forking around.

well, started frank's commuter/cross bike. it's a pretty special project, i got a kaisei tubeset from ron sutphin at UBI to build and provide feedback on. and, man, it is sweet! some of the nicest tubing i have ever seen. i'll get into the details more when i start the frame, but the tubeset is hand-picked, and includes every tube you need to build a frame, including the fork. so, here it is in process. it's a jugged fork with a 1" steertube, pretty traditional stuff. it's a 7* offset everest crown with straight legs and stainless steel dropouts from llewellen with cast-on double rack/fender eyelets. sweet stuff! the dropouts are fairly large inside diameter, meaning that you trim more material off of the small end then the big end of the stay, resulting in a pretty stiff fork, as i was checking alignment even with the fork just tacked, it felt really stiff. i know i've been slacking on build pics on the blog, but i've been really busy, getting one frame out to paint yesterday and already working on two more and a fork. i'm gonna do a full build sequence on the kaisei bike, so stay tuned. and for today's random shop pic, tubing! got a bunch of main triangle tubes in, there's tubes stuffed in the tubes too. that's allot of fresh shiny metal from true temper courtesy of henry james. also, on a "funny" note, check out this wreck i had a few nights ago: i went to wheelie over the doorstep and out the front door to go out to the shop where we were working on denise's cross bike, and tipped over backwards, getting slammed really hard. now, the outside of the door is a ramp leading to our driveway, which is really steep, and when i set up the wheelchair it just took off down the drive way out of sight, leaving me totally stranded. sucky! i had to yell for denise to go retrieve it........kinda funny, i guess..... steve.