My First Personal Framebuild

After learning the ropes with Caren, Matt and Ted I've gone solo and started out frame building on my own as Hesson Labs. Having already completed my fist customer bike and having a few more in the pipeline this is a thread discussing my own personal frame I'm currently coming to the end of building.

The basic specs are:
44mm Headtube
T47 68mm BB
142x12mm Flat mount Dropouts (paragon machine works)
2" Tyre Clearance whilst still using standard road cranks.

The tubing is a combination of Columbus Life and Zona with 29er stays being the key to tyre clearance.

Forks will be Columbus Futura Gravel (although I'm having second thoughts on this due to clearance issues)

And the frame will have minimal hardware:
4x Bottle bosses
1x External gear routing on the non-drive-side
1x Internal brake routing on the drive side

To build it up I'm using all the parts off my old Isen except for wheels due to needing bolt thru front and rear - I'm open to cheap suggestions!

So that's:
Apex 1 cable shifters
Rival 1 mech & cassette 11-42
FSA SL-K Light Cranks Lacquered Clear w 42t Narrow Wide
TRP Spyres
160mm F&R floating rotors
Deda Super Zero carbon seat post
Fizik Arione
Parts Bin cockpit to find what fits and upgrade later

6 Attachments

Sounds cool!

Ye I'm not sure you'll get 2" tyres in a futura gravel fork, think they're only 40mm?

Nice one! Whats the plan on paint?

Cool jig as well, what do you think of it? A friend of mine has one, they seem pretty good. I have the LCFF at the moment, but it wont be the last jig i buy hah

Looking good, how will you finishing the open ends of the stays?

I'm going with a Futura fork for now but may switch out to something else in the future once the crisis is over. For wheels I'm building up a set of DT Swiss 350s to some 30mm DT Swiss rims and I've got my hands on some Force hydro brakes and shifters so I won't have to use cable anymore which is great!

The frame is now finished and getting a super simple flat colour and logo job from Cole Coatings but will be getting something a lot more exiting in a couple of months once the paints are available.

For the stay ends they are filled with brass and shaped to a curve which works quite nicely.

This whole build is my experiment into what works and doesn't for offering to customers in the future so I'm sure it will be getting modifications in terms of forks, finishing kit, potential brazons for luggage, bottles, racks and head badge testers!

As for the jig, it's great and can't fault it at all, Ted had one when I worked with him and I used Anvil Journeymans at Isen, it's super simple to set up and got plenty of space to work around when tacking and brazing.

I'll follow up with more photos once it's back from paint.

.

6 Attachments

It lives! Quintessential niced me with an amazing paint job, I was expecting just flat logos and a single colour. It rides brilliantly and my gambles with no bridges, longer rear end and bigger tyre clearance definitely paid off. It feels great, I've already snapped the Deda Superzero seatpost doing dumb jumps in the woods and managed to get out twice on bivvy excursions in the last couple if weeks.

Very noice, paintjob looks super tidy

Looks really smart, you must be super pleased.

I've already snapped the Deda Superzero seatpost doing dumb jumps

and if you broke a seatpost and the frame handled it no problem then it sounds like you've built it really well and strong too.

Good job

If you broke a seatpost and didn't impale your arse I'm equally impressed.

Love this, great build and looks super fun to ride.