Bicycle

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

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

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.

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

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; 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

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

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

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

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

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

2024-10-25 update is HERE 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 … Read more

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 2023 MADE Bike Show in Portland, Oregon this past week was set to be quite an event. Announced about a year ahead, people seemed to be getting more and more amped as the date approached. In the weeks prior, the socials buzzed with hype and excitement. Everyone was getting ready and had something special … Read more

This is a quick one while I’m busy modeling the new bike and about to head up to Oregon to do some press at the MADE show. Back when we were assembling Windy’s Stumpjumper one year ago, there was one detail that I didn’t address. It was the Q172 Shimano FC-7100 SLX 170mm cranks. While … Read more

Colorado road trips are pretty great! Last year we rode at Trestle Bike Park and this year we got to ride Keystone Bike Park. I was stoked for this as most folks I talked to agreed that Keystone was the gnarlier of the two. That proved to be quite true, it’s an awesome hill. As … Read more

This is an exciting new tool for me and worth taking a look at if you build bike frames! I’ve been needing this tool since I started building my own bikes. I probably could have even used it before that. I finally got around to designing and producing it. I’m sure that many others will … Read more