The joys of Christmas removed from the house (the tree went out of the window on Christmas Day due to being bald and just plain irritating), things started getting back to normal pretty quickly. Especially after we sat down and made a whiteboard list of the projects we have on the books and what needs doing first. The long days of eating nothing but fancy vegan things that Amy got sent through her job had to come to a regretful end.
Emails and admin done, it was time to stoke up the woodburner and get down to some messing about with metal again and we made some good progress on the commuter we're building. It's a fun little project for a good friend but it challenges in annoying ways.
A wallet-friendly frame, this one has unfiled fillets, at the request of the customer. In our personal opinion — for what that's worth — we think there's a very small number of people who lay fillets well enough to leave them unfiled and honestly? We don’t consider ourselves to be among them. We're flattered that our returning customer does, but OCD causes internal struggles with the finish. For what it’s worth, we hold Brian Curtis in the highest esteem for his unfiled work because his torch work is tantamount to art and we like the way he doesn't try to romanticise his reasoning. He can, so he does. Lovely stuff.
So yes. An unfiled 650b commuter with a fork and a rack, both of which saw some movement this week. For the fork, we've gone for a unicrown design with modified Son SL connectionless dropouts and they are 12mm thru axle. Post mount faces and bosses etc all get the usual stainless treatment. We avoided the 'stacked dime' style of brazing because we just don't think it looks good under paint. Under clear? Beautiful, but when the fillets are going to be covered, a more uniform style works better and has a nicer flow.
The custom flatbed rack is being built alongside the fork that it will be mounted to. It is being made to house a Wald basket, which will be adapted for the purpose too. Shame there's not powdercoat under the brackets on those baskets as we will have to get it recoated. Hey ho, standards vary. Must accept that.
In other news, we are booked out until mid-way through 2022 for frames now. A big thank you to everyone who has enquired and the people we are looking forward to building for. We also got a sneak peek at something exciting...
Last year, we posted about our little one's balance bike. It went on to be our most liked picture of 2020 and we can now reveal that it is the insanely talented Nico Sclater AKA Ornamental Conifer who is painting it. We've given him total creative freedom, so when he posted a sneaky little snap of a yellow base coat and the first word painted on it, we nearly screamed. For those that don't know, Nico is an incredible guy, is the Artist in Residence for Race Service and has painted for Hoonigan, Vans, Ken Block, Edwin, Arctic Monkeys and countless other people way cooler than us. He's also a recent member of Dad club too. It's a genuine privilege to be included in his roster of clients.
We've had a lot of enquiries about fillet brazed balance bikes and we are happy to reveal that we will be making a batch of them in the next couple of months, all being well. Most have been reserved already but we still have maybe a couple that will be up for grabs, so get in touch to find out more.
Light brackets are on their way, so if you asked to be added to our waiting list, we will be in touch as soon as they are ready. We're just finishing up a batch for Firefly Bicycles right now, so that's an exciting connection to have made. Big thanks to those guys over in the states.
And that's about it for this week, apart from the coveted (?) award of Shithead of the Week. Mask-dodgers, people vaping in the car with their kids and general arsehats aside, we do have a recipient. Congrats random emailer who used the contact form on our website to send: "Truing £?" It's a thanks but no thanks from us. If you don't have the time to write a full sentence, our hourly rate is most likely not what you're hoping for.
See you next week when we will be talking about those Vulpine bikes, other people inflating our prices for us and who knows what else...
Stay safe and well guys.