I'm the BEST!

Sometimes things happen that just make you say "really?"

I got an email a week ago about an award that I had apparently earned from the local chamber of commerce -- 2015 Best Bike Shop in Puyallup.

Really? Sure, on my Facebook page I've listed my business as "Bike Shop, Manufacturing", but that was just for the purposes of having SOME kind of category for a custom framebuilder that made sense out of all the things to select from the menu. I've re-assembled one bike for a customer this year, the only actual "shop" kind of activity I've had all year.

Maybe I'm just all that and a huge bag of chips. Maybe the other two shops within three miles of my place just really suck. [I don't actually believe that.] 

More likely it's a way for the chamber to get me to pay for the privilege of printing out a certificate to hang on my wall saying "I'm the BEST!"

I don't need those kinds of ego strokes, thank you.

So, chamber of commerce... Really?

I've been Smoked Out!

I've been Smoked Out on Velocipede Salon.

Look here.

In many ways, this is daunting, putting my business, my building up among such masters as Firefly, Sachs, Winter, Coconino and so many others. But there it is. Something to keep current, get comments from within the community, and elevate my skill.

Getting the stays to stay

In the category of "lessons learned", I recently discovered something that has been unknowingly plaguing me.

For a while, I've had a heck of a time getting the rear wheel to line up properly in the frame after the chainstays are attached to the main triangle. It's a bugger getting the dummy axle centered in the first place on the Nortac jig, and I've always had to cold-set the stays after they're brazed to the bottom bracket shell.

So when I was assembling the "chainstays" for my daughter's push-bike (see the Gallery page -- coming soon), I set it up in the jig with a custom dummy axle (the locknut dimension for the wheels is not a road bike standard), and as I rested the stays on the rear dummy axle on the jig, I noticed that they didn't line up right. I loosened the set screw on the jig, spun the dummy axle, and watched the end scribe a nice little circle.

The dummy axle is bent. Lovely. It doesn't take much at the axle to see a big misalignment at the rim and tire.

That explains a lot, like why I've always had to cold-set the chainstays after brazing, and why I've had to file the dropouts after completely assembling the frame.

I also was forced into a different procedure in getting the chainstays set up for Simeon's hard tail. The width of the sliding dropouts is more than the Nortac jig will allow. So I had to get a little creative with the dummy axle, C-clamps, V-blocks, and steel angle stock.

And that worked pretty well to get the chainstays fitted up. It'll work great attaching the dropouts to the chainstays. But then I'm in the same dilemma in attaching those assemblies to the already-built main triangle. 

I'll manage, but it gets me thinking about a different build sequence that should work well, and solve all the issues with chainstay misalignment at the same time. And open up more options for dropouts.

Using the same "jig" that I used for Simeon's chainstay fit-up, I'll attach the dropouts to the stays, and then also attach the chainstays to the bottom bracket shell before it's made into the main triangle. I've seen this procedure before with other builders, mostly those who use spine-type frame jigs.

I'll have to accommodate the seat tube when fitting up the chainstays to the shell, but forcing the intersection towards the bottom of the shell should allow for plenty of clearance.

Learing... Adapting.

Mistakes made, and lessons learned.

One of the builders that I have much respect for is Selberbruzzler in Austria. Not just because they build some great bikes, but also because they've been very open with what goes on in their shop. Good and bad.

In a lot of big business, there's a standing hush-order on anything that could be interpreted as negative. I think that's counterproductive -- what happens when that thing you wanted to just go away finally gets shown in the light of day? It looks even worse because they tried to cover it up!

So, with that in mind, I'm going to parade out some of the mistakes that have been made along the way, and how I've dealt with them.

First up, in making Lisa's all-road bike, right at the very start I go off on the wrong foot. I had slotted the top of the tube and put in the holes for the water bottle bosses, then brazed the bottom bracket shell onto the seat tube. Then I measured out the locations of the breather holes for the top tube and the stub for the seatstay yoke, drilled them, and put that in the jig to start the mitering for the rest of the main triangle. It was then that I noticed something just didn't look right... Yep, those breather holes were in the wrong location -- I'd reversed them. If they had intersected the tube at the same location, it wouldn't have been an issue. But since they don't... I set that aside and started over. Lesson learned. I may be able to use that assembly on a build for myself, and I've got a time trial bike in the early design phase that could be the ticket.

Then there's the road bike I made for the RockSteady Junior Triathlon team that I help coach. I've got it at 99.9% build -- the only thing left is to put on bar tape and cut the steerer. I've actually already ridden on it, a little shake-down cruise up and down the road in front of my house. But in doing the parts build, after the frame was complete, chased and faced, painted, the whole nine yards, I found a fundamental error that I KNOW I checked before I lit the torch. I was threading in a GXP bottom bracket cups, and having the worst time with it. It'd go in a thread, then pop out. I got the taps out, and re-chased it. Then went at it again. Well, the right side went in half-way, then stopped. As in turning it didn't produce and movement -- in or out. Oh man. So I took the taps out to another frame, and then had the "oh crap" moment, realizing that the bottom bracket shell on that bike had been put in backwards. Sure, I'd chased the threads just fine, just as backwards as the shell had been assembled. I ended up ditching the GXP bottom bracket and crankset, and going with a Shimano type outboard bearing unit, and just making sure those cups were in there good and tight (with some thread locker for good measure). Yes, it works, and for a bike I'm donating to the team (and will likely be maintaining myself anyway), it's fine. Had it been for a paying customer, I'd have been starting all over again.

I've trimmed a tube too short when I didn't compensate for the offset of the tape measure on the other end, I've mitered tubes too deep using the bench grinder a little too aggressively, and I've mis-aligned the braze-on bits.

Richard Sachs has a great phrase -- "imperfection is perfection". It alludes to the fact that a hand-made frame is made by HUMAN hands, and they aren't perfect. It doesn't mean that we don't always strive for perfection, but there comes a time when chasing that last .0001mm of twist in a tube is counterproductive. It'll ride just fine, and unless the customer is examining the frame with a scanning electron microscope, it'll go unnoticed. But the builder knows it's there. and learns.

This openness hopefully doesn't become a bludgeon used to beat my framebuilding to a pulp in the industry. I'd like to keep building for a long time, even if I am just really starting out.

As long as I can laugh at myself, and learn something along the way.

Shuffling, and going legit

Wow, it's been a while. Life has been busy, and building has been going slow-but-steady.

The build queue has been moving around a bit. A kind of production musical-chairs, moving one project forward while another sits for a while. I moved Lisa's all-road bike to the front of the line -- not a stupid thing to do for your wife, I'd say. It's not complete and she's taken a few rides on it. It still needs a little tweaking to the handlebar and grip position, but so far she likes it.

I also added another bike to the queue that will go outside the family. A road bike that I will be donating to the RockSteady Junior Triathlon team which I help coach. It's almost finished -- all that's left is applying the graphics and overcoating them with clear, then building it up into a complete, rideable machine.

My own all-road/'cross bike is next in line, and it's at about 70% build. Chainstays were added this past weekend. I had a bit of an epiphany with the cable routing for this bike, and with the seatstay mounted disc brakes, it'll look good, I think.

Eric's tri bike is on hold. He's wavering on just what he wants, so that build is in the pre-design stage.

And one more, something I said I wouldn't do -- I'm building a hard-tail mountain bike for my nephew. He basically wanted me to duplicate the geometry off another frame he's ridden and liked, which made the whole interview and design process a lot easier. It'll present me with some new challenges, dealing with sliding dropouts and a bent down tube.

Abbie's push bike is slowly piecing together. Since she's a long way from being able to use it, it's not a huge hurry to have this one finished.

There was some talk in the house about the taxes and finances related to this whole frame-building venture, and I have maintained that much of it is a tax write off as business expenses. To that end, I have my business license and UBI number. I'm legit now!

Next steps are to get the insurance in line (which will be a requirement, in all good conscience, once a frame goes to some one outside the immediate family), and then parts supplier contracts.

Seems there's never enough time to work on this. I could easily make this into a full-time gig, it's that absorbing.

Builds, and building a build biz

I currently have three bikes in the works, though they're all staying "in the family".

A balance bike for my youngest daughter, though it's stalled for wheels that are back-ordered, is the first in line. The main frame is mostly finished, and the rear "triangle" is waiting on the wheels (to make sure the axle spacing is set correctly).

The second is an all-road bike for my wife. Tire clearance, disc brakes, stable geometry, and comfortable are the main plays on this one. Built on 24" wheels (507 ISO for those who speak that language), it'll have ample room with no compromises for tube tweaking or negative-rise stems. This is in the very early stages of the build at this point.

Then is a bike for myself, essentially a cyclocrosser with disc brakes, or a disc-brake road bike with clearance to wide (like 42mm) tires. Tubes are in the box for this one -- no actual building has taken place yet.

Next will be time trial bike for a good friend of mine. And that brings me to the the "building the build biz" part -- insurance and suppliers.

It's been quite the education researching the needs for a frame-building business. Even a very low-volume hobby level business has many of the same requirements as the bigger custom builders. You have to not only protect yourself in a product liability sense, but your customers as well.

Insurance is the key. It's not cheap, but it's worth it. I would never pass along a product that I thought was sub-standard or remotely unsafe. But, as in all things, stuff (or that other s-word) happens, and I wouldn't be able to look myself in the mirror at night if I knew that one of my products drastically changed some one's life for the worse without the ability to somehow make it right.

And once one of my bikes leaves my own household, that protection needs to be there (I would think that my wife or daughter wouldn't sue me... right?).

Suppliers need to have proof of that insurance as well, if their products will be resold onto a finished product. They also want to make sure they're not just undercutting their existing dealer network by supplying wholesale to the hobbyist.

So the list grows. Licenses, tax IDs, insurance, tooling (though I have most of that covered), supply contracts...

The nature of any business -- running the business is not secondary to the products you make.

From Sindri's forge...

From the account in Skáldskaparmál, Mjolnir was created by Sindri and his brother Brokkr. Mjolnir was forged with the interference of Loki, the Trickster, and though it caused a flaw in the handle of the war hammer, it was still one of the most fearsome of weapons made. So fearsome that it was given to Thor as his weapon or choice, worthy of his hand.

Mjolnir Cycles was born out of a want for something better out of a bicycle.

The impetus behind the idea was in 2004, when I was making a re-entry into the world of triathlon. I had made a study of bike geometry, weight distribution, handling, and position, and found that nothing on the market fit my concept of appropriate design. There was a reason that triathlon bikes had the reputation for being sketchy, poorly handling beasts. I was inches from contacting a custom builder when I found an old (okay, from the early 1990's) bike frame that came close to what I wanted. It shouldn't have taken that much to find a tri bike that fit me and handled like a bike should -- comfortable, stable.

Since then, I'd had it in my mind to make my own bikes, to my particular wants in handling. Even talking with many custom builders (some of whom I've bought from), their interpretation of my desired bike fell fairly in line with a narrow set of parameters that define the mainstream racing bicycle. I remember a particular comment on a cycling forum frequented by many framebuilders (both professional and hobby) where a budding builder was admonished to make their frame "like the million and one bikes out there, because they work well." It struck me as wrong, and my return comment was "maybe there are a million and one because there are a million." Blindly following what's been done before doesn't answer the question, in my mind.

It wasn't until I designed and built (with the help and guidance of Dave Levy at TiCycles Fabrication), that I solidified what I had suspected -- "accepted standards" don't really cut it. With this bike, I wanted maximum stability, a bike I could almost fall asleep on (a term I used when having my first custom bike built in 1991) and it would still track true. This bike does all that, and more. It served as a proof of concept, if you will, to validate my thoughts on design and handling. It's this philosophy that I bring to Mjolnir Cycles.

This blog will serve to be a sounding board for my thoughts on design, the industry, custom builders, and my own production as I build Mjolnir Cycles, the business and the bikes.