Recent content by tmarsh

Busy time at the moment. Spring has sprung, which means crazy weather, heaps of things to do in the garden and loads of chainsawing of next year's firewood. Oh, and work is nuts. But I managed to steal some time on this warm evening, and did some minor work on B's bike. Starting with the fork...

There are at lease two separate skillsets involved in this. One of them is the whole joining side of things. That might be silver brazing lugged fittings, brass fillet brazing or TIG welding. They each have a significant learning curve, and you don't want to still be learning when you're...

The filler is 56% silver, not brass - silver flows better in close fit-ups like this and allows you to work at lower temps, which is nice. As for galvanic corrosion... Galvanic corrosion happens when one metal corrodes preferentially to another in the presence of an electrolyte. The tube and...

It's been pretty quiet in the shed since I finished the last bike. Fortunately, I have another willing test pilot, a colleague of mine we shall call B. B has been riding seriously for a few years, and has mainly been aboard a Surly Crosscheck. The aim of this build is to try and preserve as...

Finally... build time. Dura-ace 9 speed. Sure, it's not the latest and greatest, but if you don't win the race on this stuff, it'll be your legs, not the gear that held you back. See how that mudguard snugs up into the chainstay brace? It's almost as if it was designed that way, huh...

The exact angle of the seatstays isn't particularly important. It *might* come into play on a really small frame with a sloping top tube in order to avoid heel strike, but you'd probably look to solve that problem by using s-bend seat stays. As far as steel bikes are concerned, seatstays that...

It's not a silly question, and I'm not a geometry expert - I tend to work within fairly established parameters - but this is my stab at an answer for you. Seat tube angle isn't a critical dimension in the same way that head tube angle is. The same effective seating position can be achieved...

It's a pale blue. The purple tinge is due to the fluoro lights in the shed I think.

Embarrassing to think how long it's been since the frame was finished. Anyhoo. It's finished. Back from the painters and looking great. The photos aren't too great - I was taking them in the failing light of the evening, but I was keen to get something up on the 'net after so long. Nice...

Sorry to keep y'all hanging like that. Stand by and in a couple of weeks you'll see some very nice powder blue paint on the frame and a whole load of new photos. I think it's going to be built up with some 'vintage' 9-speed Dura-Ace and some other nice bits. It should have been done ages...

http://www.steephill.tv/tour-de-france/#live

I think the one thing you can be confident of is that it's not a Colnago! Some observations... I think it's not likely to be a commonly imported Japanese made frame of the 80s. The components like Galli and Stronglight weren't commonly spec'd outside of continental Europe. The fork ends...

I was in Helsinki this time last year. Loads of Finnish made step-throughs called 'Jopo' - truly hideous things with the frame made from two pressed steel sections welded together like some Soviet era take on monocoque design. More serious cyclists seemed to be riding low to mid-end cyclocross...

DB's bike back from the local sandblaster. I'll have to keep it somewhere warm and dry until it hits the painters: freshly blasted steel rusts like a mofo. the whole frame... head tube... top tube... lower head lug and fork crown... brake bridge...

I just don't get why you would bother. 100 years ago, the bicycle was a legitimate form of mass transport in industrialised Europe. Millions of workers used bikes to get to their jobs every day in England and the continent. Roads weren't great and nor were tyres. So there was a lot of...