Not immediately but he will once he gets more practice.

Ah, like the art of **** yet reverse when you become more accomplished…

I tell you what, it doesn’t matted what you post on STW, some know-it-all has to slag it off, don’t they?

Welcome to my world 😉

Nice bit of DIY ! but without being in any way dismissive, isn’t it just a copy of bog standard Taiwanese Merlin geometry judging from PP’s second ‘sweet babay jeesus’ picture ??

I see what you’re saying there but on the full thread on our THT forum Lyn explains that he based the geometry on an Inbred. Why the Merlin is in there is anyone’s guess!
He did use some design software of some sort and built it for a 100mm fork, but then somehow an error crept in and the fork anded up being longer than accounted for, hence the ‘too slack’ head angle

http://tunnelhilltrolls.get-forum.net/bike-maintenance-plus-tips-f15/new-type-bikes-frame-t1573.htm

Looks great! 8) There’s a good home-made-bikes thread on PinkBike somewhere.

great bike,, the first is the hardest,, from here on it just gets better,,
i have designed and built a few bikes in my time,, in fact some of you may even be riding them,,

but there does seem to be a number of armchair experts, out there,, we need new people in the buisness, dont get discouraged ,, get on and build the next one

as for testing ,, i’m sure he doesnt need to test it,, if you go to a local frame builder he doesnt have to build two bikes one for testing and one for the customer,,,

……explains that he based the geometry on an Inbred……

Ah so he copied a DeKerf too, just by a slightly more drawn out route.

Love ya really Brant.

😉

Welcome to my world

Indeed….
🙂

Good thing about homemade frames is that you get into immediate contact with the manufacturers customer service department at the trail side…

whats all this copied na na na stuff,,

it’s a hardtail there are only so many ways to build a convetonial hardtail,, it’s hard to be original making a hardtail

and i would ssay impossible to be original for your first bike,,

1 you spend a lot of money and time building a jig

2 you spend money buying a set of tubes

3 you spend even more time learning the skills

4 you build you first bike and you want it to work , handle and not collapse the first time ,, so you build simular to something that you know works and you like

then you can start to experiment,,

ok i used to design bikes for Marin and whyte and we used to have a whole rack of bikes designed built modified ,, that we rode with degres of sucsess,, we had prototypes which failed in very public circumstances ,,we like Brant did a lot of our design work in the public domain

a bit of a rant i know but i do get pissed off with people picking holes in other peoples great work i welcome constructive critisium ( like my spelling) but comments like he copied x or y sadly just get my goat,, unless you acompany it with a picture of a bike you built in your shed

I’d followed this on the MTBR thread for ages, really inspiring and great to see it finished.

What adward says.
How many of the people making unconstructive comment have build their own bike?

What a talent!

Those welds are very very good; the kid sus machine would have Damian Hirst in a sweat !

Hurraagh for the Brits 🙂

Also, if this guy could make a full susser for my wife at a competitive price… I’d have one.

That is a lovely looking frame.

Ooohh I wish I could weld properly I would have a go but I would end up with more holes than a swiss cheese trying to weld tube that thin

http://www.timpaterek.com

http://www.timpaterek.com

“That full-sus kiddie frame thing is a work of genius!”

I couldn’t agree more 🙂 http://www.atomiczombie.com/gallery/alisonrushton/recumbent.htm

Mine first seen on front page of (defunct old) Singletrack website circa February 2006!

If it was his own idea then that is an amazing coincidence! If mine inspired it then that is just great – I hope his kids enjoyed it as much as mine. As Ade said there are far too many people on here that consider assembling a few components to be “building” a bike.

And as for custom paint jobs? Very few of us (apart from crazy Ferrous Raoul) have the skills or equipment to also blast and paint the things to a decent standard. The local powder coater is your best friend after an eternity locked in the garage framebuilding (and will often be FOC provided you are happy with bollard black / JCB yellow / household appliance white or whatever is going through the shop on the day).

Peter – do you know if he is bringing his latest build to SSUK? Would be good to exchange notes over a beer.

Fine looking thing. Why are people so risk adverse? Surely if your bright enough to do something like this, you realise it needs self-testing progressively, until confident that it’s built adequately?

It’s not like he’s selling it to anyone.

Damn fine job well done

Peter – do you know if he is bringing his latest build to SSUK? Would be good to exchange notes over a beer.

Dunno mate. I’ll ask when I see him. 🙂
If you want to see the full story, get a log on to the THT (Tunnel Hill Trolls) forum and have a read. There’s far more than I can go into here.

out of interest…

I see he’s cuttin the chainstays in one of the pics with a holesaw that looks like it has a substantially larger diamater than his botom bracket shell. Is there a reason that its not the same diamater or within reason is it immaterial?

Pete put a link on the THT site so I’ve been following this thread and decided to sign up and answer a few questions.

Firstly, the kids bike. It was indeed inspired by mick_r. Someone I know sent me a pic of his inspired creation and I new I had to have a go. That kind of started rekindled my interest in bile building.

A little more detail on the single speed build.

It has a name, it a Type Bikes Type 44, hence the t on the seat tube sleeve.

Type Bikes is unlikely to go global, in fact Type Bikes may well fold after the next frame, you need to do at least 2 frames just to prove you can learn by your mistakes. The next one will be Type 45, it’s an age thing.

I should say first, I’m not a designer. I can design the engineering solutions to the individual problems but I don’t claim to have the overall vision to create genuinely novel designs.

I’ve used just about every resource available to help me build, frame building forums, builders blogs and suppliers all great sources of info.

Peter at Ceeway Bike Building supplies help me choose a tube set and because I was a first time builder helped choose as many tubes from old stock as possible, this keep the price down as much as possible. To give you an example the down tube was less than £4.

The jig is my take on one detailed on MTBR by dr.welby. There is a reason you see a Merlin frame in the jig. The Jig needs to be true in all three directions, while I can check its square I can’t easily check for twist so my reference point is the dummy rear axel. The Merlin frame was used as a datum and attached to the dummy axel and used to true up the rest of the jig.

To play it safe I simply copied someone else’s geometry, in this case I choose a well known steel hard tail from On One.

I used a free version of bikecad to do the basic layout then produced a full size drawing from the limited info bikecad provides.

100 hours seems like a long time but that includes all the time just sitting in the garage just thinking about it, loads of practice joints that are then cut up to visually check the weld. To give you an example the heat sink I made to help prevent distortion of the seat tube took about 10hours work.

Pete is being rather generous about the quality of the welding and the camera phone helps hide my blushes. The welding is workman like and best viewed through a thick layer of grey tractor enamel.

Some say the devils in the detail; I prefer to say the pleasures in the detail. The seat tube sleeve has an incredibly complicated complex curvature on the cut end that defies description. This complex curve came about buy accident and is a result of the hole saw size I used to slash cut the tube and the filing afterwards to clean it up. It exists only on the wall thickness of the sleeve, just over 1mm in thickness. Now its been painted over you can hardly see it, but I know its there.

It your thinking about having just do it. For me it used up TV time not riding time. OK I’m not to sure what Britains Got Talent is and for all I know Dirty Den may be building his own Jeff Jones replica on Eastenders but I’ve got a Type Bikes Type 44.

No doubt Type 44 will be retired long before fatigue has exposed my welding inadequacies, it won’t end up on the dock of ebay, just hanging on a nail from the garage wall.

Lyn

Cheers Lyn, glad you cam e along to explain it. I was just sooooooooooo impressed.
🙂

Home made Ti gearbox bike anybody?

Full story here

http://www.pinkbike.com/news/ti-Gear-Box-2009.html

Hi Lyn

Nice to hear from you. How did your version of the kiddy bike ride? Ours has started to gather dust now the youngest is approaching 5 and riding his own bike. A couple of bikey friends in Scotland has just sprogged so may well be lending them the original creation. Or maybe this winter I’ll offer to make them mkII with all the “production” ideas and improvements I have floating around…..

And by pure coincidence I found a basket full of used / offcut aluminium extrusion in our stores yesterday – I might root out the bits needed for a proper jig – work should be willing to sell some if I offer more than the current lowly scrap value.

Like you say – distortion is the real killer and where the know how lies. I’ve just made a tube steel bulkhead / grille to seperate the kids and bikes in our van and had to keep jacking the thing flat every time I showed it the torch.

Currently my welding isn’t pretty, so brazing after hours at work is the chosen route (not a very family friendly use of time). Sometime I must get my own TIG inverter so I can practice at home. What do you use? (TIG I guess but do you have a proper argon bottle or just the piddly things from machine mart?)

mick

mick,

Kids bike was fun, fun to ride, fun to build. Pedal induced bob was in some cases so evident that it use to rock my daughter to sleep.

Someone sent me a pic of yours but I didnt know how you made it, mines bits of 4 old bikes welded together plus a few bits of box section and some alloy plate so I didnt need a jig just used string to true up to the main front triangle. I welded it up with a combination of Mig and Tig, the Mig is increadibly quick, liquid metal filler really, no need for all those tight mitres, the Tig was used on some of the more critical joints.

Likewise kids are too old now, in fact I passed it on a few years ago to someone with a young family and I hope they are having as much fun as we did with it.

I’m stuck with a tag along now, no where near as good off road.

I picked up a very cheap second hand transformer based Tig about 10 years ago. It had a few issues but has been coaxed back to life. I run a large Argon bottle which is costly but convenient.

I’ve heard mixed reports on the inverter based Tig units, some say they are the laptops of the welding world, if it breaks you throw it away, but they are cheap and some offer pulsers as well. If your looking for a unit I would recommend a foot pedal as an essential, it gives you so much more control.

I wish I could fillet braze a frame, one day maybe.

Like you say, distortion is the real problem, I put enough heat into my BB shell that the EBB would no longer turn, that took a lot of time to sort out.

Now, that Ti gearbox bike, thats a real challange.

i smell a singletrackworld biker build off in the making.

I’m very impressed, I impress myself when I get my gears working or bleed a brake.

To play it safe I simply copied someone else’s geometry

I’m not sure I understand this bit. People usually build or spec a custom frame because they feel their needs aren’t quite being met by what’s on the market, so what’s the story with this one? Was it just the challenge of doing it? A project to learn on, before trying something more ambitious?

It depends on why you want a custom bike.
If you want a bike that rides differently to what is currently on offer then I guess you would discuss your requirements with your frame builder of choice and he would listen and use his experience to select tubes, dimensions and angles to tailor the ride characteristics.
I don’t think many people go to a frame builder with a full engineering drawing of what they think will produce that special blend of sublime ride quality with fast yet stable steering, ridged yet compliant ride. You may of course want a custom bike for other reasons.

In my case it’s the other reasons, and like I say, I’m not a designer of bikes.

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt in life its how important it is to have a pointless hobby, it doesn’t mind what it is but normally they suck up your spare cash and time and the results never really justify the investment, perfect.

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt in life its how important it is to have a pointless hobby

Yep! 🙂

Brazing is much more forgiving than welding but more cleanup required (but can juuuust squeeze a frame in the blast cabinet at work). And no way would I ever have Oxy-Acet bottles at home! I got warned off the very cheap scratch start TIG kits as numptys like us would constantly foul the electrode. Must save up and wait for one of those VAT free days at Machine Mart. Like you I really need a pile of mitred scrap to play with until welding half decent.

Pedal bob wasn’t a problem on my kiddy bike but it had plenty of other foibles. MKII would be plenty different and made from new tubes rather than scrap. I still have a pipe dream (sorry about pun) of selling something simple and small scale UK built at a vaguely sensible price – we can’t keep shipping things around the globe forever can we?

Must finish front garden and other house jobs ready for a long cold winter in the garage.

Right – time to pedal home via dads to play on the lathe (making bike storage for inside van).

this is a useful place to get frame parts, tubes etc

http://www.framebuilding.com/ – not the greatest of websites, but lots of stuff there if you look