This is the 1st show bike of the 2010 season. It’s getting close to being done with just a few hours of work to go before it will be ready for paint. I should get this completely wrapped up early next week and then I’ll be moving on to the next show bike – a JK Special road. I’ll post photos here once it’s started.

I hope you all have a good safe weekend and that you stay in the Holiday mood and mode for the weekend.

Dave

I’m getting into the meat of my JKC that I’m building for the upcoming NAHBS and wanted to share a few photos of it……. but I suspect that for many the background might also be of interest. My shop is in my garage so the car parked in the background gets a lot of ink when I take in-progress photos. Here’s the scoop on the new photo backdrop.

Anyone that has known me for more than a few minutes knows I’m a huge fan of Lotus automobiles. I have been since I was a young man and I’ve been very lucky to have owned a few genuine Lotus’ over the years. There is just something about the simple and elegant engineering that appeals to the framebuilder in me. The founder of Lotus, Colin Chapman, is my engineering hero and his designs are legendary both in and out of the automotive world. My first Lotus was a 1966 Lotus Cortina. What a wonderful car. I spent a number of years restoring it and at about this time I got into autocross and eventually sold it as it was just too rare to risk damage while autocrossing.

When I sold the Cortina I really wanted to get a Lotus Elise but they were very new at the time and way out of my price range. While shopping around for a serious autocross car I found the Birkin, which is a modern version of a 1969 Lotus Seven. It’s been a great car for the past 4 years and I’ve had a ball with it but the deep seated itch to own an Elise had not gone away. Lucky for me that the value of a used Elise has come down and the value of a used Birkin has gone up and just recently the two values came very close to one another so I could entertain selling the Birkin and buying an Elise.

I got lucky and was able to swing a deal on selling the Birkin at about the same time a very good deal came to me on a used Elise. So the Birkin is heading to a new excited owner in Maine and the Elise just arrived in Bozeman a few days ago. It’s a 2005 Elise with about 32,000 miles and it runs very well and I look forward to spring when I can start working on it in earnest for next years race season. It being November in Montana I haven’t been able to spend much time in it yet but spring is coming! Well, eventually it is………..

Here are a few photos of the bike that’s in progress as well as the cars I wrote about above. If you have no interest in cars I can respect that and promise to get back to the full bike content for the next post.

Thanks for looking,

Dave

I almost always build frame and fork sets but on rare occasions I build stand alone forks. Today was one of those occasions.

I was approached by a gentleman who had an older Serotta and loved it but had a few issues with it that were keeping him from using and enjoying it. The first was that the seatpost would not stay put in the frame but it drifted down over time. We talked about it and I was able to talk him through a fix for the issue and the frame is now working like new.

The second issue with the frame wasn’t the frame but the fork. He wanted to move over to a threadless fork/headset/stem system but wanted to have the original look and ride the bike always had. So today I built him a fork that is almost identical to his original but threadless. Since I built so many of those back in the day it was a simple thing to make a replica of sorts.

Now the fork is off to JB’s where it will meet the old frame and they will get matching paint and be like new once more. Pretty cool.

Thanks for looking,

Dave

As odd as it might sound to some I don’t own too many bikes. Years ago I did but over time they were sold to finance other things or just because it seemed a shame to have a nice bike gathering dust. At this point I have three bikes – a JKS, a full suspension titanium MTB I designed and made back while I was at Serotta and a Redline BMX bike I bought a year ago. I also have a few other frames hanging around that were test mules to test tubing or different Terraplane stay designs but these are true prototypes and not the kind of thing I’d want to ride on a daily basis or even have seen in public. Frankly they are crude and nasty looking.

Today was fun for me because I started a new bike for myself. It’s going to be a JK Cross and I think I’ll be bringing it to the show coming up in Richmond. I’m telling myself that it’s being built to do a final test on a new dropout design I’ve been working on and prototyping but the truth of it is that I want a new bike just for me. For the first time in a very long time I’ll even be hanging new parts on the bike. A new fresh bike is going to feel very good.

When building something for myself I tend to try  few new things and to pick away at the build when I have a few free hours here and there. Right now I’m waiting for a few tubes for the next customer build so I grabbed the lugs and started carving. As I find time here and there to work on it I’ll take a few photos and post them here. I might have a few hours tomorrow so who knows, maybe I’ll miter a tube or two.

Like I said, this time it’s personal. Thanks for looking.

Dave

The lovely Karin and I needed to go out of town on a short trip and we flew out of Bozeman on Wednesday afternoon. Since the forecast looked like we might get a small bit of snow we threw winter jackets and gloves into the car with the ever-present shovel and away we went. Just 30 hours or so later we landed back in Bozeman to find it cold and very, very white. We had about 16″ of snow on the car at the airport and bringing the shovel turned out to be a good idea.

We got home from the airport without incident  but could not get into out driveway. So some quick shoveling was in order so we could get the car out of the street. This morning we woke up to it being just 9* but perfectly sunny. Now I like snow more than most folks but this is out of hand for this early in the season. We are used to the upper reaches of the high mountains being white this time of year but having nearly 2 feet of snow in the yard is a bit out of hand.

And to think that just the day before I was checking fender lines on a new frame. What a difference a day makes.

Have a warm safe weekend.

Dave

Today I’m putting the finishing touches on a new ride for Darren. Custom cut lugs and side tack stays for this all weather bike. The fork will be built on Monday and then it’s off to JB.

Have a warm and safe weekend.

Dave

I really like working with and looking at a clean and simple lugset. My personal taste goes more toward simple and less toward baroque. The lug pictured here is a down tube/head tube lug that I did a bit of reshaping on to make it a bit more modern and fresh and maybe even a bit edgy and I like the way it came out.

Tomorrow I add the rear end to this front end and it will look like a frame. I like when that happens.

Dave

I was sitting in my office yesterday and happened to turn and look out the window to see the moon rising over the Bridger Mountains. It was stunning and I grabbed the camera and tried to get a shot of it. It didn’t come out as I’d hoped it would but it still looks cool.

I started construction of another frameset today for Darren. It’s a lugged utility/commuter/touring frame and I did some different shaping on the lugs and love how they came out. I’ll get some photos of them up tomorrow.

More then.

Dave

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This month marks a bit of a milestone in my framebuilding career as it’s been 20 years since I started working as a professional framebuilder. It was late October in 1989 that I went to work with Ben Serotta in Greenfield Center N.Y. and I’ve been building ever since.

When I sat down to think about this post and what deep and insightful things I may write in this space I came up short in all honesty. I thought of telling you all the valuable lessons I’ve learned over the past twenty years or about some of the bikes that stick out in my mind as being special in some way or maybe even something about how framebuilding has changed for the better/worse over this time. But you know, I don’t know that any of this matters. What matters to me is the building itself and just how fortunate I am to call this my job.

I love almost anything with wheels that goes fast – from skateboards to cars, I love them all. But bikes hold the most special place for me due to their simple beauty. The idea that someone like myself can make a living fussing over these simple machines just flat out kicks ass and I am a very fortunate man indeed to have spent the last 20 years doing what I love, and what I do best.

It’s funny……. I have a neighbor a few doors down from me who drives by on his way into work in the morning and sees me standing in my shop and we wave to each other. Same thing in the afternoon, he goes by in the other direction and waves at me while I’m standing in my shop. One afternoon he pulled into the driveway on his motorcycle on the way home. He flipped up his visor as I walked over the greet him. We BS’d about the weather and then he got to the point. “What do you do all day in there?” I told him that I was a bicycle framebuilder. He responded with a “Ok, but what do you DO?” So I told him in more detail what I do.”And you pay the bills doing this?” as he shook his head in disbelief. I responded with “hard to believe isn’t it?” He rode away shaking his head and I felt much the same way after looking at it thought his eyes. It’s sometimes hard to believe that this has all worked out. But it has and I consider myself very fortunate to do what I love for a living in one of the most beautiful little towns I’ve ever seen. I’m truly fortunate and I have Karin and you all to thank for this. So thank you for letting me live my own little dream.

Tomorrow starts the next 20 years of my career and hope it takes it’s sweet time and doesn’t pass too quickly. I want to enjoy this ride as long as it lasts.

Thanks for reading.

Dave