Sunday morning and Dave drove up from Melbourne to join me for a ride. He's racing in the Golden Triangle 100k race next weekend and has set up his hard-tail for the race. He wanted to give the bike a 'shake down' before the race.

I promised him some fire-road climbs, some flat out descents and some very twisty, narrow singletrack. After an initial romp through singletrack near my house, we spat out onto the Blackwood Ridge Road, which climbs steadily up and up... and up.















Now, Dave isn't the fastest guy out there. But put him on a steady climb and he just chugs away like a diesel. Now I'm not the fastest guy out there either. And riding 3 times in 6 months hasn't made me any faster. Suffice to say that Dave kicked my arse into next week. Which was all the more humiliating since he began the ride telling me that he was feeling sick and wasn't sure how well he'd go. Yeah right...

The long fire-road descent down the New Sultan track was where I thought I'd peg him back. After all he was on a hard-tail and I was on a very well sorted dually. Sure enough, after shifting into the big ring and railing the first few corners, I was on my own. And I bombed down the track in much that fashion, till I reached the intersection with Lerderderg River Road. Where I waited... and waited... and waited... Eventually, I saw a blue speck in the distance.




















Dave appeared. He'd stopped for a few minutes to try and troubleshoot a mysterious rear hub noise. So much for me dusting him on the descent.

With Leighton's bike finished, I managed to do a big clean in the shed. The workbench is clean of metal filings and worn strips of 80 grit. Tools are put away. And in a fit of organisation, I made some simple tubing racks out of some pine I had laying around.














On those racks and in the metal dish is a very long term project: a road bike for Heather. It's based around the ornate Long Shen Fleur De Lys lug set, and will be primarily Dedacchia tubing, with some Columbus Zona and EL thrown in where appropriate. I've had these tubes for nearly 2 years, so it's great to finally be doing something with them.

Leighton's bike is finished. I brazed in the rear bridge and did the final cleanup on the rear dropouts today. The rear bridge is a short length of 1/2" cro-mo tubing with a water bottle boss brazed into the underside. I brazed it - as I always like to braze bridges - from the inside out.

A little coil of silver was wedged into each end and fluxed up. I gently sweated the tubes, using the flame to pull the silver through the joint to the outside. When I was done I had a perfectly radiused fillet, with no cleanup whatsoever. Very satisfying.













A trial fit with a track wheel from the first bike I built lined up perfectly, with the wheel exactly centered in the rear triangle.

A few photos outside and I'm going to call it done. Next stop, the powdercoaters, but I'm waiting on getting the fork back from friend of mine who is currently turning the crown race down on his lathe.





















Shamus joined me for the photos.

After an email exchange with ace US framebuilder Steve Garro, I've decided to get off my arse and keep a blog. This entry comes most of the way through the building sequence of a lugged fixed gear bike I'm building for a friend, Leighton. The bike uses Long Shen oversized arrowhead lugs, forward facing horizontal lugs, a straight blade lugged fork and Columbus Zona tubes. It's the first frame I've built since moving to Blackwood. Some months were spent getting the workshop up and running, but the effort has paid off: it's a very productive work-space now. It'd be nice if it cleaned istself though.... The floor is already filthy with scraps of 80 grit paper, gobs of flux and metal filings.














The main triangle and rear end are brazed, and this post finds me in the middle of cleaning up the brass brazed rear dropouts. Earlier today I reamed the seat tube and faced the head tube. In the next day or so I'll braze in the rear brake bridge, which should be the end of it.














With this frame finished I can then turn my attention to something I've been promising Heather for a while: a Campy equipped road bike for her. I'll be building it from a mix Dedaccai and Columbus tubes, using the very fancy Long Shen Fleur de Lys lug-set.

The weather here has been crazy this past week. We went from nearly 30 degrees on Friday and Saturday to an overnight low of 2 last night. Hopefully things will fine up before the weekend. I'm planning on heading out on a trail ride wih Dave on Sunday morning, which should leave me nice and sore for the hour long massage scheduled for Sunday afternoon!