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

Aha, thanks.

How about a hack cargo bike? Makes it easier to haul the tall bike back and forth for your next class.
Also, don't kill the hummus.

Since it seams you haven't completely made up your mind yet & you're open to suggestions, here's another one. Still no mods to any of your frames but opens up possibilities of carrying stuff around.

1 Attachment

Dunno why but Ive never been a fan of the xtracycle or the likes of the Yuba (?) that carry cargo in this way.

Of course I've never ridden one so my dislike is purely aesthetic.

Not a big fan either man, just dishing out some ideas you could experiment with.

Having said that, since I'm car-free I've started to look around at different cargo bikes lately and have started to like the idea of the Surly Big Dummy which has some resemblance to the above pic. It goes without saying that I'd pick a Surly any day of the week in comparison to the xtracycle thing.

What sort of welding will they teach you? If you have a choice, focusing on TIG and brazing makes the most sense if you want to make bike related stuff. It will be more demanding but also more rewarding. And if you learn to TIG using a MIG/MAG will be simple.

Have fun! I've been looking for a welding class in Sweden (did an introduction almost 20 years ago) but so far I haven´t found anything that works for me.

Same here. Let me know if you stumble upon something?

We can do mig, tig and mma or stick.

Obv for building bike stuff, tig is the ticket and when I mentioned bike stuff one of the tutors said he's get me onto tig asap but I've heard that when you are learning it's actually better to stick to mma/stick because getting nice/good results with it is harder so you learn quicker. If you can stick weld nicely then you can probably mig and tig nicely but the opposite not necessarily true if you see what I mean.

From my very limited experience stick welding is harder than MIG but easier than TIG. So it´s probably a good start. It´s tricky to stick weld material thinner than ~1,5mm without burning through but it is possible. I welded track ends to this gas pipe bike with a stick welder (crap photo):

Love these forks,

Not sure they'd ride too well though (they look like they'd be laterally compliant and vertically stiff).

A lowrider style springer fork would probably be quite acheivable with the shock and pivots etc from the full sus bikes I bought but what happens when you slam the brake on and the shock tries to rip itself apart? Not sure I'd trust those cheap shocks with that.

http://ratrodbikes.com/forum/index.php?threads/springer-fork.65386/

Great thread on Ratrodbikes.com about all sorts of different springer forks.

Lots that seem pretty homemade and quite a few that turn rigid forks into suspension forks.

Day off tomorrow so going to spend some time in the garage, looking at how I could chop up that pile of stuff I picked up the other day.

Here's what I'm looking at so far.

Will probably make something that mounts above the headtube and hangs down to mount the top of the shock to, may move the bottom shock mount inboard a bit. Dropouts can't be used as is so will hopefully plasma cut new ones with integrated disc mount or try and utilise premade dropout and disc mount section of another donor fork.

Edit: Or do I just flip the shock mount around so the shock can lay flat, parallel to the top tube of the urt and mount the other end to the steerer/pivot area?

This already looks better than I expected! And by better, I mean more badass!

I did a similar course a few years back. Was gonna suggest you don't bite off more than you can handle given the limited time.

On the other hand go for it. Just have a few different options should time start to run away from you a bit.

I've found a sculpture workshop where you can hire welding kit and workspace by the day so not the end of the world if I don't get stuff finished.

Cool. Sounds good.

do I just flip the shock mount around so the shock can lay flat, parallel to the top tube of the urt and mount the other end to the steerer/pivot area?

Now is the time to draw graphs and do maths.

Also consider the failure mode, you don't want a shock to be aimed at your face if something fails.

One of the tutors at the welding class looked at my mock up photo from more of an engineers viewpoint than I had been and pointed out a few things (shock still going to rip itself apart under braking, braking would stop the fork compressing, travel path less than ideal) and suggested a few others like flipping the swingarm around and running the shock under the downtube but I think to make it work I'd have to increase the a2c such that it wouldn't fit the frame and it wouldn't be as attractive.

Plus I put that awesome Orange F8 fork back on and it looks boss.

Going to start tigging this week at the class, I've prepared a few practice joints and then have this,

To move onto if I get on well enough.

I haven't cut the front mitres yet, will do that once I get the 2 'stem' pieces attached to the steerer clamp.

Think the mitres I have cut look pretty good for being completely done with manual hand tools.

Also going to see if I can weld a sliding disc mount to the rear of the Hummus and do away with the sharkfin.

I have one of this type to work with,

Looks good. Looking forward to seeing the results.

One of the tutors at the welding class looked at my mock up photo from more of an engineers viewpoint than I had been and pointed out a few things (shock still going to rip itself apart under braking, braking would stop the fork compressing, travel path less than ideal) and suggested a few others like flipping the swingarm around and running the shock under the downtube but I think to make it work I'd have to increase the a2c such that it wouldn't fit the frame and it wouldn't be as attractive.

Yeah, Amp fork right?

I don't mind the look per say, just not with the Hummus, I think it's too modern.

Just me or is every single fuckin bike at Nahbs this year a rigid singlespeed double top tube klunker style mtb?

They need to get with the times. Aluminium in 90s anno colours is where it's at.

Alu! Now there's a thought ...

By now you ought to have seen this: