Hi everyone. Sorry for the big lapse in communication - I've just moved house which has meant I've only had mobile internet for the last few weeks. I'll answer questions and get some lunch, then I'll type up the next big update...
Djangoberry/Phil: Sure, feel free to PM me if you have any questions. I can't claim to be an expert by any means but, as you'll find, there are a lot of things you pick up even building only one frame that you just wouldn't have thought about before.
Thanks for the link to RattleCAD - I've never used it before for some reason as I find even the free version of BikeCAD easy and powerful enough. It does lack some things though (and I'm not going to pay hundreds of pounds for the full version just yet...), so I might find some use in RattleCAD in future.
As you say, Ceeway's site is notoriously difficult to use, but their customer service is great. I decided to splash out on the TSS7 stainless dropouts with TSS2 and TSS8 inserts - they came to a pretty serious £56 before VAT and are so far the single most expensive part on the whole thing. I liked the functionality of the sliders though, and the increased space to strengthen the joint compared to horizontal dropouts. I went for the CYRK18 headtube from the Thron tubeset.
I had planned to use this UD tape, with a thin overlayer of this fabric. I wouldn't advise using a CF/kevlar blend for the whole thing because kevlar has a lower tensile strength. A top layer of it would protect against abrasion and impact damage (how much I really can't say; possibly barely at all, but more than CF alone). 99m of a 25m tape would be plenty, but I'd use unidirectional rather than woven tape for most of the joint, or half of your material (/weight/money...) is going in a direction that achieves next to no extra strength, - you're better off using UD tape or tow with the fibres aligned according to the load on the joints. In other words you'd need about twice the length of woven tape compared to UD tape, assuming they have the same weight per metre.
From my research (which you may wish to check) a bare minimum of 100g of unidirectional fibres should be enough to make all the joints (plus of course a roughly equal weight of resin). This corresponds to about 20m of UD tape or about 130m of 12k tow, 260m of 6k tow, etc... I will probably buy 40-50m of UD tape to be on the safe side as I'm using such skinny tubes and may wish to really build up the joints. If you're only using woven materials, you'll need something nearer to 200g as a minimum (Brano Meres used ~360g of woven cloth on his beautiful bamboo MTB).
Hi everyone. Sorry for the big lapse in communication - I've just moved house which has meant I've only had mobile internet for the last few weeks. I'll answer questions and get some lunch, then I'll type up the next big update...
Djangoberry/Phil: Sure, feel free to PM me if you have any questions. I can't claim to be an expert by any means but, as you'll find, there are a lot of things you pick up even building only one frame that you just wouldn't have thought about before.
Thanks for the link to RattleCAD - I've never used it before for some reason as I find even the free version of BikeCAD easy and powerful enough. It does lack some things though (and I'm not going to pay hundreds of pounds for the full version just yet...), so I might find some use in RattleCAD in future.
As you say, Ceeway's site is notoriously difficult to use, but their customer service is great. I decided to splash out on the TSS7 stainless dropouts with TSS2 and TSS8 inserts - they came to a pretty serious £56 before VAT and are so far the single most expensive part on the whole thing. I liked the functionality of the sliders though, and the increased space to strengthen the joint compared to horizontal dropouts. I went for the CYRK18 headtube from the Thron tubeset.
I had planned to use this UD tape, with a thin overlayer of this fabric. I wouldn't advise using a CF/kevlar blend for the whole thing because kevlar has a lower tensile strength. A top layer of it would protect against abrasion and impact damage (how much I really can't say; possibly barely at all, but more than CF alone). 99m of a 25m tape would be plenty, but I'd use unidirectional rather than woven tape for most of the joint, or half of your material (/weight/money...) is going in a direction that achieves next to no extra strength, - you're better off using UD tape or tow with the fibres aligned according to the load on the joints. In other words you'd need about twice the length of woven tape compared to UD tape, assuming they have the same weight per metre.
From my research (which you may wish to check) a bare minimum of 100g of unidirectional fibres should be enough to make all the joints (plus of course a roughly equal weight of resin). This corresponds to about 20m of UD tape or about 130m of 12k tow, 260m of 6k tow, etc... I will probably buy 40-50m of UD tape to be on the safe side as I'm using such skinny tubes and may wish to really build up the joints. If you're only using woven materials, you'll need something nearer to 200g as a minimum (Brano Meres used ~360g of woven cloth on his beautiful bamboo MTB).
Hope that helps - sorry it sounds so complicated!
Right, update on the way...