M_V's multitude of bikes and adventures in the land of framebuilding

and the inevitable paintjob upgrade.

Tempted to leave it be in the interests of resale value when I do eventually replace the frame but I've already noticed that all the bottle bosses are doubles and at least some of them would be better as triples.

There's also front gear cable routing! I mean, what is this, the '90s?!

dm me if you're wanting to join the sweepstake on

"how many weeks till this bike is in 2 halves and no paint"

Are the bars any stiffer by having that twin 'stem' brace?

Possibly. The handlebar section is a motorbike handlebar so pretty overbuilt anyway.

Triple bosses sound like a great idea, but I guess it depends on how willing you are to keep the paintjob.

re cable routing: Kona's just providing for the inevitable return of the triple.. LOL

Kona's just providing for the inevitable return of the triple.. LOL

The way cassettes are going it won’t be the triple coming back, it’ll be the quintuple taking its place!

Or one in the back, 13-speed in the front.

I’ve realised I was meant to sell

Oh yeah, haha I forgot too. They look good on this! not to worry anyway as I don’t think I can afford to spend any money on anything :)

Been working on this cargo fork on and off for a wee while.

Originally I'd planned to do a small batch but its looking increasingly unlikely that this will happen for a few reasons,

The design is too similar to the Crust fork I think. I know that shipping and import costs basically make it unfeasible to get a Crust fork over here so it's not that I'd be stealing any customers from them but Crust have done all the r+d and promo/hype stuff so I'd definitely feel like I wuld be piggybacking on that and that's not something I want to do.

They aren't that fun to make. The tubing is heavy walled and the joints are mostly boring 90deg ones. Boring but easy or interesting but hard would be fine but boring and hard work is a bit much.

There's a lot to them. A lot of miters to cut and file and a lot of joints to set up and braze. For me to make it worth my while making them I'd have to charge a ridiculous amount for them.

Anyway, that aside I gave them their first loaded test today with a ride up to a local reservoir for a wee burn up and some burnt sausages for lunch.

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this looks boss

guess it's a bit more like building a rack than a fork on the labour front aha,

This looks soo good! What is the color code for the orange basis? I might steal this look for my Squid, maybe with some fun colored logos :)
(Also seriously great details on the frame, the dropped toptube, the wishbone-fork seatstays and many more)

Cheers!

The orange is just a Montana colour, Power Orange.

Thank you! How hard was that effect marble paint to work with?

Pretty easy.

I gave an old bmx fork a blast with it first to get the hang of it. You just have to be chill and not worry about it not being super consistent.

Ahhh shame, but I get the ‘boring and hard work’ aspect of things.

Still psyched about the ones I got from you. About to start building them on a bike.

I look at this and all I can do is wonder how big a sound system it could carry...

Great work.

Did this lugged tarck frameset for an ex colleague recently, just dropped it off on Wednesday.

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Yes, those are candle holders! Customer gets what they ask for!

There’s a match striker under the downtube too.

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Also bought myself a bender been playing about with it recently.

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That stem! That stem is brilliant. I’ve been meaning to ask you about stem commissions after I saw this https://www.instagram.com/p/CPiopCAhCa6/

That was an early stem, hence the rather messy brazing. It was just the only quill stem I had to throw the frameset together to check it rode straight!

I think I still have some of the quill tube stock, not sure what I have to make the extension tube out of.

I would be after a threadless stem anyway! It’s for a Faran

Sorry, would you rather this in DM?

Candle…holders? Is there a logic behind this insanity?

Also put me down for some klunker bars if you go into production.

Those bars!
Put me on the mailing list.

No don’t mind discussing here.

I have all the stuff in stock to do thread less/ahead stems I’m sure.

What dimensions are you after?