Guypie's Bike Builds - A paint job and more!

Guypie · June 18, 2022

After the great success of the Llama based seat post alignment tool design I decided that maybe the dummy axle holder would work well if it looked like a duck.

With that done a dummy axle and clamp followed shortly after

And that is the jig mostly done. Certainly done enough to make a bicycle with.

Guypie · June 19, 2022

So for bike number 3 I decided that my previous 2 bikes were far too practical and that I need to make something that is almost useless. Well not really but thats is pretty much how it turned out. Most of the design decisions were made for 2 reasons.

First reason is that I wanted to make a bike with as short a chainstay length as possible as that has a few advocates in the frame building world. I'm not convinced and think that it should be a ratio of front centre to rear centre, so if the front gets longer the back should too to maintain a neutral weight distribution between the front and rear wheel. But I don't really know so I figured I would make a long bike with a short rear end and see how it rides.

Second reason is that I wanted it to be cheap and use as many of the parts that were already floating around in my shed. So it has a few odd standards that will make it ineligible for further upgrades in many ways. I had a single speed setup in the stash and sliding dropouts would be easy to make at home and allow for chain tensioning. I had a spare 26" wheelset from a dirtjump bike that I had built up then decided I didn't really like and then sold off the frame, so I made it to suit this wheelset with a 10x135mm axle.

I made a chainstay yoke out of 25x6 flat bar with a couple of bends and the dropouts are from some 6mm plate. After putting all the parts in the jig its a just a game of connect the dots. So much easier! there are still some processes with getting tubes mitred that I need to make tools for, particularly the seat stay to seat tube interface. It intersects at an angle on 2 planes so I really would like to make a jig for the seat stays so I can just pop the mitering jig in the milling vice and get a nice clean cope. that is probably next on the to do list after building @hampie a bike.

I made a reducer to go in some straigt gauge 31.8mm tubing to fit a 27.2mm seatpost. I slotted it on the mill with a tiny wee endmill spinning at 4000rpm. that was quite exciting but it came out pretty well I think!

I borrowed @Geophy's bramley bender and had a go at bending up some seat stays. they came out ok, a little wrinkly on the inside. Probably could have done the packing with sand or ice trick. I mostly covered it up with a little brace that I was super happy with, I recon it looks cool.

Guypie · June 19, 2022

I didn't really give it a big test run before paint like the first 2 bikes, I don't think there will be any issues so I decided to paint it after spending about an hour or so riding it around the house doing bunnyhops and generally messing around. I painted it GM beechwood medium fading to GM beechwood light, a very 80's metallic colour. Pretty happy with how it came out, its far from perfect but its straight and shiny and looks very purposeful.