Jaap's next step. Frame building.

After modifying (carbon) forks, frames, hubs, shifters and whatnot, the next logical step was building my own frames of course! And after spamming some friends, including @Tijs and @Tijmen this week, I decided to make a thread about it.

So I ordered a "Low Cost Frame Fixture" from The Bicycle Academy back in October 2018, however it didn't arrive until April of this year. And with a few multi-week cycling trips planned I postponed the actual building till this week.

Here's my progress so far:
Made a plan.

Ordered some tubing.

Got some dropouts from San Fran with Trump newspaper.

With most of the supplies in started making some tooling for mitring tubing on my lathe.

Now the tubing kind of fits together I started on giving my seat stays a nice curve.

Decided to try something new, used a flow drill to make bottle cage bosses. These melt the steel instead of drilling through it, creating 2,5 to 3 times the wall thickness around the hole in which to put some threads.


This gives me a chance to show off my thread cutting tools (just look at that beautiful case).

Also tried some practice welds on tubing I ordered extra, although far from perfect, they look solid enough to trust my teeth to.

This is amazing

Thanks, that's too kind.

Have been following your progress and I have to say, you're doing pretty good yourself! Respect!

The flow drill looks very interesting.

Yes. More please.

super cool!

what do you think of the fixture?

Awesome!

Subbed, great stuff!

what do you think of the fixture?

It's pretty nice, all the calibration options with the included laser and calibration plate work pretty nice.

However, the bottom bracket shell fixture is on the drive side. So there is no room to check for chainring clearance, which is unfortunate. And the read-outs on the fixture for frame sizing are all dimensions that are NOT in the free version of Bikecad, which is a shame.

I could spend another €350 on Bikecad, but I decided to spend 3 hours calculating my dimensions and keep the money for (maybe) some reaming tools.

That's a lot of progress happened very quickly, looking forward to seeing the outcome! Loved your sram 12 speed modification. Am I right in thinking that you had an AWOL up on pedalroom that had a custom AARN style chainring on? Any more info on that is the maker still going?

Yeah you're right! That was me. I had it made by https://www.themechanic-parts.com/, paid around €70 if I remember correctly. But you might get a better deal since he doesn't have to make the designs for it again.

This was it:

Exciting stuff Jaap!
Have fun with it.

Ah thanks, I did fire over an email a couple of weeks ago but no response yet but they seem to still be in business.

I have 2 e-email addresses of him:
themechanic.parts@gmail.com
info@themechanic-parts.com

€70 is cheap for a custom chainring! Its NW and 12 speed?

I ordered it about 3 or 4 years ago and 12 speed didn't exist back then :) Not sure if he has since updated his teeth.

It was NW though!

Spend some time today on the internal hydraulic line and di2 wire in the chainstays. For the hydraulic line, I just brazed in a stainless tube.


For the di2 wire, I went with the replaceable inserts Ceeway sells. Not very happy with the result...

Lekker bezig!

I’ve found that the ceeway internal routing castings are perfectly flat so you have to build up a small fillet on either side to get them to blend in nicely, yours look good especially considering to small OD of the chainstay

Subbed

I'm not too happy with it too be honest... Maybe try it on the inside of the chainstay next time. Or just fabricate something else.

@Shame dank je!

So it's official, Jaap wil never come out of the shed again to actually ride bikes.

Who has actual time to ride bikes on here?!
Too busy on the interwebz

painfully true...