Presta Valve Dice

This is a golden oldie. About a billion years ago, I’d make special valve caps for presta valves from small dice, either six or 10 sided. Dice on tire valves is an old hot rod trick. It then got adopted by the BMX kids. It never quite made it from Vg8 to Vg5,2 Shrader threads. … Read more

Calvin Norstad and the new Paragon

It was time to interview Calvin Norstad. This January, Calvin took over from Mark (Calvin’s father) in running the whole show at Paragon Machine Works. This is some of the biggest news effecting custom bicycle framebuilding in a long time. One of the most influential and important companies has a new captain. This is important. … Read more

Accountability Mechanisms

I have a concept what I call ‘accountability mechanisms’. It’s not too different from what others talk about. These are tools that keep me working hard and in good ways without having to ‘pay’ someone to do that. An extrinsic motivator; a teacher, trainer, or editor, would (hopefully) do the same thing but those come … Read more

Samantha – Foundation

Major benchmark for the Samantha frame fixture. The plates are mounted and linear motion is proven. The slop in the movement is down below 0.001″. I’m stunned it was that good without any calibration. I did do a calibration for the parallelism and height of the plates and things are looking great. There’s more than … Read more

More Samantha Fixture Updating

As promised, I made a new video explaining some of the improvements to the Samantha Frame Fixture design. Not too much to write that isn’t in the video. Lots of simplification. Better in many ways.

The FN M1900

This is a fun little toy. So slim and delicate. It’s an FN M1900. This would have been produced between 1900 and 1911. One of the first slide pistols and the intro for the 32 ACP round. (7.65×17mm Browning SR). It was given to a friend of mine. Her father had gotten it from her … Read more

Sticky Pedals

I’ve been working with the HT AE05 pedals lately. I just upgraded the pins. Now I’m looking at the spin. Out of the box, these pedals are very bound up. They have an insane amount of resistance to them. I wanted to figure out how to improve that. These are simple bushing pedals with a … Read more

Downgrading the shifter

I’ve made it clear that I’m not a fan of the new SRAM Transmission system. I’ve found that it shifts very poorly. It’s painfully slow. The shifter ergonomics are terrible. There’s no clearance under the new stealth master cylinder reservoirs for a better clamp. And the shifter pod perch is very weak. That’s a lot … Read more

Finders Keepers

finders, keepers; losers, weepers I have a several general rules that I follow when I’m riding trail. One of them (and the topic today) is that I stop to pick up any small parts that I see on the ground. Even if they are fairly beat or weathered. I do that. Why? The logic is … Read more

HT AE05 Pins

I said in the last post that I was going to be making some nicer pins for my new HT AE05 pedals. These were made from stainless steel M4x8 set screws. A basic 4mm x 34.7 degree taper. Sets up for a nice 1.5mm tip. The performance gain here is that it is now a … Read more

All-Road Upgrades

Yesterday, I made a couple of changes to my all-road bike, the 2023 PVD M2-F2. I figure that both of them were worthy of comment as this is always a work in progress. The all-road platform is fairly exciting for me to work with. The ‘answer’ to the puzzle is relatively undefined in the bike … Read more

Trannies

Back on November 2, 2023, Transition bikes dropped their new hardtail bike, the TransAM. This is a bike carrying a name that they’ve used for hardtail models many times in the past. While I try to keep up with comments on some of the more interesting products that come onto the market, I just didn’t … Read more

Numerical Suspension Modeling

I’m probably known best these days for my hardtail mountain and all-road bikes. What some may not know is that I have a long history riding and tuning suspension bikes and sport motorcycle. I’ve had big enduro bikes and downhill bikes. I’ve changed shims, fluid, and springs to alter the performance of these systems. This … Read more

The Fixturable Sine Bar

This is a project that I had been working on last year. It’s a fixturable sine bar for use on fixturable fabrication tables. Sadly, I got distracted before finishing it but it might be at some point. For that reason, I delayed posting on it until now. With a good design and an hour at … Read more

A Low Profile Table Clamp

There’s a funny thing in the world of fixturing. Most of the pin holes on the smaller side of the range for metalworking rasters are 5/8″ or 16mm. In the wood working world, they use 3/4″. This is frustrating as there are some nice products that would work fine for some light duty work. So, … Read more

Samantha Bicycle Fork Fixture

Last week I posted here about the new bicycle frame fixture (Samantha) that I’ve been designing and am hoping to produce. I mentioned that I was wanting to produce a fork fixture that fits in with the rest of the ecosystem. Well, in the interest of economy and ensuring that any extended considerations of the … Read more

G6

The skate truck project continues to move forward in the background of the other big projects and developments. Nothing ever stops. Movement is important. Initial designs for the G6 started almost as the G5 trucks got finished. I had a lot of ideas that I wanted to get ‘on paper’ when I was setting them … Read more

Samantha Bicycle Frame Fixture

Thanks to our evolutionary push to modern bike design, back in mid-2020 I brought the PVD Cyberdyne bicycle frame fixture into the world. Since, I produced designs for the SKYNET (2021) and WOPR (2022) frame fixtures. Now, in 2023, we have the big update. Samantha !! The first 3 fixture designs were each different enough … Read more

The Adam Prosise Interview

I can’t remember exactly when Adam Prosise first showed up on my radar. It was maybe 4 or 5 years ago. I’m not sure. It was clear that he was something else. Adam really stands out in a crowd, literally and figuratively. He’s tall, 6’4″. He’s excited. He’s in the game. Chances are, you may … Read more

Frame Fixture Video Series

In my effort to make some video content, I decided to share some discussion on frame fixture design and development. I need to figure out a way to produce this kind of content without having to do too much (or any) editing. I figured some things out on this run of videos. I need to … Read more

The problem with flat mount

Last night I got a call from Ronen. He was finally getting around to mounting post mount calipers to his all-road bike. We have special conditions in Marin and the way Ronen and I use our all-road bikes push lightweight flat mount caliper brakes to their limit. Since I’m old and fat, I made the … Read more

BikeCAD Dimension Templates

I’ve decided to share a couple of my dimensioning templates for others to use. I’m thinking that this can move some others forward in an easy way. One of the more powerful components within BikeCAD Pro are the templates that a user is able to construct,  save, and share. Custom title blocks, notes, paint schemes, … Read more

The PVD Mount

It was time to take another look at a ‘problem’ long in the making. Holding crap to a bicycle frame. In the bicycle world, we’ve been using a system to hold water bottles to a bicycle developed sometime in the 1930’s(?). Little has been done since. A hole is drilled in the tube and threaded … Read more

T47 Shim Rings

These are hard to get items. I wish that that wasn’t the case because they are very important. Few discuss them. In this case, these are 50mm x 47mm x 1mm stainless steel shims for T47 bottom brackets. I need to get a few 0.5mm as I needed one today. Broad strokes still work and … Read more

PVD-RSD SRAM 8-Bolt Spider

Mountain bikes and all-road bikes are some of the harder bikes to design and build. Squeezing frame members around tires and drivetrain parts compound into many other problems to solve. One of the primary ways of alleviating this is to provide as much clearance on the outside of the bike as can be made. This … Read more

2023 PVD Northrop M2-F2 All-Road

Better. Stronger. Faster. I had two heroes when I was very young child. Mohamed Ali and Steve Austin. Ali was amazing. Steve ‘was’ an astronaut and more. It’s been quite a while since I’ve been able to put serious development time into the all-road platform. It was mid-2021 when the majority of the work on … Read more

Permeable Prints

I’ve discussed (2) some of the particularities in additive metal manufactured parts in my bikes and skateboard designs. It’s strange stuff. Since it isn’t (in a macro sense) a uniform homogeneous crystalline structure, it has some strange failure properties. It’s globular. I think of it like Styrofoam. It’s quite stiff and strong but when it … Read more

Plastic Printed Tube Blocks

In a way, one of the nice things about additive manufacturing is the long wait to get the parts. We don’t really like that wait but it’s a fact and hard to change. It takes between 20 and 30 days to get my parts from the printer from when I send off the models. Since … Read more

The tricky part about suspension gravel forks

This is some seriously nerdy stuff. Since I haven’t seen any folks discuss it so, once again, I have to. I’ve just sent files to the printer for a new all-road bike for me. After most of the real work had been done, I began fine tuning and evaluating my expectations and decisions. This last … Read more

2023 MADE Show – The Chris King Party

This was the MET Gala of the framebuilding world. I’ve been to a lot of parties at these shows, this was something else and the best yet. Everyone was there. The place was PACKED and HYPED! A few weeks before the show, the MADE organizers let us know about a couple of industry parties that … Read more