena is a senior in preschool! Whoo hoo!!!! Be ready to play when I get home...I miss you.

Millimeter by agonizing millimeter...

Ok, I'm gonna bring this show up to date.  Spent the weekend getting caught up on work from back home, writing letters to my girls, cruising Ashland for gifts and whatnot, and going on a hike with Calle out in the Rogue National Forest.  Also took some very Ashland kind of pictures.  I like the one of the trains behind UBI...I cross those tracks on my bike every morning and know I am heading into the zone....The past two days contained many hours of straight up working on this frame, interspersed with TONS of tips and instruction.  Ultimately, we are all working hard to stay on track to have these frames complete by the end of the day on Thursday. Everyone is within about 6 hours of each other, so I think we'll make it.  Here is Lori's front triangle all jigged up and ready to tack and weld.   Here's a closeup of the bottom bracket.  Notice the holes drilled into the shell that leads into the other tubes.  Little known fact, there are 13 holes drilled into the insides of a titanium frame...a little added bonus of working with this metal...gotta have the Argon purging everywhere at all times...and be CLEAN.  Here's Lori's head, top and down tubes tacked up and ready to weld on the table out of the frame jig.  The fun begins.  Here's where I sit for hours staring at the lava and contemplating my existence.  Stressful, and sublime, every time.  Here's the headtube junction again, all welded up.  Not pro, but DEFINITELY not like the goo balls I was throwing last week.  Here was today's duties....getting the chain stays welded up to the hooded dropouts.  Yet another custom jig for alignment and purging the subassembly with Argon until you can get it tacked up to weld free on the table.  Chainstay to dropouts all welded and snug as bugs. The maestro, Jim Kish giving us the knowledge as he works ahead of us on a frame that he is going to leave in the mechanics shop to test drive new components on.  It was his birthday today....many donuts were delivered by the rest of the UBI staff as he was stepping us through seatstay machining on the Bridgeport.  Last but not least, after hours of very difficult welding down in the chainstay / bottom bracket connection, I got to a good resting point.  I almost gave up on one spot because I couldn't get a good angle with the electrode, but I hung in there, determined to nail it all myself.  Then, as we went to check alignment on the chainstays, I was really worried when the whole thing had contracted to about 7mm narrower than they should be.  So Jim told me to jam in a mtn bike (wider) axle jig, and whip a weld around the side we needed to pull around, across the weld I just finished.  Bang, Bang, Bang.  Done.  Pulled it straight, just like he said....the little things you learn.  ;)  Here is where I left things today as we shut out the lights in the shop.  Almost ready to get a wheel...seatstay's tomorrow.  Probably the trickiest thing yet.  I need some sleep....gonna be a long day.  

Back into the fire...

Beautiful sunny Ashland Monday morning...slurping down espresso and gearing up for a stressful day. The real bike gets welded on today. Front triangle will be done by happy hour....more pictures to come.

here we go...

Diarama Part Deux

Falling behind, sorry, still stuck on pictures from last week. BUT, here's where I'll shift gears and start showing the live ammunition shots as I'm working up Lori's real bike. First off, the drafting day. Basically drew out a full scale mock up of the actual bike, including chainstay schematics and then converted it all into machining instructions...here's the bottom bracket junction.



Then it was off to turn pencil lines into metal...here's the bottom bracket / seat tube junction jigged up and argon purging prior to welding.



Another view. The jig is pretty tricky to weld around, so we just do some little tack welds and then pull it out for the full business.



A view of the class with live bodies in it.



By the end of last week, I had Lori's front triangle cut down and ready to get cleaned up for fitting in the jig and eventual welding. I got that all done yesterday over the course of several hours, with only some minor trouble spots, so, this thing is becoming reality!



I'll post the actual bike in action shots tonight.

Rear triangle machining & welding today. Gotta get to class!

out

A Brief Pictoral Diarama of a Journey In Metal....

Alright, time to put a face to the story. Here's a few pictures to take you through what I've been writing about. First up is the school itself. UBI is down in the old part of Ashland, down by the railroad tracks. It is broken roughly in half, with the front half of the school where the large classes of bike mechanics, wheel building, repair, etc go on. The back half is a big warehouse type shop space where all the materials are stored and the welding shop is. Next to this building is a dorm type building where students stay while they are in Ashland.



Just outside the frame shop door is this view back toward Mt Ashland. This is where I retreat when I've been under the hood for hours focusing all my energy towards a 6mm diameter pulsing pool of molten Titanium.....it's quite a dichotomy to say the least.



Here's the exterior of the frame shop...where all the magic happens. Notice the huge solar array on the top of the building, it supplies 60% of the power to UBI. Pretty cool given that we are all blasting away with 200 AMP welders and three phase machine tools.



This is where our teacher instructs us in bits and pieces along the way. His name is Jim Kish, and he is great. Not just in his welding and bike building which is pretty epic, but he's also been a fantastic teacher, putting us all at ease under some pretty intense circumstances. Can't say enough about him and Gary and Rich, who also helped me tremendously.



View of the machine shop wall, lathe and Bridgeport milling machine in the backgroun there....(I often wonder how I'm going to fit my own version of those in my basement.. ;)



Closeup of the mighty Bridgeport. Turns a daunting task into a pull of the lever. I think I could have a serious relationship with one of these...man love.



Oh yeah, welding. ;) So here is my work bench where I try to create miracles.



More often than not in the beginning, I was just lucky enough to get the joints to stick together and not grow big swiss cheesy breather holes on the side...goopy Ti.



You can see what happens to Titanium when it is over 800 degrees and finds oxygen....p.s. don't ride this bike ;)



But like anything in life, throw yourself back in the fire and breathe, and it gets better...



and better...little victories.



Finally, yesterday, I made it around these 2 Gruelons without a failure, and some decent welds interspersed amongst the rumples....



Armed with the knowledge that I wasn't a total plebe at the welding torch, I constructed a real live bottom bracket / seat tube weld with some quality Ti (versus the Chinese stuff we'd been practicing on). Then, it was off to a stationary jig and a 50 pound extended metal pole that I leaned and bounced on with my entire weight until the seat tube finally gave up it's life.....the good news is, it did it before my weld ever budged. Proceed, Grasshopper...



more to come in another post, gonna head out to take some snaps of Ashland and locate some surprises for my women back home.

It's Friday y'all, and it's time to get whack...

Made it through the first week in Ashland....completely drained. But finally...FINALLY felt like I could let my guard down a little and hang out tonight. Calle and I went in search of Mexican food at the El Tapatio down the way in Ashland, right next to the old El Tapatio that got burned down by the Ashland Fire Department the other night in a "Learn and Burn" exercise....or Burn to Learn, or whatever.

Anyway, was a good time, including a live guitarist on a stage singing old time Mexican love songs or whatever. AND two girls doing full on mexican skirt dancing with the tap shoes an all that. Good stuff.

Then we rolled back to hang out and listen to tunes and shoot the breeze, seeing as how we haven't really talked much this week what with my sorry ass passing out early in every night.

I also was grateful to get to talk to Lori and Pete and Dan and Alvy about my adventures this week. Haven't really downloaded or processed a lot of the stuff that has been going through my head this week. Hoping to catch up on more of it this weekend. Also the PICTURES. I don't have too many, but some to spruce up this page, so, I will get those in tomorrow while I am chilling out and catching up on email.

word. Many blessings to you all. Is Jon and Kate on yet? ;)

Kaboom...

Day 4 was 90% a day for total work. Total work. Grinding, cutting, filing, cleaning metal, jigging, welding, and BREAKING. I got through my first full triangle first thing this morning. 2 of the 3 joints were solid, and actually looking alright. Not beautiful by any means, but the guideline my teacher said was that another 80 hours of solid welding on top of this 80 hour class was required to get fully flat and even welds. I have moments of brilliance, where I can't believe how easy everything is going, and how good things look, and then all of a sudden I'll miss the line, or lose my pacing, or get too hot and screw things up. But, overall, I'm lightyears away from my first "work" I did. Looking back on it today it was kind of funny to see.

I also got my practice bottom bracket and seat post welded up for the destruction test. I had to do some hole filling as well in one spot, so it was ugly, but I made sure that it was a solid weld. Into the jig with it, long bar connected to it, and then my whole body weight.....bouncing body weight....creak....BANG! It broke just where it should...just outside the weld pool, so, passing grade (and an ease on my nerves that Lori could never put as much torque on any of the joints that I was putting on that one...I think that was the point).

Also, started machining out the tubeset for the front triangle. Got to work the big lathe (after tons of math calculations on total and miter lengths) cutting the tubes, and now have them on my bench ready for construction tomorrow after some more practice welding....the final cut. Then everything is for real....stressful. But will be very cool to walk out tomorrow for the weekend with the front triangle done.

Did I mention that I love this class? Now, how the hell am I going to get a shop set up. I'm going to have the bug for sure.....won't be quenched until I knock out the next bike...and the next....I knew this would happen. ;)

Calle and I are going to head out to her local watering hole for a bit, and then come back where I'll post a few pictures I took today. Nothing too exciting, but will put a face to my descriptions.

Did I mention that I miss my girls? HI MARINA! HI ELENA! I'm glad that grandma and grandpa are hanging out with you!

More later.
out

Where am I?

Man, day 3 down, I crawled back to Calle's place (between dodging thunderstorms...), laid down on the floor to stretch out a little and ended up passing out. I am totally exhausted. This class is really draining. So many things to think about, focus on, learn about, refocus on....it really feels like I have been doing this class for about 2 weeks already instead of 3 days.

The good news, I got Lori's bikes design down in full scale on paper today. I ended up having to have a lot of consultation with the teacher and the other pro guys that work at UBI since the bike is going to be a smaller road bike, and yet, a little more relaxed ride. Trying to escape the problem of major toe overlap of the front wheel, we ended up deciding on a pretty unorthodox design, incorporating 26" wheels (i.e. mtn bike rims) and most likely a custom built steel fork from my teachers friend in Massachussettes...man that word sucks...probably screwed it up.

Anyway, we searched all the catalogues for options in 650c and 650b before ending up realizing that we were trying to force a solution where the best solution would be to continue the custom theme. So, custom it will be. With the reference from Jim, this guy said he would build my fork whenever I'm ready, so, very cool.

The rest of the bike design process was really fun. After making a few incorrect turns, and going the process of remembering cosine and sin functions, I got it nailed down and checked off as feasible, machinable and weldable by the staff. So, that's that. Other than that, we had several more hours of weld practice. I think I am finally over the hump. Made it all around 2 T-joints with some decent looking welds and no holes. Plus, I just felt more confident staring at the pulsing molten pool of metal and making it do what I wanted.

The other cool thing we did today (and what we will do for ourselves tomorrow) was to do a destructive test of a seat tube and bottom bracket joint. Basically, do up your best weld of that joint, and the reef on it with a huge crowbar until it breaks. It's the final test of our weld skills before they cut us loose on our own frames. It will show if we prepped the material right, cleaned it (and kept it clean and argon purged), used enough heat, and filled with enough wire to get everything to weld together. Hopefully, if all goes right, the damage won't occur in the weld itself, but just outside it in the heat affected zone. That's the A+ for the experiment. Judging by my welds today, I'm thinking that I'll be fine. We'll see.

Now, gonna sling together some tacos and repair my nerves with some R&R. Up early again tomorrow. All day we'll be starting to machine our tubesets on the Bridgeports and getting them geared up to weld....supposedly we will have a front triangle by the end of the week. I still don't see it, but like I said, nobody seems concerned, so I won't be either.

whew.

I love the smell of Argon in the morning

Day 2 in class....by lunch, I couldn't see straight I was so frustrated. Sat down first thing to try another T-Joint weld, or, "get warmed up" as my teacher said. I was all charged up to put my first day's learning to practice on the tubeset that I spent 30 minutes filing and cleaning to fit right. Jig set, Argon purge flowing, everything clean, shiny, welder charged.....and go.....tacked the first obtuse angle centerline fine. WHOOO! Then, turned it around to hit the acute angle tack and trying for once not to cut a hole in the mitered tube.....was too hesitant...took too long to build up the heat and weld pool and....BRRZZZAassnnoaopaPAPAPP!! Another F-ing hole!

Oh well. the rest will go better. 20 more minutes of crap welds....missed weld lines...oxidation....totally frustrating. I destroyed it. Such a bummer I can't even describe it.

Then a demonstration by my teacher of building a miniature triangle (Gruelon), where Jim proceeded to put together the damn thing with the most beautiful welds in about 10 minutes...all the while talking to us. Amazing. Many years (and thousands of bikes) worth of practice...so I had to keep that in mind. Back to prepping another T-Joint before luch. file file file file. Lunch with the parents and Calle on the river to unwind.

Back at it, we spent 2 hours going over fit theory and geometry. The process was well demystified and broken down into logical steps. Very good. My homework tonight, start working out Lori's bike. Then back to practice welding. HAVE to hammer one so that I don't feel like a total loser. Took my time. Breathed alot. Got some more pointers. And in the end? Got around one whole side with totally passable welds. WHEW. Of course I had to finish the other side with a very humbling blown hole again. BUT? All told, a total victory to end the day on.

Back at Calle's, Tall Boy of High Life in hand. Feeling better. Ready for tomorrow (almost). This class is totally exhausting. I feel like I'm in space. But that's alright. I'm still moving forward. How I will ever get to a full bike frame, I have no idea, but the teachers are telling me I'm well on track. Looking around at the other benches makes me feel a little better. This crap is HARD.

Heading to dinner in Ashland now. Back to the work table for sketches later with more reality TV with Calle (her favorite sport), and then my cozy sleeping bag. In the shop again for day 3 tomorrow. I'll take pictures then. Forgot the camera this morning....but probably a good thing. I was totally humbled by metal!

Hot Shots....

So, got here to Ashland last night to some pretty epic fireworks....almost like some sort of OMEN of the hot exploding metal to come. As I was crossing the Rogue River the sky turned an amazingly dark color of purple and brown right over my car and the surrounding hills, complete with the first dark rainbow I have ever seen....Helped that I was listening to some Dio while this was going on, so I may have been hallucinating. Anyway, huge lightning and flash flooding happened for the next 20 miles or so. Completely awesome.

Anyway, made it to Calle's little studio apartment she has been nice enough to let me crash in. Got up and rode to the school this morning. 7 of us in the class being taught by Jim Kish, who custom builds Ti frames in San Luis Obispo, Ca. Super cool guy, sharing all he knows so far. The morning has been a blur. Lot of setup talk and general questions then right before lunch he cut us each loose on some practice Ti with our welders at our benches....kind of like "Ok, 15 minutes for lunch, give it a go!".

BRRRZZZ ssssnnAP! Burning metal. Blown weld puddles. Total confusion. Shaking hands. But the virgin moment is over. We move on after lunch to weld up some practice triangles (supposedly.... ;). I'm calming my nerves in a hippy coffe joint and gearing up for what's next.

I have to be honest when I say that this is quite possibly the most incredibly cool thing that I have ever done. THANK YOU LORI!!!!!

I have some camera trouble that I am going to work through and start documenting my work progress in the shop for those who actually find weld lines interesting.....you know who you are....

stay tuned, and enjoy the office y'all!