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.
