finally got out to get some sun.

trail conditions were quite tacky from all the rain & snow we got last week.

had some friends along - Yael, Kristina and Denise.

a wee baby Arizona cypress tree.

cruising through the dry creek valley, great views all around.

i really love the shady cypress groves along the arroyo.

Kristina giving me a spot on a dicey edge. she's a firefighter, so she probably figured it was more efficient to spot me then evac me.......

a BIG cypress tree.

thanks for coming out, gang! it's fun to hang with friends & i'm sure Denise appreciated the conversation! i don't see many pics of me next to people - man, three years of arm power is getting my upper body pretty thick. i guess three and four hour arm workouts mixed with filing and getting around almost entirely with your arms will do that!

so you want to be a framebuilder, huh?

if so, i hope you have the perseverance and integrity to not lose your shit and to keep at it when you are starting on your fourth pair of seat stays FOR THE SAME BIKE just because they are not perfect. i'm six years and many bikes into it and there are still day{S} like this..........i'm gonna finally stop and have breakfast {at 2pm} because i'm spun out on coffee and frustrated trying to get these teeny weeny little stays juuuusttt right. then, i'm going to go out and try to pretend that this morning never happened. other then that, the bike is going great! fair warning, wish me luck, i'm going back out, steve.

@&#^%*@!!!!!

checking tire clearances on mary's bike.

all jigged up. i've actually made a few bikes this size, and one a few inches smaller.

i sold my original frame and fork jig back to jim stein! he said that when i bought it he wouldn't sell it to anyone else {i 1st. met jim when i was about 17 or 18} and that if i ever sold them it had to be back to him. this design is about as "old school" as they come, and there is a rear triangle fixture, too. if you have one of the first 30-something coconinos, it was built on this.

a curvaceous shot......marie, your bike & wheels are going out today.

final random shot.......i have a whole drawer of vintage t-shirts that i don't wear and are stored for posterity - just a couple gems off the top!



boy, things are just not progressing at the moment.......a short list of SNAFUs currently: sally the dog had to get all sewn up & had a gross external drain tube, but she is OK and just as chipper, i busted one of my molars and got to get it all ground down for a crown yesterday - didn't get any work done, just watched "the universe" marathon on discovery with a super headache {how about those double black holes, huh?}, i still haven't received my new regulators so i'm dead-ended for the moment on marie's bike, i made her first set of seatstays too short and had to recycle bin them........but, other then that i guess everything is OK.........just gonna do errands today before the holidaze, check out some fellow humans down town and hang out with denise. thanks for stopping by, happy holidaze, steve.

some more build shots of mary's bike, some customer bikes out having fun,and some old momentos.....

checking to make sure the seattube, the "spine" of the bike is straight in relation to the bottom bracket shell. to make a straight frame it's good to start out that way.

completed seattube assembly - mitered, tacked, sleeve installed, ventholes drilled for the toptube, down tube and bottom bracket shell and the seatube pinch slot and stress relief hole all good to go!

chainstay trimmed and slotted at an angle with a hacksaw & a warding file - five minutes, with a goodly amount of practice.

stays brazed in the anvil fixture. i have it clamped in a rotating machinist's vise so i can belly up to it and rotate it to me.

finished untouched silver braze straight outta the dunktank. i MAY get this baby brazed or very close to it tomorrow.........

deanne's bike out in the woods. she's diggin' it!

annie's bike on a road trip out east.

ditto here!

some old mementos.........i actually used to be pretty fast! those are both sub-9 hour buckles - one was an 8:13 - 13th overall! that's as fast as i've ever ridden 100 miles.

this one was MUCH harder - 3rd place single speed at the cascade creampuff 100 - 18,000 feet of climbing in 100 miles off road, over 1/2 singletrack - 9th pace OVERALL. over my seven CCP100's i also got a 10th, 11th, 13th and 14th........

been biking long enough to remember these? they were sweeeet.......... steve.

marie's bike!! not much to add, the pictures say it all......

first steps: design and tubing prep - just getting started

first: tubing selected for the design. i don't go into design here, there's just too many variables and each builder has their "secret sauce".

checking the raw lengths to see how much material i will just hack off and throw in the recycling bin before i even start.

here i have marked where to cut & what gets tossed.

into a bucket of hot, soapy water. i'll clean the tubes inside & out and inspect for creases, dents, bad seams, anything at all that may make the tube a reject before it gets any farther along in the building process.

cut to raw length & squeaky clean! here you can see the different lengths of the down tube, top tube and seat tube in descending order. yes, it is going to be rather petite.

marking the bowing in the tubing......

and then the actual butt lengths. the chart is for pure theory, the actual butting may vary, so you gotta measure!

all the vent holes are drilled in the seat tube sleeve, the bottom bracket shell, and the head tube, which has also been faced. the other marks are "witness marks", showing where the intersecting tubes will go.

sorry i've been missing - as you will see, i've been slacking.........

we spent three days at lee's ferry............

cripple down! no - i'm OK! just relaxing.........

fishing was slooooow..........only TWO fish!

the sun was so low that one day we only got an hour and forty minutes of sun the whole day!

look! we had a camp roadrunner! he was super inquisitive and hung out with us for a while. what a cool bird. one of my favourites.

went for a unicycle/hand cycle ride with eugene! cool fun! he drops me uphill but i can get him on the downhill..........

pedaling uphill in snow is HARD.

railing it down upper brookbank.

euge is pretty damn amazing on his uni!

tracy's road bike is all done & boy, it's sweet.

detail shot of the headtube with euge in the background.............shiny!

and lastly, m. hoover's bike all layed out.


WHEW!! that's it for now. more soon, steve.

late night build on deanne's bike/cool shots from customers.

all done! looks like a sweet, flickable ride! ral #1000, "banana"

kickin' it with deanne on a late night build showing her how all the stuff on her cool new bike works.

keenan on his way to becoming the youngest finisher ever of bend's big fat tour! check it out: http://bendsbigfattour.com/rides/ keenan finished the long options every day! quite the accomplishment at 14! he's the closest thing i have to a "sponsored rider!"

simon z's rig at a recent 12-hour race. also "banana" great color!

quite the stack! denise's bike and sam & christie's bikes, both dating from 2004 & still clocking the miles!

thanks for the action shots, folks! keep em' coming, steve.