The wheels keep turning.....

This weekend I was working on my Lab style Espresso machine ( post coming this week ) and on the Top Speed Bicycle.

Good weekend of just hammering in the shop on all the projects and keeping the young kids happy teaching welding, by the way I had my youngest TIG student this weekend, 8 years old and I was proud to see him running the torch. Its amazing what kids can do if you get the wheels turning on proper methods and safety!


Friday I picked up the huge block, all 26 pounds of 7075 aluminum to make the front hub for the Top Speed bike. If you look at the 3D model you can see the front steering is inside the hub so it requires the hub to cup over the front steering point on the bike. Its not a big deal except for the fact that I need to start out with a huge 4 3/4 inch round of 7075 aluminum. This grade of aluminum is an amazing grade to machine and makes very light parts out of, but your welding fact for the day is DO NOT weld it, and there is a link why if you have some time to read about welding.

Yep, I used a can of Murry's for a size reference!!
After I am done making the hub I will have a good chunk left of this bar left and the hub will be under a pound   with a huge pile of chips left in the lathe, which to me might as well be my paycheck laying in the machine.

I love my shop, its coming together very nicely

Thats Margaret Holland's Oil Painting of  " Chuck " on the right

Chuck is a living legend in the Santa Cruz, CA area I've heard

She is a really good oil painter and I get to hang it in my shop as inspiration !!!

And on the left is Louise Chen's " Love to Bee Home" painting 

Oh Yeah, the bike is coming along as well, got some 4130 tubes tacked on after 9 hours of making about 15 mistakes trying to put tight bend after tight bend on to rolled tubing ( kids don't do this at home, its not a good idea if you only have one shot to get it right ) 

A day in the life.......

Somedays when I move about my day to day life, I never really stop and think about what I do and how much fun its been the last 5 or so years...

Some times I get the chance to look at it from a whole different prospective and see how it looks from a different way and it makes me smile...

This video is a quick view of the BRD Electric Motorcycle  that I did some prototype work on a few months ago ( older blog post ) such as the aluminum skid plate and display stand, I don't appear in the video but it doesn't even matter to me, I was there with all those amazing designers, craftsman and thinkers and in the end the results with the project were amazing and I thank them for letting me be a part in the fun.

MLS has arrived and is here to stay, the San Francisco Bay Area is truly an amazing place for thinkers and builders of all kinds...


BRD RedShift from Sam Erickson on Vimeo.

Here we go..... You ready?

100 MPH + on a track bike with no fork?

This project between my brother Jason Tiedeken and I has been on the burner for a while and its time to just hammer it out. I did the mock up of the bike and some of you got a sneak peek of it in the 360 deg view of my shop weeks back but its time to put it on the blog, plus a quick teaser video from Matt Ducot

The vision started about a year or so back when I asked my brother to team up with me to design and build something fun and fast, something that would get people thinking different about the bicycle industry and all the possibilities still out there when it comes to design.

He sent over some sketches for me to think about...



This one of the many 30 second sketch that caught my eye!





In my years of working in the prototype industry, I have got the opportunity to work with some of the most famous designers and engineers but my brother scores in the very top few because of his mad skills of thinking outside of the box as well as being one of the fastest design engineers on a computer, and then being able to walk in to the shop and build it, to put the cherry on top.
He is very highly in demand across many industries for that very reason.

Jason T, my brother and owner dude of Metal Morphosis Engineering threw a quick 3D drawing together of the creature to see what it would look like 

in Solidworks so we could decided the layout. This was a quick drawing to take some of the guess work out of it, there was nothing specific about his drawing to build off of, most of the time this style of 3D modeling is done as a point of concept to clear up any questions before the specific drawings are made and building starts. This is the reason there is no seat, the chainring goes thru the tube and so on, its nothing more then a good way to view your project in a different way then a hand drawing.

My brother's concept was locked down and it was now my job to make it a reality, my brother stepped back and let me do the magic in my Skunkworks shop in Oakland,CA. 

Peter from Cane Creek has always been a believer of anything rolling out of the MLS doors and was quick to join the effort with some sick carbon wheels and AER headset.

Since Cane Creek always helps me out I decided why not do an internal headset using their AER headset,

I decided to make it using a bottom bracket from a BMX frame I was suppose to build for a customer, the BB is the same size bearing bores as an internal headset, the only differences being in the small angle the bearings rest on ( you can see inside the tube), I machined an angle inside for the bearing rests. Kinda cool and it took about 5 minutes to make it work, if your ever looking for great info on machining headtubes for custom projects check out Cane Creek for PDFs they show every dimension need to make all sizes of HTs. 

I did some quick layouts dimensions to set up my frame table

The frame geo is based off of Lance's TT bike.

My frame table I built about 2 years ago was built for this very reason.

TO THINK OUTSIDE OF THE FIXTURE

not to be constrained by the requirements of where to put the tubes, it takes a bit longer to build a frame because you need to be measuring extra, but in the end, your brain has no limits to where you need to be.

I machine out all the parts to save every possible gram...

There did I sound like a roadie?

I machine out the parts just to make sure that later down the road if I need to back purge the frame with argon for better weld quality or if I need to run cables inside the frame I don't have to get ghetto crazy with the frame and do it the wrong way with a long drill bit and some beers.

I know your asking " How do this thing steer"??

good question

These good old "Morse Push Pull Cables" as seen on your dads dragster and boat

This one is for a TOP FUEL dragster hammer shifter from B&M

I havn't lock down all the details with it and the mounting but I had to start somewhere with the concept.

If you going to go over 100 MPH your going to need a big ring, maybe like 90+ tooth

Thats a 52 tooth laying on the table and check out those chainstays.. talk about a pain to make

As of right now this is how far I am.

I built the mock-up bike already to make sure it looked right.

I like it.

Now I am running a orbital sander over all the tubes to clean them and doing the final tacks and cuts on the tubes.

Matt Ducot working on the video teaser

I don't think he wanted me to take the picture?

He made this video so quick and with such little amount of footage, kinda makes me wonder what he would do if he had a lot of footage and way more time. 

                               Monkey Likes Shiny - 100mph + concept track bike
                                                    from Matt Ducot on Vimeo.

Remember tell you mom you seen it first here on MLS, she will be stoked.

Class is now in session.

My drive in metal crafting for the last few years has been two things...


Kids and Learning


Its my true passion and love is teaching. Its the reason my dream jobs are doing work for science museums and once and a while at MLS the job comes along and I get the pleasure of crafting for museums and it makes me smile the whole time.

I have been shooting for my CWE and CWI certifications ( certified welding educator and inspector ) for a few years now, the reason I haven't got them yet is, I haven't been welding long enough to even qualify for it so expect the day I hit my qualifying year,  I will be first in line for my test!

I also have been working with a non-profit out of California that develops classroom educational videos for students to get a behind the closed doors look at what a concept fabricator/ welder / machinist does and possible strike up some intrest in someone board in high school careers class.

I saw a need to share my passion a while back when a teacher told me about their school they worked at had only ONE very basic shop related class left, as all had been cut due to budgets years before. The machines were all sold at auction and the great shop teachers that helped hundreds of kids run the mills, lathes and welders were all let go..

That school was MY school......

That school in Minnesota and others around the USA were incubators for skilled craft works and it is truly sad to see these machines filling auction floors now days, realizing that these 1930s to 1990s machines built the USA's next generation of crafters. But now seeing them at auction makes my heart sink as I realize kids will never get the chance to see, hear or touch some of these amazing machines.

I am very busy and always running around building something for someone, but there comes those days when I need to shut it down relax and take a quick break. For some reason, I don't feel like I want to leave the shop, I guess when you Live, Work, Eat, and Sleep in your shop and or other shops it becomes a complete connection of you.  I think thats why I wear my safety glasses all day every day because I am always in a shop, but either way I find spare time to mentor someone in hopes of opening a new option for that student as a skill choice or a new path on life.

My favorites are teaching welding to kids between the age of 8 to about 16 because they don't have the " I know " attitude, everything is fresh, exciting and ready to learn all about this crazy new stuff.  My new student the last months has been little Nate, 11 years old and full of spunk always ready to grab the TIG torch and see what he can make. I wish I had an Aerospace Welder teacher when I was 11, thanks to my dad and his mad skills when I was about 11, I got to look at what was going on thru a 1950s POS welding helmet that was almost fully melted and I learned a lot from what he did and did wrong as he burned his hands and such.

Heres some cool shots and video of Nate, during one of our TIG/FAB classes.

I don't tell them what to build, I just show them how to build it.

Nate has been building stainless steel madness and learning torch angles

Nate forgetting to wear his safety glasses 

yep, he got yelled at after this photo for not having his glasses on.

Not bad for some old Schwinn road bicycle handlebars &

a 11 year old's creativity

Remember I didn't pick up the torch once on this project

even Kane wanted in on the fun by taking this sweet picture

 at MLS Skunkworks HQ. 

New kid on the Block.......

The last months at MLS have been off the hook nuts..... Sorry, I haven't been hiding, I have been living it large between getting flown around the USA to weld and working on some new crazy concept projects for a big airplane company, the new Gillette razor commercials, and those other kids down the street called Clorox who always have fun robotics to build...

With being so busy comes the problem of filling orders for things that MLS normally produces for various companies, the level of expectations the customers expects only leaves me the choice of hiring someone to help out that is experienced and as excited about building stuff as I am, which is hard to find....

I heard of a kid Mike Cleaver having fun building stuff in Oakland out of a Steam Engine restorer's machine shop, so I invited him to a bicycle art show I threw a few months back at the Actual Cafe and I was surprised to see his level of creativity and building odd stuff. He builds a lot of weird stuff that is quick to catch your eye and he has a good sense of style and flow to his machines.

I knew he would work great helping out around the shop so I put him to work building stuff and welding. I think he has a good out look on having fun and doing it for the love of building, learning as he goes along.

We had a booth at PedalFest in Oakland

Hard at work 

Thanks Izi for the Polaroid Photos

This was a quick build Mike did years back 

He builds a lot of normal track racing, touring and road bikes as well

I made a visit to the Steam workshop and seen this thing up on the rack

I pointed it out and he shook his head, why?

" A bike to haul a Pony Keg, I started building it years ago for a micro brewer to deliver and never got paid so I threw it up on the rack and never finished it "

I said " I need it, trade me for tools " so we traded for tools, everyone wins !

Check out Mike's Flickr for all kinds of cool photos of builds

Cleaver bikes Flickr 

Pedalfest Jack London- Oakland, CA

This show put on by a bunch of avid riders from Oakland and it was so much fun, I some how slipped it in to my craziness of work and thanks to Sean from Soulcraft bicycles for throwing me down a booth next to Mark from Paragon machine works. I think the whole day the most enjoyment was seeing Mark's two young kids push each other around on the Gravity Speed bike in the trade show hall. Those kids put on a few miles pushing each other around laughing. It was so cool to have a free show in an very bicycle driven community, it made it possible for new groups of people to experience all the handbuilt and vintage bicycle world without paying for admission and scaring them off.

There was sooooo many kids wanting to talk at my booth about welding and building stuff, so rad!!! 

Good work to crew for putting it on it made my day and my week!!

Izi shot this fun video of the 36er cruzin the WiskeyDrome

This was the test run by Slow Larry,  the faster run didn't get filmed and got really dangerous!!!

Later in the night a bunch of builders all met up for dinner and they for some reason kind of invited me, mostly because I pulled up while they were standing waiting for a table and did a huge brake stand burnout in my truck,smoking out the street block, then I parked and joined them to their embarrassment.

 It was rad, I got to hear all the great stories from the master story teller and master frame builder himself Bruce Gordon about the Slug Queen of Eugene,OR ( you might want to search that up if you don't know about it ). 

Bruce Gordon, Sean and a bunch of us out for dinner in Oakland

Well, I will be all over the place like normal but I got a big fun project coming up 

I will let you in on the secret - MLS Espresso machine 

Just wait......

Lucky Lady

The other day I was pressed for time as always in my life and I knew I needed to make something special for my lady for her birthday...

A quick scratch on my head, some Titanium bar and the stop at the coin shop on the drive home proved to be a good choice.


I have always been a big fan of big gauged earrings, better yet if they are worn by a super cute girl with tattoos that loves to ride bike!

 Perfect sign me up, twice!

For the kids out there that don't know what Gauged earrings look like, here it is...

Heres what I made over lunch break ( don't tell her it was that quick )

Her ear hole size is 3/4 (.750 ) of an inch ( a bit bigger then the photo above ) and a Mercury dime has a outside diameter of .702

Then I pressed the dime in to the Titanium rings I made with a tight press, the dime is locked in without the use of glue or anything, so with that being said if you find a cooler dime you can press them out and press in a new dime.

With a big stack of roses and a pair of these 1938 Silver beauties, she is bound to hang out with me for another week!!

" Treat them like GOLD, and they will aways come back" - Casper Tiedeken ( my dad ) 

Thanks Dad you were right

Come on in....

Once in a while I get someone that rolls in to my shop and wants help building something.....

Once in a while I am so stoked about what they do, I need in on it so I trade my work for work.

In this case my buddy Devin brought this dude Patrick Cheatham to my shop. Patrick is a photographer and you might have run across some of his work across the internet or seen it on TV. He came to me with a need for someway to hold a razor and rotate it 360 deg and make it look like it is floating for a TV commercial. He figured out the computer controlled rotating part using a crazy camera rotating mount, so I just had to make some easy holders for the product using Lexan plastic. When I found out what he did for a living shooting 360 images, I said, this one is on me but you have to come shoot the shop... Time for Time lets trade...

He came and set up a few days later, took a few minutes.... This camera was so cool, it was on a CNC robotic arm doing fully auto shooting!!

360° of Monkey Likes Shiny, by Patrick Cheatham

Figured I would show you my Manual Machine Shop..

These are the photos the camera takes using the crazy fish eye. These are the flat laid out 360 deg photos

After you do all the editing if needed, then you put the photos in the software and it makes it a crazy 3D image where you can look 360 degs around.

Check out the link below!!!

360° of Monkey Likes Shiny, by Patrick Cheatham

A secret place........

When I first moved away from Minnesota to California,  joining Exile cycles and working on Discovery channel shows, I was a bit taken back and sometimes a little overwhelmed by the work load of on and off camera work.

I needed a place to hide....

I happened to run in to someone that told me about a very special place located in Los Angeles that would cheer me up and leave my brain twisted, the true location is low key and I don't know how much I should share but here is quick peek at one of the most happy places in the world for me!

My buddy Art, who use to work here moving stuff around,  now is on a Navy ship repairing jets and moving aerospace parts around just like when he worked here ( there you go Art, theres your fame for the month)

Remember I am an AeroSpace Welder and my love for NASA is very strong so this place is very special to me.....

This place is where NASA laid to rest so of its most well engineered " Space Race " projects of the late 1950 and 1960s.

You could call it a graveyard of Mercury, Apollo and Saturn rocket mission projects.

It is one of the only places that you can walk thru and NOT know what it does or what its used for.

There is about 40 rows in the building and two floors of just NASA stuff

over 20,000 feet of stuff!

Tanks and tanks and tanks

More tanks, complete rows of tanks

Titanium Tanks designed for fuel for NASA and the X projects

Rocketdyne J2 rocket used for the Saturn rocket and more Titanium tanks

One of the coolest things here!!

A back up rocket for the X-15 test projects 

This little beast pushed the plane to set the record of mach 6.7 - the fastest thing on earth 

North American X-15

Its only a dream to have it sitting in my living room

These are some of the tanks and parts used for the Apollo Command Module

This is a close up of the crazy Titanium welding that they did in the early 1960s 

Remember these guys wrote the book on Titanium welding, it was all trial and error

and what a project to learn on.....

 

Just looking at some of the prototypes they built makes my jaw drop

these guys did it all without computers and without crazy machines.

Nothing but a good set of hands and a smile

Control boards from the research centers and back up rockets

I worked at exile all weekend with Blake ( aka - random ), can't tell you what I am working on with these NASA tanks from 1958s Saturn project, but I can say its going to make a nice hot cup of wake me up in the morning... 

So many vistors....

Over the last weeks theres been all kinds of people swinging by the shop to say hello and give me a high five, which is super rad!

The other night I was very surprised to see at my shop door with his lady, multi-time World Champ Downhill Mountain Biker Greg Minnaar, I would also add hes super rad and knows motorcycles.

I had to twist his brain with the idea of going 120 mph on a bike with no fork ( I think it worked ). Then he told me about the old Honda Downhill bikes and all about the new rad Santa Cruz DH bikes hes riding to twist my mind,  then we were off to a music show in good old Oakland.

Theres a regular around MLS and his name is Noah Sakamoto. You might be one of the few million that have seen his videos or seen him on TV mashing some of the most crazy hills in the world both in competition and for fun. Hes one of the craziest fastest dudes in the world and a school teacher, even more radness!!

Noah and his classy speed-suit

                              
                    The best part about this is it was before GoPro cameras were super hip and it wouldn't have been the same kind of video if they didn't hand off the camera while going 50 MPH +

Noah dropped of a rad board for me to crash in the hills

Thanks dude.

Its against a new machine I was given as a gift from the All Power Labs in Berkeley - a 1940s Gorton Pantographer machine, just wait until I get it running!!! its so neat its like a crazy over built engraver/cutter from the 1940s, this one is very special as it came from the Navy during WW2. It needs some TLC but I will put her back in to service! Search it up if you want to understand how it works, its really neat!

Burningman

So, If you havn't heard about it.... Get with it and find out - Its crazy and amazing at the same time.

A 50,000 population city built in the desert for one week filled with all kinds of makers, designers, hippies, ravers, crafters and so on. Search up " Burningman "

My trip was very very last minute as normal, giving me about 3 days to get everything ready, and as being a fabricator and builder, you can't go to one of the biggest creative events in the world without something really cool and new to show..

So I started building..

Mr. Dirt Rag him self Maurice ( owner of Dirt Rag and Bicycle Times magazine )

was out testing the new Santa Cruz and seen my pile of BS laying on the sidewalk so he had to stop by and give me a hard time as he always does!

First being the 36er 29er cargo bike to a point that it was ridable - this was the perfect place to get out there and test the machine and beat it up. I put on every part on it that I didn't care about because of the crazy dust and wear and tear I knew it would see.

Next being silverware and plates - I built a quick set up with a spork that wraps around the plate and bolts on. Very few people use any sort of disposable cups or plates out there due to trash so always having a plate and a spork is perfect.

I decided to build my truck in to a desert combat ready rig with canvas top over the bed ( for sleeping in ) and sitting on top of the canvas supports, I welded up a support to hold a 55 gallon water drum acting as a water tower, all plumbed in to a 1930s shower head attached to the side of the truck. This ended up being so nice to take showers in the desert, I found a old NASA temp gauge and mounted it on the side to watch the water temp, as well as a water level hose to watch my uses as the week went on.


 If you want a great way to meet people at Burningman - Just build a shower and they will be your friend all week !!!

With the help of Craig Johnson and his mad CAD skills in about few seconds, I had a blueprint for a sheet metal Conical hat made from .030 Aluminum and I made it just an hour before I left. This was so cool to ride around with ( not in the wind ), it kept me out of the sun and kept my head very cool.

Craig ( aka CJ $$$ ) making the flat layout for the hat on Solidworks

I was feeling lazy and he really wanted to draw it

here is the flat sheet before making the conical hat

The last thing I made was a custom Titanium wedding ring that I spun out on the Monarch lathe before jumping in the truck, using some of that great Titanium left over from Clorox prototype projects, I spun it up with the idea that I shouldn't leave home with out it, just incase something crazy happens and I find the lady of my dreams. ( by the way its back in my shop again )

yep, I hope her hands are cleaner then mine...

Add these things to the already long list of stuff needed to be built for others such as concept electric skateboards, art projects, concept bicycle stuff, and doing all the Clorox and Gov Lab stuff,  it didn't leave much time for a thing they call sleep...

I will keep the story short...

I left Thursday night headed east while talking to Blake ( Aka Random ) about how Dirty Dave was going to ride his Harley almost to 250 MPH at the BUB Speed Trials. My brain decided that would be way for fun to go to the speed trials then to burningman so I kept on driving thru the night headed for the Salt flats passing thru Reno and pass the turn off for Burningman. I stopped in Reno to go in the Casino and after walking in with 100.00 dollars and leaving up with 100.16 ( mostly found change on the floor ) I decided there was only one thing to do with all those profits and that was to go see some ladies dancing....

Back on the road now about 250 miles (400 KM for you metric kids) past my turn off for Burningman, I got an odd feeling to turn on to a small road and go back towards Burningman, why my brain decided with only 50 miles left to drive to the speed trials,  to turn around, it would be a mystery why I turned around but my brain told me to take a crazy gravel road that was 200+ miles long headed back west.

the death of a old Ford COE truck

the result of a new freeway years back..

Driving thru salt flats and gold mines, I got to a point where in every way I was 50 miles from everything.... I seen a man walking or more like dragging himself... I pulled up to see him out of water and in the last few hours before going in shock and maybe death.

I took this picture a few miles before finding the dude

being out here with no water seems like something out of a movie story

My brain is hurting now as I ask him why and how he got out to this point. He responds something about a hot spring... I put him in the truck, water him up and make him take a load off. He doesn't say anything to me but one last thing " you have beautiful welds " as he looks at the mega load of welded things filling my truck bed. Another 50 miles pass and not word was said, I drop him off at the sheriff station and tell him to have them help out, my brain was overwhelmed , and to finish it off - As soon as I dropped him off and everything was good I got back in my truck put it in drive and then had 4 flat tires......................................... My brain was done.....................

I gimped my truck in to the burn and aired up one slow leaking tire and put on the only spare to at least hold the heavy load of water, food and metal things in my truck and just drove it with the 2 fronts flat. I got to my camp and set up, I also got ready to work as I am an employee of the event, checking tickets and searching cars at the entrance.

I had to take this picture because it about made me cry

On the drive back I ended up blowing out my wheel bearing and having to ride the 36er cargo bike over 10 miles down the freeway to the auto parts store to buy a complete front wheel assembly to rebuild my truck on the freeway, it sucked.

the temple took months to build and was a great model of craftsmanship and then 

they burn it down, along with all the things people wrote, added, or put in the temple to burn memories and start clean again...

The story goes on and on but in a nutshell, the week was amazing and there is really no way to describe the fun I had - being with some of the most interesting people and personalities made the week fly by and not think a single bit about my shop, jobs, love, or anything that existed miles away in the real world.

Don't hate on it until you try it......