Last Day Stress Relief

Well today marked my last day working for Roland Sands Design, I decided to part ways to follow my goal of finishing school. Everything went well and I thank Roland for the years of good times.

Time for project of the tonight - a good way to cool down after a week of work

Put on a 20mm front downhill hub and disc brake on my Schwinn Super Sport project bike

Check out the picts fool

I reduced the amount of rake of the stock Schwinn fork and lowered it about an inch. The fork was designed for a 27 inch wheel and tire so a 700c has a lot of room to breath.

Build time - 1.5 hours - no disc mounts yet

Here is the parts I made - Aluminum 20mm Axle, dropouts and the other goodies

Done - If it only was that easy

Stayer Track Racing

Here it is kids, take notes! Very crazy and dangerous sport. Check out the bikes with the forks backwards! It allows the rider to get closer to the motorcycle and changes the geometry of the bike's front end to add some trail without adding rake.
The bikes in the video are hitting 55 + mph

Expect something to roll out the shop door in the next few months related to a Stayer bike!!!

Roland Sands Design: Vintage Brushed Nickel Finish#links

Roland Sands Design: Vintage Brushed Nickel Finish#links


Ha ha love the video

a RAD monday!

I had to steal this one from Jeff @ Bikejerks Blog because it is a perfect monday video!

My life is easy !

Well after a quick visit to the Orange 20 bike shop in Hollywood the other day, I noticed Jim ( the owner ) working with a gentleman that was very small and was an amputee of both legs. The project of the day was to develop a bicycle that he could ride pedaling by hand; with all the bells and whistle of a full sized city bike.
After the bicycle was complete with the fresh powder coat of Yeti turquoise, the dude was ready to try it out for the first time. Seeing Jim work with him made me realize the ease I have for simple things and daily functions. The design needed some tweaking on of which training wheels would be added for the learning process of riding the bike.
The bike uses a Shimano Nexus 7 speed coaster brake hub on the front and has some trick parts around it, like the super nice Intense tires. 20 inch front wheel and 16 inch rear wheel.

The problem -

1. Design and build an adjustable stem/bottom bracket system with more adjustment and lighter weight then the existing one that was custom fabricated for the bike.
2. Reinforce the training wheels for an adult to ride, strong enough not to bend.

Check out the photos - 5 hours build time

Notes - I would love to build a project like this one, more as a concept project but adjust the geometry a ton and make it very close to a recumbent position with a normal bicycle seat. The rake and trail of the front end needs to be really far out there to slow down the response of the cranks wanting to turn the front of the bike as its being pedaled. I would also include a steering dampener to even further reduce the side to side sudden movements that may cause instability issues at higher speeds.

Dream Bicycle

Well I got it - one of my dream bicycles. I really didn't expect the bike,all the info and contacts to fall in my lap like it did the other day.

Here I am with my Perma Grin :)

very rare - 1939 fillet brazed Schwinn NEW WORLD track frame

This rare bike was welded by the same crew that did the Paramounts at Arnold Schwinn's Chicago factory. The factory on Chicago's Westside had a small section attached to it called " The Handbuilt Shop" this is the home of the Paramount and New World frames and forks. The bike only was built for 2 years and not many were made. This is a very special frame due to the dropouts and a few other features. The New World was a easier frame to build and cheaper then the Paramount because it was not a lugged frame and at the time there was still no efficient way to carve lugs on a production scale. There is a possibility that the frame was welded by the great Oscar Wastyn in the hand built shop.

Basically - I love this frame

Pipes of Steel - Wait thats Titanium

Here is your metal shop welding info for the day;

Welding Titanium and stainless applications requires surrounding the weld area with inert gas ( non flammable stable gas such as Argon, which is used the most often because it is very easy to control. ) both front and back of the weld area building a micro atmosphere.

When welding bicycles as an example; both the inside of the tube needs to be completely filled with the inert gas and then use of a large gas cup is needed on your tig torch as to cover the complete weld zone on the front side and allow no atmosphere air to enter the weld area. Here is a glass lens on a tig torch, this is the one I use for all my Titanium or stainless work as it covers a large area but doesn't block your view.
If atmosphere air enters the weld zone it will react with the molten metal and create impurities, depending on what kind of air hits the molten weld area it can cause things such as underling cracks cause by hydrogen or it can mess up the grain structure of the weld area causing a weak zone. The easy way to tell on titanium, how your weld turned out and the FAA approved way by aerospace testing procedures is by color ( this only applies to titanium ), any color other then a light gold color called Hay is considered contaminated and needs to be removed or redone.
Here is a picture of " Stainless Steel Sugaring " - This is a term from the aerospace industry. This will happen on just about any metal that is welded but it is very very critical that it is not present when welding stainless or titanium. If it is present well start cutting it out and starting over!



If you have a lot of work to do or it is very windy ( as this might blow the inert gas from the weld area and cause a welding failure ) some people use these bad boys. They are expensive but super nice, it is a complete purge welding balloon and you can also get fixed boxes with windows for production runs.



Other ways titanium can develop color in the weld area is from oil or other chemicals. If you ever visit a shop that specializes in titanium for aerospace or other industries, the shops are cleaner then most hospitals with most employees using cotton or rubber gloves for everything in the shop.
Here is an example of a color code chart for titanium - as you can see all the color plates are bad, the top left is very good and had the correct purge but second to the left is on the edge of being accepted.

NOTE - IF any one of these plates was cleaned with steel wool or sanded the color would disappear and the weld would be perfect looking - beeeeeeeee VERY CAREFUL it is possible to fool even the most experienced welding inspector if it is lightly cleaned.

The days of USA made bikes

Check out this rad video I found, it shows most of the steps in building mass produced bicycles.

I like the movie because it shows them making the tubing in house - this was very common, up until the late 1970s for Schwinn and Columbia. The very large roll of thin flat strips of steel shows up at the factory on train cars and the tubing mill rolls the steel strip in to a tubing shapes. The last step of the mill is to weld the seam of the steel strips closed, making a sealed tube. Some machines even finish the tube by grinding it.

The other machines shown in the first part of the movie are Swiss screw machines. The machine is the fastest machine in the machining world for mass produced machined parts. It runs on cams and gears and uses raw force to drill, cut and profile the parts. The operators had to understand how to adjust the machines by using a large series of gears, cams and belts. The cutting tools used have to be made to the outside shape and contours of the parts as the machine only travels on one axis when cutting, so it could only make one cut to make the outside shape of the part.

Check out the video for all the cool machines

My custom messenger bag from Trash Bags

Well it showed up about 2 months ago and has been getting its ass kicked since then. Everything looks good so far. Andy made this custom one of a kind embroidered Yetiman bag for me with everything on it, even straps and mounts to haul steel tubing.
http://www.trashmessengerbags.com


The pictures isn't very good sorry.

Not fun

I made this fence a while back for Adam Carolla's valley house, it sucked building it because I had to tig weld the whole fence together which took forever.

Now here is an idea !

Check out this rad bicycle from early 1900's used to check the rail yard and inspect tracks in Denver,Co

The good days of bicycling

Every bicycle made in the USA

Don't think I will ever get to see that in my lifetime!

My decal for my Super Sport Schwinn.

Sunday afternoon

How about a tribute to the Schwinn Paramount stem from the early 20's. I started at about 3pm and finished up about 6pm, a good use of a Sunday and Dan came and chilled out as well.

Well its my quick modern twist on a famous piece of bicycle racing history. The bars I used are Schwinn Approved !

22 hours of fun

I found these pictures from about 6 months ago when I wanted to build an extended bike that was all electric. I received 8 of the crazy Heizmann electric hubs for projects and decided to use one on a bike to haul stuff. I received about 300 feet of Chromoly from Plymoth tube company a year or so ago. The tubing was all off cuts and such, mostly about 8 feet long. With all that 4130 tubing I decided to use some of it to build this machine. Check out the pictures below. The bike took about 22 hours to build including talking on the phone for hours, drinking beers, eating lunch and dinner, and the end project was a rad flat bed bike that could go about 40 mph with the pedal assist. I built it using all the stuff I had laying around and it worked really well. With batteries it was about 55 pounds and had a range of about 4 miles full electric @ 18 mph.

my temp fixture ready to start building

some of the tubes in

the battery box and tubes all in.
back view with a Schwinn super sport in the box

nice fork and brakes makes it complete

Link to Nitro Circus for my MOM

http://www.mtv.com/videos/nitro-circus-season-2-ep-7-nitro-circus-circus/1622881/playlist.jhtml


There it is mom, the full tv show !

Sheet metal bike

Check out this frame, I really like the design. It is an electric bike frame but the idea is very slick and very easy to make. It could be laser cut and stamped if needed. Sorry I forgot the company that makes it.

Nitro Circus tonight

Well the showing of Nitro Cirus is tonight on MTV - Season 2 Epidsode 7

Some of my projects, stuff from the shop and Rolands will be shown - Check it.

Here is a picture of Travis Pastrana cruzin Rodneys Wheel of Death


Here also is a picture of the Tall Track bike Dan and I built one afternoon and Dans personal tall bike he built years back.

Tall biking LA

This is to the O.G.s of the LA Tall Bike Scene -

Part 2 of the Red Bull Soap box race

Well, it wasn't like I thought, nothing we built broke. If you watch the video you will notice the car goes so high on the berm that it grabs the right front wheel on the safety railing and as the car started to drop back down the wheel got hung on the railing and it ripped the spokes out of the rim.

The Easton wheels held up really well and it wouldn't have mattered who would have made the bike rims they would have all broke in the same situation.

So watch the movie and enjoy