tomorrow, the lights!

a few little bits, just the mudguards to get.. very very happy with it. unnervingly close to the flight date. maiden voyage once the mudguards are on. Denver soon come…

Stroop Mk2 lives!

Done, back from the painters finally. And this time they managed to get the colour right! next is finding somewhere that will be able to do the decals for the down tube. 

starting to put it together, bit of a debate on stems. stubby Thomson or long Litespeed. i’ll have a ride and see. in the mean time, just need them mudguards sent up from London and it’ll be done! well happy……

I think it’s done! all the last little bits are filed and sanded and the head badge is on and polished.

i decided to leave the rack out in the end, partly because i didnt like how it looked but mainly i realised that i wouldnt actually use the rack, it was more just an interesting place for the light. so instead i have incorporated it into a sort of extended seat stay bridge. unfortunately it now won’t work with the dynamo as it’s too late to move the cable routing.

very happy with this at the moment. just got to get it off to the painters.

the frame  is done! all the bridges and bosses are on and tidied, now it really is just the rack. my challenge today was drilling 4 holes at exactly marked spots on the bottom rung of the rack. 10mm holes into a 12mm tube, with a hand drill, without a jig. that was pretty nerve racking as its too late to order any more. drill ran out of power before i could finish.

the frame and forks are done! i brazed on the seat stays and put theV brake mounts on yesterday and left it to soak over night, which made it nice and easy to brush the flux off with the brush today. i spent most of today filing and cleaning the seat tube cluster, making sure it all looks smooth and organic. I’m glad i did the triple triangle, it’s helped the internal cabling in places and i might do it again for certain projects and if you ask nicely enough With. Your. Wallet!

also put in the seat and chain stay bridges, cleaned up the drop out junction and put a few bottle cage mount bits on the fork so that i can attach a front rack when i get round to making one.

Tomorrow, the rack, a final file and polish and on with the first head badge.

mainly just measuring, mitring, re measuring and re mitring the seat stays. I also put in the internal routing for the brake and the gear cable. The seat stays are taking so much longer than normal because there’s quite a bit going on, i’ve had to make sure that the point where the rack connects to the frame leaves enough room for the arms of a V brake and also to make sure that where the gear cable leaves the right hand stay isn’t scuppered by the vertical strut of the rack. Rented a tube bender and spent all night drawing and laying things out on the kitchen floor. its agonisingly close now!

also been working out where to get this thing painted, Bob Jackson quoted me a month and i know they will do a decent job - but, a month! found a few other places but the seems to be car body shops and the like and im not to sure how it will come out. Got head badges sorted as well, satin finish stainless steel, they should be done on friday apparently!

The chain stays are on and hard part has started. The seat stays are mitred but before they go on i need to draft out the rack and work out where the cable routing is going to go. Mitreing the seat stays was tricky, doing the first one was quite fun, but making sure the second one was exactly the same involved countless tooing and froing to check i hadnt over cut it. all done now though and its just the gear cable routing left on the main triangle to do and then it all just depends on the rack.

Didn’t get the gear cable done, but i did do one of the triple triangle seat stays which was good fun. a bit un nerving filing into the side of the seat stay but its a good tight mitre now (tighter than the picture!) which is nice….

The fork is done as well, once again went smoother than i was expecting. i thought dynamo routing might skew it a bit but it was fine. The last picture shows the dynamo routing through the fork crown and into the steerer tube. That was pretty difficult because of the difference in tube thickness, but i remembered i had some solder with a lower melting point so that did the trick.

i wont show you the fork in the jig because i’ve put up loads of them. i’m sure you know the deal. but i’ll get a picture of the finished fork when its all cleaned up. 

also, someone find me a new word to use other than ‘but’ - thanks

front triangle done, got the cable routing set in place. Tomorrow it’ll be gear cable routing, pressing on with the fork and whitbys seat stays. Keep eyes peeled!