We just got news from Merlin about a price increase in titanium and related manufacturing costs.  We are sorry to have to tell our future clients that we are instituting a price increase, as of today.  Both of our titanium models’ prices are increasing 150.00.  This is the first price increase in our titanium frames in many years … it had to happen some day.  Today is that day.

For those who are currently in our titanium Q, not to worry.  Your price holds where it was when you ordered your frame.  Again, we are sorry to have to make this price change.  Thank you for your decades of support.  We will continue to do our best to earn it going forward.  Now, go ride your bike.

05/07/12

Frustration:

I spoke with a current client earlier today.  He and his wife have known us for many years.  He understands.

He will be getting his new bike in a few more weeks after he gets back from a vacation.  John ordered his new frame way back in September.  It used to be that our long delays were largely a result of supply problems.  Merlin always seemed to have delivery schedule problems from the get-go, and that problem only improved somewhat when the company moved to Ooltewah back in 2000. 

When Merlin decided to end its custom frame fabrication in 2010 and we began working with Seven, delivery times improved significantly in both speed and consistency.  Of course, Seven has always been known for their efficiency and organization along with their building skills.  Wonderful.

So what’s the holdup?  During our chat this morning, John reminded me that that over the last few years it seems that our clients have asked more and more of my skills as a painter.  As the paint work has gotten more complex and time consuming, our deliveries have again slowed.  We continue to survive since more complex paint jobs are more expensive, but delivery times suffer.  And that is the frustration.  We get one bottleneck fixed and another develops.  No easy answers since I am too picky a painter to cut corners. 

Do I work more hours?  When I was younger, that might have been an option.  But at my age, eleven hours of work is pretty much my limit each day.  My family deserves my time and I need to continue riding as well. 

So maybe I should offer full custom paint jobs, as long as they are all black.  Thoughts?

05/07/12

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to assist a friend who runs training camps.  Much of my assistance was to be in the form of creating GPS files and Q sheets for the campers.  During my wife’s and my layover in Detroit on the way over, my hard drive crashed … dead, gone.  That was the end of a lot of work I had done in preparation.  So our route finding was not quite up to what it should / could have been.  Beyond that serious glitch though, …

I’ve been riding between 3000 to 12,000 miles a year since 1975. I’ve ridden in a lot of places, many of them wonderful. But never have I ridden in such beauty and on such roads. Of course, I haven’t eaten this well over a ten day period in my entire life either. Yeah, the French do seem to know their food. Lionel’s description of my exclamations during the Route du Crete ride was dead on accurate. At every turn on that first climb, I’d have to say “Holy Shit!” And you can’t really understand unless you’ve been there. It was that amazing. Yes, I would have preferred some more technical descents, but there are never enough of them for me. The highest speed I hit during my time over in France was only 45 and I have gone a lot faster than that right around home. However, those 20K descents on twisting mountain roads were the absolute best. Even the 20K+ climbs weren’t bad since there was little climbing over eight percent anywhere. Drivers in France are very skilled and courteous, no “issues” with that at all, even on those very small roads. 

Every evening, before the amazing dinners served by our host Denny, we met at the park across the street from the Hotel for wine, cheese and local appetizers.  A wonderful time to talk about riding, sight seeing and even better opportunities to get to know the campers better. Dinners were without exception, exceptional. Denny is not only a classically trained French chef, but he is a wonderful host. Near the end of our stay, he and his staff hosted a party for us with “significant” amounts of alcohol and wonderful before diner baked pastries. 

I’m going to quit here since I could go on for a really long time. Above is a photo which will give you an idea of how I felt riding in Southern France.  If you are interested in joining us next year, keep an eye on the Events page http://www.velocipedesalon.com/forum/f4/ of the VelocipedeSalon forum. 

Make plans because; “Next year in France!”

1/12/12

Am I good enough yet?   

When was I good enough? 

The answers to those questions from frame builders today come in a wide range.  Most who answer in the affirmative do not have years of experience while the chance of answers in the negative increase as builders get older.  On the one hand, being good enough could legitimately mean being able to make a frame strong, straight and safe to ride.  On the other hand, is that good enough?  Does cleaner brazing make the difference between good enough and good?  What about tailoring handling and center of gravity to a rider’s skills and riding conditions?  Is that the last step to being good enough? 

Somewhere around my tenth frame back in early ’77, I began to realize that my fourth frame had really been a poor effort.  It was strong, straight and safe.  But I’d gotten so much better since then.  I’d arrived.  I was getting some notice in my area.  I started getting orders from national class riders.  I was good enough. 

A year later, when I had another fifty frames under my belt, more feedback, more of my own racing experience, more experimentation with subtle changes in geometry for different conditions and tracks, I could look back and see how wrong I’d been a year before.  In fact, for my clients I’d been good enough back then.  Not good, but good enough.  But now I was getting the hang of it.

When I was hired by Ross Bicycles to head up their new handmade frame department in ‘79, I had to at least pretend that I was good.  I surely knew a lot more than my employers did about handmade bikes.  I was only at Ross for a year and a half, but I learned more than I could have imagined from people who knew very little about what we did back in that converted kitchen.  During those 18 months or so, I made about five hundred frames.  Only a few custom frames, but within a few weeks of arriving, I was building far better frames than I had ever built.

By the time I left Ross, I could build technically perfect, lovely frames in my sleep.  It had become easy to do what had been impossible a couple of years before.  So repetition was critical.  Many hundreds of repetitions.  Even with today’s eyes, those frames remain beautiful when they return for refinishing all these years later. 

How do those frames stack up with what we build now?  Not even close.  Over the last thirty years, I have never felt that I couldn’t get better.  I got over that long ago.  I am always at a point where I am designing and building bikes that are easily good enough, even good.  But never as good as they can be.   

If someone thinks that they have worked to a level where they are as good as they can be, they need to find a new job.  In fact, what they have worked to is a place where their understanding of what they are doing is so divorced from reality that they cannot improve enough to be good enough.   Quit or get better.  There are only two options.

1/10/12

Last night, June and I took Colby to her vet for the last time.  It was peaceful.  It was so hard.  It hurt.  It still hurts.  We have been blessed with wonderful dogs.  Colby was as good a dog, a member of our family, as we could have hoped for. 

After a life of fifteen years and six months, it was time.  We know that.  Colby had lost control of her vocal chords a few years ago, making breathing difficult at times.  Her ACL tare as a young dog had come back to bother her as arthritis in her left knee.  As spinal stenosis developed these last few years, her hind legs became weaker.  Through all of this, Colby never changed.  Last Thursday night, Colby had a seizure.  After a short period of acting goofy, she seemed to recover well.  Then, Saturday morning she could not get up or stand on her own.  It is likely that her seizure was the result of a stroke.

Saturday evening, we hosted a party for many of the members of our Church.  Our house was filled with friends.  Colby lay on one of her beds under the dining room table unable to get up on her own.  She received a great deal of love and attention.    June and I made our decision later that evening.

We picked Colby up from the Detrich farm in Stoney Run when she was eight weeks old.  She always had full run of our neighborhood.  She went in and out at her pleasure, was never aggressive to anyone throughout her entire life.  Like all labs, she was a handful for the first few years, developing into what labs are known for.  The gentle, loving dog that she was. 

Colby died in peace.  We will miss her.  

01/03/12

Damn!  RS has done it again … he’s made me think.  Shit. 

Richard Sachs Blog post

It is stunning how folks who do very similar things can be so different.  I’ve always understood how I am different from some of the other American builders.  Like Carl Strong is way better than I am at running a business.  And Sasha White and Peter Weigle have WAY better aesthetic senses than I do.  And boy Richard can sure write better than I can among other things.  So if I am well down the scale in those areas, what horn can I toot?

This is where Richard’s recent post made me think.  (Damn him) If I can paraphrase him, he does what he has become really good at, and that is where he stands.  He finds that he is not driven to figure out why his stuff works so well since it just does. 

To a large degree, I am always driven to figure stuff out.  Even though our bikes work well, I am always working out why something works.  I want to understand.  In a sense, understanding really doesn’t matter if the thing works.  For me though, working right isn’t enough. 

This started early.  In ’76 (or maybe ’77) I was building for a number of guys on the National track team.  I had little clue about track frame design at the time since I was feeling my way along back then.  With their feedback, I was able to fairly quickly figure out how to make the frames work the way that they wanted them to.  Once I had taken that first step, I figured out pretty quickly that when one or two little external variables were changed, a design that worked for one guy or on one track would not work for beans for another rider or on a different track.  This is what started it all.  I could not leave that sort of question hanging.  I had to understand how to design a bike no matter what the external variables might be.  I knew that I could not address everything, but I sure wanted to understand it all. 

Since then, I have figured out an awful lot of stuff.  It is now clear from what I’ve learned that there must be an awful lot I haven’t figured out yet.  That’s the fun of it for me.  Figuring stuff out is one of the best parts of my work.  Jeff is the same way.  I’ll give him a problem … some little fitting or part that isn’t what it could be.  He will get his neck hairs up and say that he can’t make it better without a lot of work.  Over the next day or so, he will come up with a few bloopers before lighting on an elegant solution.  He figures it out.  We both live for this stuff.

In the end, this working out challenges is likely why we make so many types of frames successfully here.  The variables affecting a match sprint frame are nothing like those affecting a randonneur frame.  Fine with me.  I have to figure it out.

1/2/12

Richard’s take rings true to me.  We sure as hell are not trying to copy someone else’s mold here and without our love of what we do here, we would surely be belly up in any case.  

But Richard’s piece got me thinking about something tangentially related.  A number of months ago, a major Cycling publication contacted me and asked whether we’d be able to provide one of our custom steel frames for a review.  Talk about visibility!  This publication reaches more cyclists in this country than any other.  Cool.  So who is the frame to be built for?  And when is the frame expected to be done? …  ”Just make a generic frame and we need it in a few weeks.”  

So that was pretty much the end of the conversation except for my explanation of why we could not be involved, as  much as I wanted to.  a) We don’t make “generic” non-custom frames and, b) we are usually backed up about six months.  The editor was very nice and understood why we could not provide what he needed.  What he did need was a frame from a builder would could get it to him quick.  

For the most part, that rules out most if not all of the well established steel builders in the country.  Is that a bad thing?  Not necessarily, but it does mean that the article about high end custom American frames won’t represent a significant and important portion of the business.  

I’m not upset about missing a great marketing opportunity, but being less visible because we (and others) are well respected, established and won’t juggle our Q struck me as a bit of a paradox.  If we’d been willing to bend our principles a bit, we would have gotten the press.  Since we are not, we didn’t.  It is what it is and this isn’t the first time this thing has happened to us.  In fact, the editor who contacted me agreed that the time-frame imposed on him from above didn’t make much sense and in the future he hoped to set up editorial scheduling in a manner which took the type of product into account.  It is one thing to ask for a pair of shades to test next week, but a custom frame?

So there’s a bunch of us who will remain pretty much out of sight of the national press.  Like I said; it is what it is.  And like I said, if we didn’t love what we do here, we’d have been gone long ago.  Fortunately, we (the small American frame builders) haven’t relied on publications for marketing for many years.  Whoop Whoop interweb!

11/03/11

We are back in the barn this morning.  A line crew from West Virginia got us back on the grid yesterday.  The borrowed generator went back to our friends (Fred and Hilda Patton of Phoenix Sports Technology) after a light servicing and cleaning.  The wood stove hasn’t heated up the shop yet since our stone walls take a long time to warm back up.  Our old generator is in the shop for some serious work for the next outage.

It will take me at least two days to get correspondence and related work caught up. As it turns out, this comes at a time of year when we are traditionally very busy, and this year is the same.  I am feeling pretty overwhelmed at the moment.  We have thirteen orders in with Merlin and Seven and I am working with four more clients now who are in the process of preparing to order their frames.  We are trying to hold to the five months turnaround that has been holding steady for some time, but I am starting to worry a bit.  Fortunately, we get the most backed up during the time of year when riding weather is the worst for most of our clients.  

During the power outage, I drove my youngest daughter to the Phila. airport to see her off for her six months volunteering at an orphanage in Northern Tanzania.  The Tanzanian Children’s Fund runs the orphanage which is over four hours from the nearest city.  Solar power only, 5,000’ in altitude, rhinos, elephants, etc.  She will be living with and teaching children from infants through 19 years and developing mathematics curricula for the local primary schools.  We won’t see her again until May 3rd.  This is tough for us, but what she will be doing for those children will be invaluable.  We are very proud of her.  Check out the Fund’s web site and contribute to Jill’s work if the Fund’s work strikes you as valuable.  

I haven’t ridden but once in three weeks, fat …

On Saturday, October 29th, the snow started at 8:35 AM.  By the time it had ended here twelve hours later, there were almost 200,000 houses in the Lehigh Valley without power.  Spectrum and the Kelloggs were not among them, yet.  My youngest daughter and I went off to Church at 10:00 on Sunday and while we were away for a couple of hours, a tree finally gave up under the load of 8” of very heavy snow.  

So that was it.  I have borrowed a generator from a friend so we have heat in the house and the fridge and freezer are cold.  No water, not much light.  We can not work in the shop at all without light.  Jeff and I will work on clearing the driveway and yard of all the trees and branches, but no real work until we are back on the grid.  

The power company is overwhelmed and over 300 crews have come to our area from out of state.  Our road will be one of the last to get back on line since there are only four accounts being effected by that one tree while there are a number of large towns and developments without power that will be brought on line first.  I just got a robo-call from our local utility which indicated that they hoped to have us running again by Thursday evening.  

It is what it is.  Just wanted to let folks know.  If you are one of our current clients, please be patient.  I don’t have regular internet, so correspondence is difficult.  As soon as we get fully back underway, I’ll do my best to catch up.  Thank you for your understanding

10/27/11

Close to done.  Going is slow since there really is no pressure to get her done.  Jeff has been doing other work around the cross frame project.  Building a paying customer’s frame, building up complete bikes, etc.  

New images and a few comments here:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/spectrumcycles/sets/72157627715934830/

The only part of the project we have not shown here at all yet is the integrated front brake cable hanger.  The AutoCAD work is all done, but I want to make sure that the design is really correct before I post it.  Once we determine that it all works as designed, we will be posting it and giving the drawings to other builders FOC.  

I still have to finish up the art work for parts of the paint job.  Its going to be fun.

____

We have made every effort over the years to have no secrets here.  We are happy to help other builders and give away our knowledge, at lease within reason.  We don’t really have enough time to be the “go to” place for aspiring builders.  Between what we do and the combined knowledge of the other builders in the Collective (http://www.framebuilderscollective.org/), there is a huge amount of knowledge and help available to those trying to learn and improve.  It is our pleasure to help where we can.  In the instance mentioned above, I would prefer that we not publish what we are working on until we are sure that we’ve got it right.  It has worked the same way with our Randonneur front racks.  We’ve been building them for our own bikes for years, but we didn’t feel that we had them really right until about four years ago.  Now we are happy to let others know some of the tricks to why they work so well.  So we are willing to give out information, just not bad information.  K?

Now, go ride your bike.