Hello, I'm new/ For Sale

Joke! about the sale, put those torches down.

I've been loitering for ages and have built up my first fixed with knowledge gained only from this site and Sheldon Brown, so cheers. Every problem I encountered had been addressed in some previous thread and the site really does contain pretty much everything you might need to know, including the value of people's actual experience with building and buying. It was my first build and the things I thought would be hard were easy (fitting the bottom bracket) and the things I thought would be easy, hard (dropping tools and chipping the paint time after time after bloody time...).

The hardest part was sourcing the parts- trying to keep it 'period', and then working out I didn't very much care about that. Kept the braise-ons etc. and plan to build it up geared in the winter and start work on a nice, bare 531 frame I've picked up and dremel-ed the braise-ons off. Yeah, I like projects.

Anyway, I'm now about on either an orange geared Mercian or the newly assembled red Olmo- I'll post a pic once I manage to produce a half-decent photo (photographing bikes is harder than just lining up the crank arm...)

If you see me out west, say hello!

You are cool, managing to do all that and not come across like a total n00b with annoying questions and such.

Welcome !