Hacks: April 2017

“Well, shit, that month didn’t go so well, did it?” That was the first thing that went through my head when I started this draft and started thinking about what tinkering I’d done in April. Of course, I wasn’t really thinking about the fact that it was April 18th when I started the draft and that I had almost two full weeks left in the month. Here’s what I got after in April:

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Missing the Craft

I miss framebuilding. I make no bones about it. I love damn near every part of the process — and when everything’s happening the way it should, the process of building a frame might be the most rewarding thing I do. (Yes, there are clusterfuck days, and stupid mistakes, and annoying shit that doesn’t seem to go quite right, but I love all of that, too.)

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Tiptoeing Forward: CX Frame Build, Part 9

This weekend of framebuilding didn’t quite go down as planned. When I got to work, I just wasn’t quite in the zone mentally, and based on past experiences, I know that’s when stupid mistakes get made. So I decided to spend my time conservatively — not rushing, and to focus on what I could do with my mindset being what it was. So, you know, not much. While I am supposed to take the occasional day off from my Adderall, today probably wasn’t the best day for that.

First things first, I started off by doing some alignment work. The front triangle was only off by a hair over a millimeter, so I decided to go ahead and run with it. The next step was to get the chainstays into place where they needed to be. That’s done — they pulled inward a couple of millimeters, and it was primarily the drive-side where that was an issue. A couple careful pulls, and it was right where it needed to be. Lastly, wheel twist — when the wheel was in-place, it was pretty obvious that the chainstays were slight out of alignment. A few twists and shoves on the rear wheel while it was in there, and all was right with the world. I spot-checked myself with the H-tool (see the main image above), and everything looked legit. Pretty dang pleased with myself.

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Musings: CX Frame, Part 7

I don’t really have too much of an update for you on the framebuilding front right now. Over the last two weeks, the project has plodded forward slowly. The weekend of April 25th-26th, I managed to cram Ignite Minneapolis, Minneapolis WordCamp, and the Minnesota Ironman Ride all into one frenzy of activity that precluded any … Read more