metal circus

howdy all! getting allot done with the freezing weather and all. got some weird lighting shots of john's bike all finished. he's still trying to come up with a color choice......it's true. and, got a great start on cosmic ray's bike. ray authors the cartographically famous trail guide: "fat tire tales and trails" give it a gander if you are ever down this way. it's a pretty damn traditional touring rig, and it will accept anything 700c up to 2.1". rim brakes, rack mounts, the whole enchilada. it's cool to get to step outside the standard {for me} building envelope, but i've build a quite a number of traditional rigs like this, and really dig them. one of his design requests {more of an insistence, actually} was that i dig up as much tange prestige i could for this build. a tall request, considering that it hasn't been imported from japan since the mid 90's. sooooo, ended up with a prestige headtube, toptube and downtube, dedacciai chainstays, and a columbus seattube, and i'm gonna bend up some of my special sauce seatstays, of course. also, busted out some of llewellen's stainless steel socket dropouts. beautiful units with two nice, thick cast rack/fender mounts. got those babies all the way from australia. ray led cycle tours throughout europe for many years, and knew what he wanted: a cross between his 82' ritchey and his carbon allez! he was here and supervised the entire design process. i bet it rides niiiice. also, twisted up some new hoops for good 'ole buddy bony salmonella. i still build allot of wheels for folks all over the nation, and not just for bike builds. i've been building wheels for 22 years {!} and often get calls along the lines of: "hey, the wheels you built me seven years ago finally wore through the side walls. will you build me some more? they have never been trued ." you bet! if you need some custom hoops, just let me know. great prices. handbuilt quality. dt swiss, sun, velocity, mavic, salsa, wtb, chris king, phil wood, white industries, shimano, hope, hadley, whatever you want, as long as it's strung with dt swiss spokes. gotta go get busy on ray's bike once i get my coffee level adequate....steve.