Pick a color…….. any color.

Dave

It’s late Tuesday afternoon and it was a productive day on the 57.

The frame is done and 100% ready for paint. Today it was machined, aligned and finished. I also worked on the fork today getting the dropouts brazed into the blades, the blades bent and cut to length and then the whole deal brazed together. Tomorrow I machine, align and finish the fork and then the whole deal will be ready to go.

I’ve had a few people ask about the frameset but no one has signed on the dotted line yet so if you are thinking about it now is the time to let me know. 

Thanks again,

Dave

I made good progress on the 57 today. I brazed and finished the dropouts in the chainstays, fabricated the seat stay side tack caps and then brazed the whole shootin’ match to the front triangle. Tomorrow it gets cleaned, machined and aligned.

More then.

Dave

In the years I’ve been doing this this is the first time this has happened. I got the tubes cut and the lugs prepped for a bike and right before I was about to braze it the customer had to cancel the order. A sad thing to be sure. I decided that since I was this far that I’d complete the frameset and offer it up for sale here.

It’s a lugged frame and fork set with a 57 c-c seat tube and a 57 top tube and 73* seat angle. I’ll be completing it by April 29th and it will then be ready to go off to Joe Bell for paint and the new owner will get to pick the color.  Current turn around for one of my bikes in paint is about 10 weeks and the owner will take delivery as soon as the bike comes out of paint. The painted frameset can be had as is or can I can build it up into a ready to ride complete bike for you if you wish. 

My current wait for newly placed orders is about 9 months so whoever gets this will be getting a bike about 6 1/2 months early. The price is $2900 if the bike is painted in a single color. If you want something other than  single color paint scheme let me know and I can quote you a price on your idea.

Normally when I build a bike I send photos on a daily basis to the owner but in this case there isn’t one so I’ll be posting them here. As of today, Friday the 24th, the front triangle is complete and ready to have the rear end added. This will happen on Monday the 27th so look for updates at that time.

Thanks for looking and have a great weekend.

Dave

I wrote this a bit ago and posted it online at the V-Salon. I think it’s something good to keep in mind as we start to put in some time on the bike this spring. I know that when I keep this in mind I’m more efficient and more relaxed. Maybe it will be a benefit to you too.

Riding tip #3

I’d like to consider rider position when riding out of the saddle. There are a few key times when we tend to ride out of the saddle, climbing and sprinting. Following the “ride consciously” idea let’s think about how hold our bodies and use our strength and weight when we ride out of the saddle.

First let’s think about why we get out of the saddle. In most cases it’s to generate more power. By standing, we take the weight that would normally be sitting dead on the saddle and transfer it to the pedals. We are in effect standing on the forward pedal instead of pushing on it with our leg while sitting. It should be obvious that by doing this we can put much more weight and power into the pedal. It of course comes at an expense. This extra work we are doing takes more effort and raises out heart and breathing rates so our out of the saddle efforts can’t go on forever and this effort needs to be dosed out properly.

The main thing I want to talk about is fore/aft hip placement when standing and proper hip placement for climbing and sprinting.

Climbing – When we are climbing a steep section of road we often need to generate more power to get us up the hill so we stand to help put more weight on the pedal.  How we stand can make or break the deal. If we stand up tall and place our hips directly above our feet we are placing our weight over the forward pedal during its downstroke. We are in effect standing with all our weight over the forward pedal. This is a very good way to use our weight to propel us up the hill. The most common mistake is to place our hips too far forward and end up with too much weight on our hands. When you place your hips too far forward you start a negative feedback loop – with your hips forward of the pedal the more you push on the pedal the more weight you shift forward onto your hands and the less weight you are putting on the pedals. Since the weight on your hands does nothing to make you go forward it’s a waste of precious energy. You are in the end working against yourself and shifting the burden from the legs to the arms and getting no benefit. You’ve all seen folks do this. They are crunched over the bars, hips forward and elbows bent and their arm muscles showing the strain. You even see folks doing this with their hands in the drops to get even more weight on their hands. Think Thomas Voekler.

Why do we do this? It’s simple really. We stand up because it’s steep and hard to pedal. When we are standing our legs are doing a huge amount of work so to lessen the pain we move our hips forward and shift our weight to our hands. Our legs feel less pain but we make less power and go slower. It feels easier but we are going slower.

The proper hip position while standing climbing is to have the hips directly over the feet so you are standing with all your weight on the pedals. One way to tell of you are going too far forward is to monitor how much weight you have on your hands. If your hands are heavy on the bars and your wrists and forearms are straining it’s a good bet you are too far forward. You can test this by riding up a grade out of the saddle and then seeing how light your hands are on the bars. You should be able to have your hands just barely holding onto the hoods, fingers relaxed and forearms loose. Look closely at photos of the best pure climbers and they often have most of their fingers just dangling and they are holding onto the hoods with just their thumb and first finger. It’s as if you could take your hands off the bars and not much would change. This will result in that “dancing on the pedals” thing we see the best climbers do. It’s light and rhythmic and very efficient.

Sprinting – the hip position while sprinting is similar to climbing but with a twist. Sprinting has two basic phases. The start of the sprint where we need to accelerate as quickly as we can and then the top end, high speed finish of the sprint where rate of acceleration is lower but we need to maintain a higher speed.

During the transition from rolling along to sprinting we need to make huge amounts of power so we stand. Just like climbing we want our hips over the pedals to get as much power and weight onto them as possible. So we stand with our arms relatively straight to keep our hips back where they need to be. We make our billion watts for a short period and accelerate the bike in a big way to the point where we are now going fast. To maintain this high speed and add just a bit more we now need to spin the pedals as fast as possible. To do this we need to lower our aerodynamic drag and put our bodies in the best position to spin high RPMs. So we now need to bend our elbows and shift our weight forward. This lowers our frontal area making us more aerodynamic and transfers some weight from the feet to our hands making it easier to get a high spin going.

The most common mistakes I see when sprinting are that the two phases of the sprint aren’t dealt with. The rider either starts the sprint in the high speed spin position and can’t get the power down to accelerate or they start the sprint just fine but then don’t transition to the lower position for the high speed finish and end up pushing too much air at too low an RPM.

Time to make the donuts.

Dave

I’ve spent the last few days working on fillet bike for Michael and it’s done and ready to send off to JB tomorrow which will free me up to work on a few things. I’ve got  a few projects happening behind the scenes that may or may not ever see the light of day but now is the time I need to work on them. 

If they work out I’ll out them here ASAP.

Dave

It’s spring here finally and it was the perfect day to finally open the big door and clean the shop after a winter’s worth of grit had built up. Winter is long here and the opportunity to really open things up and clean in the winter is rare and this year it was winter until 2 days ago.

Since the place is clean I thought I’d give you a tour of the facility. When I have folks come for a visit I always joke about giving them the tour of the “Kirk Frameworks World Headquarters – the KFWH” and tell them to bring walking shoes so their poor feet won’t get tired from walking all around the plant. The reality is of course that I work from my home and everything is right here at hand. 

I use three parts of the house for business. First is the office and it’s pretty clean and simple. I have my Mac and a few desk toys and a view out the window to die for. The office is above the garage and overlooks the Bridger Mountains.

The second spot is in the basement and I use I use it for a bit of storage and for taking photos. It’s the “Kirk Frameworks Photo Documentation Lab”. Lots of lights, a simple stand and some photo backdrop paper and I’m all set. Most every product photo on my site was taken here.

Lastly we have the “Kirk Frameworks Production and Operations Plant” otherwise known as my garage. About 2/3 of the garage space is used for building frames and storing raw materials. The remaining 1/3 is used for my autocross race car (a 1999 Birkin S3). You might notice a few things (or a lack of a few things really) in the shop photos. First is there aren’t rows of bikes in various states of completion hanging from hooks. The simple and blunt reason for this is that I build one frame at a time, from start to finish and then I send it off to it’s owner. I figure that the customer wants the bike more than I do so I don’t fill my shop with customer’s bikes on hooks. The only bikes in the shop are our personal bikes and the one customer bike that’s in progress. When these shots were taken there were a few more personal bikes in the basement, still in winter storage, but Karin’s and my road bikes are hanging and my BMX bike is ready and waiting for the track to dry out.

The other thing you might notice is that there are no milling machines or lathes or laser guided alignment devices. I have nothing against these tools and I also have no use for them. I do most everything by hand as it’s the fastest and most accurate way I know how to build one-off bikes. I’ve spent a lot of time in my past life using mills and lathes and if I were building many bikes of the same size they might make sense. But the reality of my situation is that of the few hundred Kirks rolling around out there there are no two with the same geometry or build spec. So tools like mills and lathes would be in the way and cause me to need a bigger space which would mean I need to move the shop out of the house…………. a slippery financial slope that is for sure and a change in lifestyle I have no urge to make.

Lastly you might notice a portrait on the wall. It’s a painting of my father John whom the JK Special is named after. He was a master mechanic and craftsman and he keeps an eye on me to keep the standard high.

So here it is. It’s not much but it’s home and work all in one little package. Please feel free to stop by for the full tour. Remember to bring comfy shoes  and don’t forget a bike. A visit isn’t complete unless we go out and do a bit of R&D.

Happy Spring,

Dave

This is a riding tip I wrote for posting at the VSalon awhile back. If you take the time to balance your wheels you will feel the difference. Here you go -

Riding Tip

This isn’t so much a riding tip per se but a tuning tip that can help your riding.

One thing that folks often remark on is the fact that at speed their bike seems unsettled or unstable. It’s fine at 20 mph but at 40 mph it doesn’t inspire confidence and at 50 mph it gets downright scary. In most cases this can be rightfully diagnosed and fixed making sure that the rider has the proper position and weight distribution. But sometimes nothing seems to make the bike settle down and feel good at speed. I should say that a bike that fits and handles properly will gain stability as speed increases not the other way around.

I’ve found that in a large percentage of cases the bike can be made to behave better and feel more calm and stable at speed if the wheels are properly balanced. Most of the time wheels are balanced well enough without actually balancing them but in some cases this isn’t true. It’s very easy to get a rough feel for how well the wheels are balanced by taking the front wheel and holding it in your hands and giving it a quick spin. If it’s balanced reasonably well it will feel stable in your hands and not want to bob up and down. If it is badly out of balance it will be hard to hold stable and will bob up and down with some gusto. This is not a precise test by any means but it will give you an intuitive feel for how well the wheel is or isn’t balanced. It’s easy to picture when doing this what is happening on a fast descent if both the front and rear wheel are wanting to go up and down like this.

As rim designs and spoke counts have changed over the years this has become a bigger issue. Many high profile alloy rims are very out of balance due to their large seam. In the past the seam was set opposite of the valve stem and these two things did a reasonable job of balancing each other out but with some modern high profile rims the weight of the valve stem isn’t enough to balance out the weight of the rim seam. So as a matter of course I now balance all my wheels. It’s easy and simple to do and once you get the procedure down it will only take a few minutes to get right.

Here’s how I do it. There may be better and more precise ways to do this but the way I’ll describe is simple and reasonable accurate. I do both the front and rear wheels the same way. I’ll describe the procedure I use for the front –

1)    Take your wheel with both the tire and computer magnet mounted and place it in a truing stand. If you don’t have a stand you can use an old fork or even leave the wheel in the bike (if you leave the wheel in the bike the bearings must be perfectly adjusted or you will have a very hard time with this).

2)    With the wheel in the stand give it a spin and let it come to a stop. If it doesn’t stop and reverse directions a few times at least before coming to rest you need to address the bearing adjustment before going any further. The wheel should stop spinning one way and spin back the other and so on until it gradually comes to a complete stop.

3)    With the wheel now stopped make a mark the rim at the lowest point (bottom dead center if you will) with a marker. I use a dry erase marker as it’s so easy to clean off later. Now do the same thing at least 3 more times. If all goes well you’ll be making marks in the same place each time. If not I would suspect bearing adjustment.

4)    Assuming you keep getting the same results you now have a mark at the heaviest part of the assembled wheel. The first thing I do to balance things is to use your computer magnet. You should relocate it a spot directly opposite the mark on the rim so the magnet is at the lightest part of the wheel. After relocating the magnet do the spin and mark test again and adjust the location of the magnet as necessary to get the best results. Keep moving the magnet to the spot opposite the mark on the rim until you get a consistent result.

5)    After you’ve used the magnet as best possible you’ll most likely need to go a step further and actually add a small amount of weight. I use small stainless washers (about a 10mm O.D.) as weights. For testing and setting up I just use a small piece of masking tape to hold the washer to the rim. Tape the washer to the rim at the high point and give it another spin test. You’ll know when you’ve got it right when the wheel refuses to stop at the same point each time. When right the wheel will not reverse direction and oscillate back and forth but will slowly come to a stop at a random spot. You may need more than one washer if the wheel or tire is much out of balance.

6)    Lather, rinse and repeat as many times as necessary to get a random stopping point without a reversal of direction. When you get to the point where you are satisfied that you have got it right mark the location(s) of the washer(s) and remove them. You’ll then want to reattach them in a more permanent fashion. I use double-sticky foam tape. I stick the washer to one side of the tape and trim around it to give it a clean look and then remove the paper backing and stick it back on the rim where you made your mark(s).

7)    Now with the balance weights firmly attached take the wheel out of the stand and give it a quick spin while holding it by the axle. It should feel smooth and balanced and not want to bob.

Note this is not a super precise deal like when balancing a car tire. On a car the weights involved are large the speeds are in most cases much greater than you’ll find on a bike so the precision needed is much greater. On a bike getting it pretty good is good enough.

Do both front and back wheels this way (if doing the rear wheel while in the bike slip the chain off the cassette so the drag doesn’t mess with your results and so it can reverse direction). Now put the wheels on the bike and go bomb down the biggest, fastest hill you can find. If you had to put many washers on to get the wheel balanced I’ll bet you notice that the bike feels more stable and calm and surefooted. Note that if you remove the tire/tube for any reason you should redo this procedure as you are balancing the unit as a whole and messing with the tire will mess with the balance.

Thanks for reading. Go fast.

Dave  

The winters in Montana are plenty long. Beautiful but long and sometimes spring is slow in coming. This year we’ve been having lots of cold weather and snow and the skiing is very good but it’s still a bit cold for riding.

One sure sign of spring is the return the the bald eagles. Every spring I see pairs of eagles in the same trees on my early season rides. I suspect they are mating pairs returning to a mating place but I’m a framebuilder and not a bird expert so who knows. I always wish I had a camera to take photos of them with me on my rides but carrying a camera with a powerful enough lens to get a descent shot is out of the question on my bike. Today was a bit too cold for a fun ride so I hopped in the car and drove to one of the spots I often see them hanging out. I got lucky and snapped a few shots before they got spooked and flew off.

On a side note – I parked my car by the side of this rural road and walked a bit to take the photos. No less than two cars stopped to see if I needed help and then the owner of the land came out and told me when the best time to catch them hanging out was. I love living in a small town.

More bike stuff very soon.

Dave