Doodling

I've been working most weeks in the middle of nowhere, spending the evening in a little room with no TV, no sealed roads to ride on, no torch...

So I've taken to drawing bikes instead of riding them. Here's a couple of my more lighthearted drawings. Firstly, mooching along on the flat being the lazy cyclist. In my twenties I had a permanently sunburned midriff from spending too much time on the bike in crop tops. What can I say, it was the nineties:

And secondly, descending. Those who ride with me generally claim I descend like a maniac. I figure there's no point making the climb if you're not going to give it your all on the way down too:

The observant will note I don't much care for helmets, and that I'm a fan of downtube shifters. The observant would be correct.

Little fish has moved!

We've just moved house, and no little across-town move, either. We've gone from Sydney to Geraldton - on opposite sides of the country. The reason for this is that my job has moved to Geraldton, working on a new radiotelescope there. I actually get paid to work on radiotelescopes - yes, be jealous. Not only do they pay me a good wage, they also kindly offered to pay for the move, so all of our belongings were packed up and put into a shipping container - minus a few select bits.

First is my LPG bottle, oxygen cylinder and fire extinguisher. The removalists won't take gas canisters, so none of them made the cut. Same with much of my paint (no flammables and no aerosols). Oh well.

So the neat thing about Geraldton is that, unlike Sydney, housing is actually pretty affordable (sure, house prices have doubled there in the last few years, but that's starting from a really low base). So we're likely to end up in a nice little place on a couple of acres quite soon, complete with chooks, a dog to keep them in line, and (this is the really cool bit) a shed.

Yeah, I'm gonna have my own shed. How cool is that. Somewhere where I can set up the frame building stuff permanently, and tool up properly. With a proper spray booth, and a proper pedestal mounted vise, and grinder, and maybe even my own lathe and mill.

In the meantime, we'll spend a year or so in a comfy rental place while we find the perfect shed house.

We started our trip by buying up big on camping gear. I camp pretty regularly, but it's cut-down toothbrush camping. My tiny tent isn't really suited to both Perry and me. Perry isn't a camper, so I went with pretty big car-camping kit. A tent we can stand up in, big thick sleeping mats. Even a fold-up table.

I bought a rack to put some of the stuff on the roof, along with my favorite bicycle, and we filled the car with stuff, including our fish in two 20 litre buckets.

Here's a photo of the car on our very first day, packed to the gunnels and ready to go:

I'm the only driver in the family, so we took it pretty easy on our trip, with heaps of breaks and relatively short days. The first day was a quite short one, on account of supervising removalists in the morning, from Sydney to Canberra, where we hooked up with family. Next day we drove across to Hay, in south-west NSW. We stayed in a little caravan park in Hay, but in a pre-booked cabin. It was rather nice.

So on day three we did the drive across to Adelaide, where we stayed for two nights, catching up with one of Perry's friends and looking around the city. Our accommodation in Adelaide was pretty ritzy - a cabin with its own bathroom and everything, and just a stone's throw from the beach to boot.

Day five had us drive to Ceduna, where we pitched our tent for the very first time at a caravan park. Perry did pretty well on his first night of "doing it rough", but didn't like sleeping in a sleeping bag (my bags are down, and really too hot and snug for the conditions). I offered some advice for getting more comfy, by opening up his bag and using it as a blanket. Me, I like to be snug. Of course we had to take a photo at Kimba - allegedly half way across.

Day six was the Nullarbor. A distance of some 500km and stopping in Eucla, a few kilometres into WA. Unfortunately there aren't really any other options - the next town (Norseman) is a further 700km. The drive was almost surreal. The towns get further and further apart, and there is just nothing in between. We stopped a couple of times to look out over the great Australian bight. They need a picture of the water off the bight for the dictionary entry of 'azure'.

So at Eucla, we paid for a campsite and went to pitch our tent. turns out the ground is compacted gravel, the consistency of concrete. After bending a peg we gave up and paid for the world's most dire room. Put it this way, I slept in my sleeping bag, for fear of bedbugs in the bed. And the shower only worked once I put a $1 coin in, after which it cut out while I still had conditioner in my hair. Aargh! Oh, and diesel here is 50c/litre more expensive than in Ceduna.

We wandered out to look at Eucla's one tourist attraction - the ruins of a building down near the shore. Apparently it used to be a telegraph station, but shifting sand dunes half buried it so they moved the town a couple of kilometers further inland as a result. Very post-apocalyptic.

Oh well, it was character building. It made us rethink the rest of the journey though. We were originally going to stop in Norseman (another town with a dodgy reputation) and then head to Perth via Kalgoorlie, but instead drove straight through to Esperance, to get out of the desert.

Esperance was just divine. So much so that we stayed there a couple of days to recalibrate. Here's Perry reading the paper post-dead-tree, having adapted very well to living in a tent:

Our final stop before Geraldton was in Bunbury, where Apple maps lied to us about the location of the caravan park :)

So now we're in our lovely new home, with plenty of space for all our stuff, great 4G internet reception (who needs a fixed phone with a $300 connection fee when you get 9mbps on 4g). We've even got ducted airconditioning and really good insulation to get us through the hot Geraldton summers. And as a bonus, the beach is just 150m away.

Alas my garage is not properly unpacked yet - I really need to buy some shelving and cupboards to organise all my stuff. It'll be a little while before I'm back to building frames.

Paypal and ebay (or why I'm currently chewing my own leg off)

Apparently I’m a money launderer. Or a thief. Or an ebay scammer. Paypal aren’t sure which, but as long as they’re able to keep my money they’re happy to run through the list.

It all started because we're moving house. Yay for us! Even better, we're moving due to a shiny new job I got to Geraldton WA - clear across the other side of the country to a place where we can actually (gasp) afford to buy a house. What's that you say? A member of gen-X owning property? Yes! Cop that, boomers!

Anyway, that's not what I'm ranting about. Before the move proper (which is even paid for by my employer - how good is that?), I thought I'd clear some of the clutter around the house. I made a little pile; of motorcycle parts, camera bits, and even a bed from our spare room, took photos, and chucked the lot on ebay. Given that it's all basically junk that would have gone to the tip otherwise (except for the bed, which had some value) I stuck $0.99 start prices on everything to make sure it, well, actually sold.

Thirteen items in all. Good stuff. Ebay had helpfully pre-filled many of the fields in for the sales listing for me, making the job of putting stuff on easier. A couple of days later, everything was listed.

Only there was one small, teeny problem, which I didn't notice until people started paying for the stuff. It had somehow picked up my work email address for the paypal section. Annoying. Oh well, it's only the first item of thirteen. I can just fix the other twelve up, and then worry about the first one later.

Nope. It'll let me revise all sorts of things on the listings, but refuses to let me correct the paypal email address. After some thought, I figured I'd just go with the flow and create a new paypal account using the correct email address, then once the debacle is done with, kill it off. After some frustration while it refuses to link my bank account to the new paypal (apparently it's already linked to my normal paypal account - who'd have thought!), I manage to get it going.

So now the ebay annoyances start. I'd put local pickup on things, because it always costs a small fortune to post stuff, and it's a pain trying to find boxes and packaging. Not to mention that some of it is bloody heavy (like the bed and my 9kg motorcycle forks). Those I put up for strictly local pickup, and made sure that the listing said that, both in the listing itself and in the postage options.

Sure enough, someone from Melbourne buys the forks anyway, and sends me a request for an invoice, with a little note on it that says "I checked on the Australia post website, and it says they're acceptable". Not to worry, thinks I, I'll just cancel the transaction and offer to the second bidder (with a discount).

Nuh uh! Ebay won't let me do that without permission from the buyer. He of course declines the cancel request, and I'm left having to find packaging for the bloody forks, pack them, and lug them down to the post office. Not only that, I'd also offered them to the second bidder, and now get to look like an idiot. I put an extra $10 handling charge on the invoice for our hero in Melbourne just to let him know I wasn't happy.

Okay, so after a couple of days everything's packed up and shipped (only the bed went to a local pickup, and they even paid with paypal). At the cost of $128. This is funded out of my pocket, because every single buyer paid with paypal. My paypal balance says $1040, which is pretty cool.

So then the real fun starts. I eye a towbar for the car on ebay - local pickup (he's in Sydney, I'm in Sydney, all is good). It'd be a useful thing to have, I could even get a bike trailer and tow my motorbike with my car. I buy it for the offered $750, and pay with paypal. It's kosher, the buyer of my bed did the same. Paypal however don't like this. They're the taker of money, not the provider. They freeze my account and send me a nasty email.

So now, after reading through copious quantities of guff, where they say there's a problem but don't say what it is, I think they might want invoices. For the crap around my house. Do you have invoices for the crap around your house? Or is it because I'm an ebay scammer (but apparently all the twits sending me messages trying to get me to end auctions and sell stuff to them for a pittance aren't). Or was it money laundering?

More likely they're just offended that I might try to actually make use of the money in my account, which I had mistakenly thought might, well, be my money.

So now I've graciously mailed off a pile of my stuff to people all around the world, at a cost of some $128 and maybe five hours work. And what do I have to show for it? Nothing. Thanks guys! Next time I'll just take it to the tip. The tip fees can't possibly be that bad.

And for the poor guy who thinks I've bought his towbar? All I can do is apologise.

Local bicycle users group article on Keith's frame

Keith did a writeup on his frame, which made the front page of the Bikenorth (my local cycling club) newsletter.

Have a look:

http://www.bikenorth.org.au/archives/chainmail/201112/

A brass headbadge

Here's a headbadge I knocked up from brass for my next frame.

The process was surprisingly simple. I started with an offcut of 1.6mm brass sheet. I polished the front surface with brasso, then cleaned it thoroughly and coated it in a thin layer of etch resist. I overlaid the black part of the little fish logo printed on clear transparency paper, and exposed the resist with ultraviolet light. Then I developed the resist to remove the unwanted stuff, put some tape across the back to protect the back, and bunged the whole thing in an etchant tank for about 30 minutes.

This setup is usually used to make circuit boards, and etch times are usually about 3-4 minutes.

Once I pulled it out of the etchant and washed the resist off, I had this:



I then rolled it to fit a headtube, cut it out, gave it a quick polish, and hey presto. The etching is remarkably deep. I confess I'm surprised at how well it turned out. It was done as a quick experiment during lunch, and I expected all the lettering to disappear.



All that remains is soldering it to the headtube and infilling the etched areas with colour.

A better dropout fixture

Up until now my jig has made use of a piece of threaded 10mm rod as the "axle" supporting the dropouts. This has been okay, but has been the most annoying thing about the jig.

So I figured I'd improve it. I noticed Alex Meade was selling dummy axles at quite reasonable prices, so figured I'd buy a couple and adapt them to my jig.

First thing I did was to turn up a sleeve to slide over the dummy axle. This is simply a piece of brass tube 50mm long, turned 19.05mm on the inside and 25mm on the outside. I made sure it was a nice accurate slip fit over Alex's axle. I used brass because it doesn't rust, is easy to work with, and is easy to soft solder.

Then I drilled and tapped a hole for an M6 grubscrew in the middle. Now the dummy axle can be held accurately in my brass tube.

I made a pair of flange pieces with 25mm holes in the middle, and 9mm holes to suit my 8020 extrusion. I used 3mm copper sheet because there was some in the scrap bin. Brass would have been fine here as well.

Then I jigged one flange piece on the axle, so it was accurately perpendicular, and soft soldered the two together. This is much like brazing, except that you use lead/tin filler and soft-solder flux. The solder melts at 180 degrees, so the pieces don't distort. Be careful to orient the tube on the flange to ensure the grub screw hole is accessible once it's all assembled.

Finally I bored a 26mm hole through the 8020 extrusion where the original 10mm hole was, and slipped the tube through. I then put the other flange on the other side of the extrusion to provide a bit more support.

If you have a thumping big bit of brass to hand, you could turn flange and tube out of one piece. I didn't, so made it out of what was kicking around.

A basic 8020 spine jig

One of the most common emails I get is "have you got drawings or plans for your jig?"

I haven't up until now, or at least not decent ones, as the jig I'm using just sort of happened, based on a series of discussions and trial-and-error between myself and a friend.

It's a fairly simple jig - it's nowhere near as user friendly as commercial ones, because there's no easy way to set angles and lengths in it. You cannot use it to design or lay out your frame. You must design the frame in CAD or similar first, then miter the tubes and set up the jig to fit the mitered tubes. Indeed pretty-much all it does do is hold the seat tube, head tube, and dropouts in plane while they're being pinned or tacked. This however is all you need to build a straight frame.

That said, it does so for not a lot of cost and not a lot of machining. There is still some machining required - you'll have to have access to a lathe, and a pedestal drill is pretty-much mandatory.

So the following picture shows the overall arrangement. Key to the design is a spine constructed from 120mm x 40mm 8020 extrusion. It's made in two pieces, with the bit at the back going down the center of the frame axis, and then the front section bolted to the side, so it's offset by 40mm.



Vertical pieces are attached to the spine for the head tube and seat tube, using simple angle brackets, which are standard 8020 parts. The verticals don't need to be at 90 degrees to the spine - they can rotate to pretty-much any angle you want, to accommodate whatever head and seat tube angle your heart desires. Onto these are mounted the bits that actually hold the frame; angle brackets and cones for the top of the seat tube and either end of the head tube, and a machined block upon which the bottom bracket fits.

The dropouts are held in place by a simple piece of 10mm threaded rod through the tail end of the spine.

So here's the parts you'll need from 8020. The distributor near us was happy to cut the extrusion accurately to length for a nominal fee. Note that it's all in metric. If you really desperately must use American fasteners etc., then you're going to have to work out how to do that yourself:

• Spine rear piece: 360mm length of 8020 40-4012 profile extrusion.
  
• Spine front piece: 860mm length of 8020 40-4012 profile extrusion.
  
• Seat tube vertical: 780mm length of 8020 40-4080 profile extrusion.
  
• Head tube vertical: 600mm length of 8020 40-4080 profile extrusion.
  
• Small angle brackets: 4 x 40-4302 two hole 40 series inside corner brackets.
  
• Large angle brackets: 3 x 40-4311 six hole center 40 series inside corner bracket.
  
• T-nuts: 24 x 40-1981 economy offset t-nuts.
  

And stuff from any old hardware store:

• Bolts for angle brackets: 20 x M8x1.25, 15mm bolts. Button headed capscrews are ideal. I bought hex headed bolts and have been complaining ever since.
  
• Bolts for BB mounting block and head tube cones: M8x1.25, 25mm capscrews.
  
• Dummy axle: 160mm length of M10 threaded rod, with six M10 nuts.
  
• Bolt for seat post cone: M10 x 80mm bolt, with M10 nut. I actually used a length of M10 threaded rod here, with two nuts.
  
• Bolts for holding spine together: 4 x M10 x 90mm bolts, with 4 x M10 nuts.
  

Here's the drilling needed for the spine:



Once that's done, just bolt the two pieces together using M10 bolts and nuts.

Here's details of the cones and BB support:



Make these pieces from mild steel. Note that two head tube cones are needed. These are sized for 31.75mm head tubes. If you're going to use other sizes, scale them proportionately or else make a cone that works with either.

The headtube cones are just bolted to the large angle pieces using M8 cap head screws. The seat tube cone is mounted using an M10 bolt, so you'll need to open the hole in the angle piece out to 10mm.

In use I find the best way to set up the jig is by laying it horizontally, loosening off the bolts holding the small angle pieces in, then sliding the verticals around to the right spot. Finally I use G clamps to pull the verticals hard up against the spine before doing up the bolts in the angle pieces - this way the verticals are held snug against the spine. Always measure the angles of the frame itself, not the jig.

Getting the vertical pieces set up just so can be a bit of a pain, but it beats the hell out of a piece of flat bar.

At the moment the dropout supports are simply a piece of 10mm threaded rod with some nuts on it. This is reasonably accurate, but I plan on making a cheek piece that I can use to bolt a proper dummy axle on with.

Must see ad parody.

Here's a distillation of, well, every ad on telly.

Et Voila (again)

I figured this frame was worth the effort of a decent photoshoot, so set up a background inside when the light was good (one of these days I'm going to buy some decent studio lights). Anyway, here's some finished photos of Keith's frame and forks.

Please do click on the pictures - each one brings up a huge version where you can study the detail.

Firstly an overall shot of the right side, showing the general decal layout and that gorgeous pearl blue paint.



An overall shot of the front, showing the headtube logo. The logo features our hero being chased by a bigger fish. Little fish have to swim fast, lest they be eaten by the big fish.



The head tube and fork crown, with stainless polished head lugs. The stainless is quite annoying to photograph well, as it catches all manner of reflections.



Another photo of the head lugs and crown, showing the cutout in the lower one, as well as the ergo adjusters. I'm very happy with the way the lug masking worked out.



More detail of that gorgeous lower headlug. I confess this is my favourite picture. I could look at it all day.



Moving now to the seatlug, showing the view from the back including the brake bridge.



A side shot of the seat lug, showing the seat stay attachment and a name decal for Keith. It's a bit thicker than I'd have liked ideally. Next time I think I'll organise a spray mask and paint it on with my airbrush.

I just love the way the stays worked out. Thanks to Anderson custom bikes for the inspiration.



The ultra sexy Sachs front derailleur hanger and bottom bracket.



And more detail of the rear of the bottom bracket, showing the scalloped chainstay bridge. The paint is just so blue.



Finally a shot of the rear dropouts, in nice sensible stainless, so the skewers don't bite into paint.

This frame has surpassed all my expectations. It came together really well. Keith is over the moon. I was concerned that all the stainless would look over the top, so I deliberately kept the cutouts and carving to a minimum. Note also that some of my more tongue in cheek decals (the "handmade in straya" and "keepum fingers" ones) didn't make it. Again, I was conscious of adding too much detail. I think in other colours it could look terrible, but the blue just sets off the stainless perfectly.

Each of my frames has been a little better than the last, but I really don't know how I'm going to better this one, to be frank.

Clearcoating

So after a day to let the colour coats set up nice and hard, I added the decals, masked the stainless bits again (taking care not to mask all the way to the edge of the lug - the clear on the edges gets removed with a scalpel when I unmask after clearing), then set the frame up in the booth again for clearcoating.



This is the frame after the initial two coats. I put on a really light misting coat first, then wait about 10 minutes for it to start to set up, then put on a full-gloss coat. Reducing with about 20% reducer ensures that I get a gloss coat without excessive buildup - it also makes the paint flow nicely with my 0.5mm nozzle airbrush, which is really a little small for this task - I resemble a whirling dervish when putting the gloss coats on.



I then left it to sit for a couple of hours, mixed up more clear (same 20% reducer) and did another two coats. In this case the first coat was almost glossing, then a wait of 10 minutes, then a full gloss second coat. By doing it like this I get gloss faster on the second coat, so there's much less chance of overspray dulling the finish.



Here's some detail of the masking - note I only mask up to a millimetre or two from the lug edge. A quick wipe with the scalpel once the paint has set up and I've removed the masking gives me a much better lug line than I could get with the masking tape alone. An exception is the top of the seat stays. I masked right up to the colour coat edge here as the geometry of the lug doesn't guide my scalpel.



Here's our hero, courtesy of the decal printing services of Cyclomondo. No, I don't make my own decals any more.



The little fish downtube logo, in a nice white and red. Red and Blue goes together terribly well.



The Columbus Spirit decal. I like Spirit for lugs. It's really nice tubing to work with. I think I'll default to this stuff in future unless there's a compelling reason to choose something different.

If you look closely at the rear brake cable port, you can see how the lug definition is maintained. This is after twelve coats of paint; 1 primer, three base coat, 4 colour coats, and 4 clear coats. The trick is to make each coat super thin.



The fork.



And finally the stem, taken outside to show how it looks in sunlight, rather than the fluorescent light of my booth.