This is a little write-up on my new bike. It’s not an ordinary bike, so this isn’t an ordinary post. No porn yet, but be patient. There will be plenty. The process was long, very interesting, overly complicated, and of course, a lot of fun, so I wanted to share it with the group. I’ll be posting it in chapters over the next few days because it’s such a long story.
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV - Building the Bike
Once the geometry was settled on, Ves went about building the bike. It’s a complicated build with the scandium top and down tubes connected by carbon or a carbon/aluminum laminate. Scandium is not a popular material for frame builders to work with, simply because it is not easy to work with. Ves has been working with material probably longer than anyone, and before that worked with aluminum and steel. He’s a material junkie, and while some people look at the Scandium as just marketing hype, Ves sees it as the most appropriate metal to build a lightweight racing bicycle out of.
He put carbon on the bike in specific areas to improve stiffness – specifically the Easton BB/chain stay assembly, the Easton wishbone seat stay, and his own proprietary head tube – which is a laminate of carbon and aluminum. According to him, this is the stiffest frame he has built, and the laminate head tube exceeded his expectations.
I’m not a frame builder, but from the pictures I looked at and the articles I read, it seemed that a jig was involved in the process, and lots of welting, etc. But how does one go about making a frame with carbon and scandium? I had Ves send me some pics of the process.
The seat stay lug is cut by hand.
The frame in the jig.
A steel head tube takes the place of the carbon early in construction.
Chapter V - Paint
When I first started thinking about what this bike would look like, I envisioned a tribute to a mini cooper – a british racing green frame, white panels, red, white and blue stripes on either side of the panel, white accents, etc. I still have this concept in my mind, but this really wasn’t the right frame for it. The carbon and the dark green seemed like they would blend together, making the whole bike look a bit darker.
Once I shelved that idea, I started to come up with my own little designs and color pallets. Here are a few examples.
A variation on the British Racing Green theme
Dark Blue - to black to carbon
Umm… Yeah, not sure about this one.
Complex sweeps with black and carbon.
I really liked the last scheme with the sweeps - and the green. I was planning on using the Limetime that Pooks had used on his bike with black panels and white accents. I thought the limetime and the carbon really went together well. So Ves and I went down the path of the sweep design. We ran in to some problems with the logo size, it was requiring too much black on the bike, and when combined with the black carbon from the components, it was turning out to be a black bike with green accents - not what I wanted. As we were fine tuning everything, Ves mentioned that his paint guy mixed a special color for some of the work that he does – an different kind of metallic green that he called “Kawasaki Green”. That was an interesting thought – a brighter green that might work better with the carbon on the frame and the fork. He arranged to have a sample sent to me.
The sample was bad ass. It was a heavy pearl, so the color change was pretty dramatic in the sun. After looking at the sample, talking with Ves and talking with my wife (when did she get a vote?), I decided to simplify the paint scheme a bit and go with the Kawasaki Green with a couple chevrons on the seat tube and one on the fork.
Ves uses Easton components, and since Easton is such a huge fan of Easton, they put decals all over their components. Now, I don’t mind using a couple, but they were going a bit far. I had Ves remove 21 decals from the fork, chain stays and seat stays. I also had him add a few smaller decals – a Campagnolo rear derailleur decal to the right seat stay, a Campagnolo script logo to the left chainstay, and a Campagnolo world championship decal to the down tube.
With the frame complete and the paint mixed, Ves brought the bike into the paint booth, and here’s a picture of what emerged from the oven.
That is exactly the green I was looking for.
Chapter VI – The Finished Product. (climax)
