It’s come to this, winter and the 32″ wheel. We knew it was going to happen. Once the rains start showing up in late October and early November it’s time to mount up our front fenders for NorCal mountain biking. I’ve discussed fenders several times in the past. Very few riders around here use a(n) … Read more
I was driving to work after stopping by Paragon Machine Works in Richmond. This was September 26th. I had gone there on my way to work to grab a few 110x12mm skewers and 2mm headset spacers. The folks at PMW were in the ‘warehouse’ having a meeting about product while I was dealing with Coco … Read more
Updated some parts 04/2026: https://www.peterverdone.com/basic-upgrades-for-samantha/ It’s time for a full update on the Samantha frame fixture. It’s wise to capture the state of the art periodically. Some of this will be a repeat of past posts but this is a single page, with all of the updates included, ready for sharing. The Samantha bicycle frame … Read more
The F4U Corsair! Whistling death has bent wings! I knew that this would be the namesake for this bike when designs began. The infamous Vought F4U Corsair fighter/bomber took a signature stance and design to allow for a super powerful 2,000 HP engine (the largest available engine at the time) and an insane 13-foot, 4-inch … Read more
God. This has been so long in the making. For some reason, it’s always been a PITA to mount MiNewt and Lumina lamps to handlebars. It always feels like a Gerry rig operation. It’s rarely solid. Now that I have a extruder printer and with the Headless Horseless ride coming up at the end of … Read more
Back in early March of 2020, Windy and I had begun to plan a bike tour in Europe. We were excited as, after several years together, we were finally going to do something that had been the focus of a bit of our talk. Windy has a bit of experience with bicycle touring. She’d ridden … Read more
This post is inspired by Adam Prosise. I had posted an image of the new AR handlebars to social media. Adam loves to give me shit. Generally, it’s all fair. I enjoy a worthy adversary and Adam is one of the best. Still, sometimes I worry that the real motivation is more sinister than ‘just … Read more
I work at a failed school. San Francisco State University. It’s a terrible place if you are looking for a quality education. A good student can find opportunities anywhere but any of our students that go on to succeed in life do that in spite of us, not because of us. These are strong words. … Read more
I’ve discussed my issue determining chain length for use with SRAM Transmission on my bikes in the past. Missing Links TLDR; my bikes have rear centers well below what SRAM allows so I can’t use the calculators online or otherwise. That study was entirely theoretical based on published information that wasn’t entirely understood. Was the … Read more
I figured that I would lead this post with an image of my old 2005 CBR600RR after I busted it up against a car on BoFax. Play rough, pay the cost. The forks needed to be swapped. Few people get to break a set of sport bike forks between triples and live to talk about … Read more
Welcome to a new golden age of the donk bike. Big wheels are just so much bigger! Donk the donk to the donk donk. In the mountain bike world, for years we used 26″ (559mm BSD) tires. At the latter stages of this, 2.35″ (60mm) tires were the norm placing the theoretical tire diameter around … Read more
I’ve continued to refine my SolidWorks modeling methodology and have been bringing older files into accordance with the new strategies. A new video explains more of this. I’d just completed the huge project of breaking down the CAD model for the dropouts so that I could build it back up a lot better. This doesn’t … Read more
It’s been about 7 years or so since attending my last Sea Otter. I’ve been to the event for many years, primarily to race. I’ve done the downhill, super-d and XC. Years of them. This was just a check-in. What is going on with mainstream bicycles and who was representing them. What’s new. What’s cool. … Read more
I believe that my blog has now added a new branch of discussion. While I’ve focused on bicycles, motorcycles, and skateboards for the past few decades, the last year has attracted a new topic; academia and studentry. I am, without a doubt, not an academic but I’ve been adjacent for two decades with my work … Read more
This is interesting. Running a 220V3P Bridgeport mill from a 120V1P power source. Are you interested?! Industrial spaces in the United States will have 480V 3-phase power running to them from the utility company. This might be stepped down (delta transformer) to 240V or 208V in 3-phases. In our homes (US) we will generally have … Read more
In the world that I live in, bikes start accumulating and in the SF Bay Area space is a premium. That starts creating problems. How can bikes be stored more compactly but also be made easier to access? There are a number of solutions out there but this one is for those interested in a … Read more
The student becomes the master. I tease Ronen with this Star Wars scene. He’s very much a powerful Jedi. The Interview: http://www.peterverdone.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2025-02-18-Ronen-Sarig_02.mp3 I met Ronen in about 2013. He was young then. I was younger then. In Fairfax Cyclery and in the parking lot we connected. This kid was different. His early fast time on … Read more
The second anniversary of the 2023 Millennium Falcon MTB is fast approaching. That’s an odd thing for me. I don’t like when one of my MTB bikes is used for more than a year and a half, let alone two years. I don’t want to be riding antiquated machinery built on lost ideas. I want … Read more
Last year, I constructed a pair of road plus (RD+) bikes for my wife and I. They’re great but they need two more things to finish them off, racks for touring and gearing options. Today, I discuss the latter. Specifically, the ability to use a double front ring option. It’s also time to finish a … Read more
I got caught up in a machine of my own making. A machine built to catch me exactly as it did. This is my Accountability Mechanism. It swallowed me whole, right after my previous post on handlebars. Accountability Mechanisms I thought that I had completed the work required on the handlebar component of the new … Read more
I’m wondering how much sense all of this is going to make for folks out there. I wanted to talk a bit about handlebars as they’ve taken over during the last week. New tooling and math. A new bike in production. It’s always wild in these moments. Bars, stems, and spacers There isn’t a lot … Read more
A detail of the Samantha Frame Fixture that has been nagging at me since the start are the pair of low profile dog clamps that I use to help hold the angle beams in place. These are redundant and are there to help the clamp at the base of the beam. It would be a … Read more
There are a few options for holding workpieces and tooling down to fixturing weld tables. I’m going to skip the most common types. Since I’m trying to build out precise tooling in this ecosystem, there a few ways of doing this that I’ve realized that solve in quite a few scenarios. The first step in … Read more
I’m just about to order prints for the new mountain bike frame, the T-65 (X-Wing) Starfighter. This is going to be a very elegant improvement on the 2023 Millennium Falcon frame and bars. Fine detail improvements but the big performance change is going from 67 to 68 degree head angle and the change from 175mm … Read more
Another chapter in the long saga of the Samantha frame fixture development. I was looking for the solution to holding tubes along an axis by the outside of the tube, similar to what we’d want with a seat tube. This is strangely a difficult problem if we want tooling that allows an easy change in … Read more
I love producing bicycle components. This is probably because I get to do it so infrequently these days. I used to do lot more. Most of what I’m doing and where my efforts are going right now has been in the frame and tooling space. In the past year, I’ve only done a few projects … Read more
I decided to ride the PVD Sopwith Camel (2019) on this years Headless Horseless ride in Fairfax. Similar to the Turkey ride, this is a mass mountain bike ride at night celebrating Halloween. It’s pretty awesome. There are several kegs of beer waiting at the top of Loma Alta. Everyone is lit up with jack-o-lanterns … Read more
I was contacted by a student in my department (Physics & Astronomy) the other day. To satisfy a course requirement, he needed to interview someone from the department to get advice on his path through school and beyond. He probably asked the wrong person. I asked him if I could record the interview for my … Read more
I was doing a repairs on my friend Justin’s Specialized Epic carbon fiber hardtail frame this week. Justin is fast and knows how to play rough. Somehow he broke the drive side chain stay in two places. It was hanging on by threads. Fuck it. Fix it up and get it back out for more … Read more
I’ve just completed another round of major upgrades to the Samantha frame fixture. I don’t intend on bringing development to an end as there keep being new territories to explore and old ones to remediate. It just gets better and better. Firstly, I took some time exploring parts that a re-design that would give me … Read more