The keys to the shop

I am blessed with an amazing shop and somewhat of an ability to build fun stuff. I have worked hard to get there, from one Tig welder I bought with the little money I had (that taught me what I needed to start welding ) to a full shop of rad tools that teach me even more everyday and make it easier to rip thru projects.

But there was that day where I was given a key to someones shop when I was just starting out and had no tools. The first thing I was told " don't fuck up my tools, and don't forget to clean up ".

I still have those days where I ask to use peoples shop to learn new tools, such as Daryl's shop with all the rad tools like the Pullmax sheet metal machines, but now that I have a shop of my own, with a key.... My day has come where I get to call the shots ( kinda cool )

Anyone that knows me knows I have 2 goals in life.

1. Build Rad stuff to impress hot girls
2. Teach my trade and progress in my trade

Thats MLS in a nut shell - its all about progression in all ages

Anything from working on projects for kids at the science museum for learning simple things, to working on a project for DLR ( the German version of NASA ) for the leading scientist to learn more then they already know, I love to share my trade and help people learn thru my craft or just straight up teaching people my craft is my true love.

When Josh Boisclair came to me... He was already holding the blueprints of his exact design, he had some experience of what he was doing and had built 2 cargo bicycles before this one. I told him he can use the tools, the reason I said this was because he had the blueprints in his hands and he had the right mindset to get the project done and the most important thing was the passion to build it right.

Mike Cleaver of Cleaver bikes and I helped him get the tubes for the main frame tacked up right away, if you build things, you can agree theres never anything more frustrating then not being able to have 4 hands to hold all the tubes in place while you tack weld everything.

The Best fabricator in the world may look like this guy.

2 hand for holding the tubes and 2 for welding.

With the main frame tacked up and most of the tubes notched by Josh and some burnt holesaws later on my horizontal mill. Jost retreated back to his little shop not far away from the MLS skunkworks shop to keep adding tubes and starting to braze it up. 

Spinning dropout was one of the projects

These little 4130 chromoly thru axle tubes

20mm front axle and 15 mm rear

The next project was using these blue prints to bend up 1/4 chromoly plate to make the fork crown

As you know, I love to use the press brake for everything so I decided to " bump" the plate a little bit at a time ( moving back 1/4 inch at a time ) until I got the desired curve.

Josh doesn't have CAD but his 1 to 1 prints were right on

He arrive at my house to do all the milling on my ExCello vertical mill

That machine is so easy to move the head, we put the 5 deg angle in the legs and everything.

The secret was we tack welded the curved plates laying on the blueprints together with the correct spacing then we put all 3 of them in the mill welded together and drilled the steer and leg holes. 

Then the spacing is dead on to your prints - Theres your MLS tip of the day

These were a pain to get the curve right.

This is the toptube of the bike and they link the frame for strength above the kegs. 

A day before the show Josh wanted to make a chain guard

So we cut it all out and I showed him how to roll a bead around the guard to add extra strength to the body of thin aluminum guard. It turned out great, even got some welding lessons in. 

This was a shot of his bike sitting on the ground without the rear end fully welded

Looks great, I can imagine he was so stoked taking this photo, I would be. 

Chrome built this rad bag for him to keep the kegs cold

Look at that MLS T-shirt Josh is wearing

SPONSORED

This was Saturday before the HandBuilt bicycle show in Sacramento

I think it should be a requirement for people at the handbuilt show to go to a welding shop before the show, thanks to the crew at Praxair in Sacramento we got a lot of dry ice. They hooked us up. 

Heres a shot from BikeRumor with the dry ice chillin the kegs.

Check out more shots over at Bike Rumor - Josh's Keg Bike

Still have my Handbuilt show report coming in a blog post so stay tuned.

Good work Josh - it turned out great

Enjoy - MLS

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......

Cranky's Bike Shop Bicycle racks - DONE

Well,

This weekend was action packed.......

I finished up the racks with my helper at like midnight on Saturday and with some kind of urge of excitement and energy to see them on the wall and make sure Jim could get his shop ready for the grand opening.

I decided to leave LA and drive up to Santa Barbra at midnight Saturday with Brie and drop off the racks and then drive back to LA that night, then take a shower and head for San Diego for a meeting Sunday morning with Cane Creek at the Hand built bicycle show.

So with a full truck load of racks, 50 total.  We got to Jim's shop and started to set up. Jim had put up all the brackets on the wall during last week so everything was ready to go once we got there. If you look back a few post you will see the basic design  of the racks.

All the racks can be linked like blinds over windows so they can all move together with one lever 

and change angles, or they can be changed in angles one by one.

Sunday morning came quick and I was really tired from the 250 miles I drove sleepless to Santa Barbra.

With my super high quality Iphone camera I snapped some quick shots at the show, but I think you should check out 

Jeff Thrasher's Blog about the show and read more info about the show.

I also met up with Cane Creek for a while and talked to Peter about all the new things and some secret projects coming out of my shop. Its really rad to see Cane Creek at a show like that because they don't make any money going there, but it really shows the support for the frame builders and lets them know that Cane Creek supports everyone with the same attention to details - doesn't matter if you are the first time builder buying one headset or if your Trek buying millions of headsets.

 I didn't see any other big players in the bicycle industry there.

Erik of Peacock Groove wasn't there but had a few bikes on display.

This was a little road bike that he built for a customer - THIS THING IS MINI 

Jeff Thrasher and his crew invited me to go to the bar and watch the Paris road race on TV.

While I was at the bar I noticed they had some beer cans on the wall from my home town

Schell's Beer - New Ulm, MN 

It made my day :)

San Diego Custom bicycle show

Well, year 2 of the San Diego Custom Bicycle show is coming up and I will be there. Its a really cool show and it doesn't get to crazy, plus its only an hour and a half down the road from me. Last year was a lot of fun except for the flat tires I got in a weird area of town at 4 am while night riding!

I think I am going to bring the

-  The big Penny Farthing bike
-   the speed downhill bike
-   Jeffs machine
-   Brie's hot rod and maybe the Unicycle I am working on.

Its a rad show so I invite everyone that wants to go to check it out and come drink some beers with us

I want to step it up for the show and build a rad display but I am guessing that will be last minute like normal.