Monday Quarterback

Monday night's activity…chainstays per Dan's request this weekend over a couple of Hammerheads. First, must prepare to Swallow The Sun…..thanks ROBO

Trying to stay tight to tolerances with no jig…yipes!

Mellow bendy crotch shot...

Colorway…total rough mock up on printer paper, but I think it will turn out quite nice as you prescribed. Always go with your gut. And yes, the blue tape will be replaced with METAL.

Finished drilling breather holes into those Ti Dropouts….THICK. Took about 40 min to drill two holes…Need lasers. That's all I got. Till Tomorrow Night. Hasta.

Chainstays On My Mind

Well, it appears that Blogger is letting me post again…not sure why it was giving me hell…probably lambasting for latent posts… Anyway, here's some catch up. Nice curves, mitered down to the drop outs.

Wish I had a jig….oh well!

Drilling holes in nice dropouts….gas must pass.

BB miters next. Gonna be close on one of the stays, not much meat to play with…one of those countless "I'll never do that again" moments that happen on the first bike. ;) But I'll pull it out.

Mojo rising...

Spent many daylight hours yesterday in peace (amazing....) working through the math and the layout, machining and fit up of the chainstays. Difficult cut to align into the drawing because of the odd geometry of the Paragon sliders. But finally last night I cracked it and got both sides cut to the drop out profiles. The bends are gonna be nice. Also got my frame jig dialed in for BB drop, and the modified chainstay lengths to account for the dropouts. All set. Need to figure out how to cheat a jig that will hold the stays in phase while I tack them in....let alone, cut out the bottom bracket. The checklist is set, and gets shorter all the time. More pics soon...

Mojo

Summer escapes, as it always does. Cross is here. Have to get my mojo back. Crunch time. That is all. Period.

The Trials Of Birth

Oh, how summer has smacked me in the face, and right at the time that I needed the most concentration….been staring down the two leftover peeled back edges on the front triangle for what feels like a year.  Finally set down to one this weekend and closed it nicely.  Took forever…good practice.  The next and final one will be trickier….hotter joint, tight, a little wider.  Good practice.  gulp…

Here's one of the joints early on that was going pretty swell….still that faint ghosting around the zone, but, meh.

Here's a repaired "hole".  Dammit.

Head stand….

Finding Phase on some sweet bent stays…..one of these days will have a sweet jig for this….

Anyway, good stuff.  Progress is on Dan.  The clock is seriously ticking, yes, but I am close to being over the cliff…. 

Brick by brick….

She's indeed coming together Dan…moved into phase #X whereby holes were drilled through a perfectly good Ti Head Tube…

 Jig is fitted up in mastery perched atop my old school Snap-On tool box roll around…

Nice fit….thanks for doing that 3 months ago Jace…
I'm actually half way round these joints now…finishing up in the morning over coffee...

Now how are we gonna miter these? hmmm…math time.

Indiscriminate Nozzle Failures

Ok, Dan, I took one more late night practice run with my kludged together torch gas lens late the other night with pretty decent, but still not right, results. I did some forensics and tracked down the guy who made the gas lens in his shop back in Michigan and convinced him to take two of my conversion collets and solder a stainless tube on them for me to use with his gas lens. Nice guy, agreed to do it, he should get them in his mailbox today.

This is a long story to say that I'm through fighting my funky setup (and burning a lot of Ti in the process). It's a murky world full of tribal knowledge and details when you are talking about welding. I'm getting mine. Fingers crossed that we'll be in business when I get those back next week.