UPDATE: CycloFiend has converted the Rivendell Reader “prerelease” of Issue 43 to a more manageable PDF format: http://tinyurl.com/rbw-rr43
Well… apparently some people are getting links to THIS in their inbox.
Not me.
I’m a little distressed, though. It’s the second time I’ve seen “it’s” for “its” in Riv copy. Maybe that’s the new spelling? Just go with the flow?
Made these on Saturday, mailed them on Monday. One normal deck size, one “extremo,” super-large (as mocked on Bikesnob) size.
I did set up a “BikeTinker” Etsy shop, but I’d rather sell these through my Philip Williamson Etsy shop. Maybe someone will want to buy some art, too, who knows? I need to get some bike tee shirts up there, too.
Thanks to Bill Laine at Wallingford for the magic tip. The nose bolt on a Brooks isn’t held in by anything but tension. A little light tapping and prying had the whole thing slide apart.
New rivets, a couple hammers, a nail-set and a chisel, and the saddle seems functional again! The chisel split the hollow part of the rivet, and the nail-set peened the pieces over firmly. At the end, I went at the rivets with the wedge-part of the smaller hammer.
I thought I’d start with two across from each other, but it worked best to start with the one to the right of a bag loop (second from the corner), then start working my way across. It took too much pull to line up the leather hole with the cantle hole for the rivet.
The last rivet I had to sort of lever into place with the scratch awl through the hole.
The corner rivets were the hardest by far to really set well, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they ease up a little from completely flush in the future.
The saddle looks a little more scuffed than it did to start with, and there are rivet-dents in the piece of wood I used to protect the marble top of my typesetting bench. After I noticed the scruffs and scrapes in the marble… I started out using the metal rail, but got kind of carried away.
Does anyone know how to get the nose bolt out of a Brooks saddle? The ~14mm nut seems to be attached to the bolt, and the whole thing turns and turns. Nothing seems to be unscrewing from anything else, and there’s nothing to grab onto that isn’t the nut.
Brooks B72 saddle repair, originally uploaded by BikeTinker.
I intend to put a new frame on Angelina’s Brooks B72. I bought the saddle from a fellow on the RBW list, broke a rail, fixed it with a sleeve, broke the other rail, fixed it with another sleeve, and then the whole bottom part gave way. Another fellow on the RBW list gave me a B72 with wrecked leather.
It’s finally time to put the two saddles together, so I drilled out the rivets and got ready to do it, but I can’t figure out how to remove the nose piece.
I don’t want to drill out the nose rivets – I’d like to move the nose, bolt and hardware right over to the other chassis.
utopia, originally uploaded by BikeTinker.
The Gary Fisher rigged up for Max. With a longer stem and the seatpost extended, it fits me pretty well, but it’s supposed to be for my 10 year old. I’m going to de-un-singlespeed-ify it before I try to convince Max to ride it, though.
The Redline Junior has been his bike since he was 5, but now he’s 10. The Redline is highly recommended – I wish I had a 15 lb bike! Standover is very different, but I hope it won’t be an issue. The contact points are pretty close to the same between the two bikes; seat’s a bit higher on the Utopia, which is fine. Cranks are longer.
20 pounds with the new (used) Kona PII fork. Here’s how it looked when Jim owned it (cooler).
I didn’t see that coming! It kind of threw me off my stride, looking at my stats for the first time, to see I had 99 posts.
I asked my wife, who reads blogs for a living, “isn’t that supposed to be a big deal? The Hundredth Post? In the blog world?”Apparently yes, but she heaped scorn upon all the things people normally do to mark the occasion, like “flashback episodes” and giveaways, so I’ll sneak those things in later when she’s not looking.
I was thinking, though, that it’s a little weird that now I have a semi-pseudo alternate identity as “Bike Tinker.” I haven’t had an internet “handle” since before the internet, after growing out of and throwing off a succession of teenage BBS and young-adult art-making handles. I’ve been participating in the internet under my own name for a long long time. Google me, you find me. I’m the one who owns Dickies pants the pants, not Dickies Pants the company (“hook me up, bra!“).
Seriously. Any bike nerd who isn’t named Jim, Mike or Bill is named Philip. There are a disproportionate number of Joels, too. Which is my middle name.
I met an online acquaintance at a bike show, and said, “Hey! I’m Philip – from the nerdy bike list!” and she said, “I know about FIVE Philips.” I was like, “yeah, you would, huh.” Kind of killed that spark of recognition.
I called a bike magazine about an assignment I was working on, and the editor was like, “uh… this is weird, but I’m expecting phone calls today from three different Philips. When they transferred the call… they didn’t say which one you were!”
About a month after starting the blog, I showed up at the Oregon Handmade show and introduced myself to someone who said, “Oh! BikeTinker!”
Ah, that’s more like it!
What are these shocked twin amphibians staring at, as if to say “Good Lord!” I wonder.
Could it be… the Rivendell Simpleone is approaching? The Simpleone is the rebirth of the Quickbeam – new name, new paint, same geometry.
Why a new name? My theory that Grant and Co. have a big bag of awesome names they’d like to use up, was, apparently, wrong. The story goes that, at the request of the Tolkein rights holders (not the film company), Rivendell agreed (in a non-legally-non-binding way) to stop using certain Lord of the Rings names, including Quickbeam, Baggins and Legolas.
Also, these bikes are made in Taiwan, not in Japan by Panasonic, and they have fancy headtubes and plainer graphics.
I would like a 62cm, please.
Renovated JR Jackson, originally uploaded by capnahabnick.
Man, that’s cool. Look at that machine. Click the picture and look at the whole set. Clearance to spare, hubs, rims, flared drops. Kickback(?) Fichtel & Sachs hub. White hoods, beautiful old saddle.
And you probably missed it, but if you look closely you can see the barber pole seat tube. Too good. How many other bikes could carry that off? (The answer is “none.”)
Except… the fatbike/snowbike tire has a larger OD than anything else you can buy! Is this true?
| 559 (26″ mtb) | 584 (650B/27.5″) | 622 (700C) |
| 92mm | 76mm | 56mm |
| 92mm | 76mm | 56mm |
| 743mm OD | 736mm OD | 734mm OD |
| 3.8″ Fatbike |
Dialing back the fatbike tire, so we have some equivalencies. The 650B still drops out of this race.
| 559 (26″ mtb) | 584 (650B/27.5″) | 622 (700C) |
| 87mm | 74mm | 56mm |
| 87mm | 74mm | 56mm |
| 733mm OD | 732mm OD | 734mm OD |
| 3.45″ Snow | 2.55″ 29er |
This might be taken as an argument for 24″ fatbike tires… a real fat snow tire in 24″ (iso 507) would be 507+90+90=687, or the same Outer Diameter as a 32mm road tire and a 2.5″ mtb tire.
Now that I have a bike project underway involving disc brakes and decent clearances, I sat down and did with a purpose something I’d done a couple times just for fun: figured out tires for 700c, 650B and 26″ rims that give equivalent wheel diameters*.
Now it’s inscribed in the immutable internet, and I can refer back to it later.
Narrower. In my circles, the 42mm 650B “Hetre” is the most-hyped tire… well, ever. I’ve never ridden it. Of these first three, the 2.1″ mtb tire is the only one I’ve ridden, and I’ve worn them bald. It’s a good size. I’ve also ridden a 590×37, which has a similar OD to the 650B, (and can be boughten or ordered at any LBS). It was also a good size, for the bike it was on.
| 559 (26″ mtb) | 584 (650B/27.5″) | 622 (700C) |
| 53mm | 42mm | 23mm |
| 53mm | 42mm | 23mm |
| 665mm OD | 668mm OD | 668mm OD |
| 2.1″ MTB | 42mm 650B | 23mm 700C |
Plumper. I’ve only ridden the 32mm tire. Good for everything but deep gravel, which is just sucky no matter what.
| 559 (26″ mtb) | 584 (650B/27.5″) | 622 (700C) |
| 63mm | 50mm | 32mm |
| 63mm | 50mm | 32mm |
| 685mm OD | 684mm OD | 686mm OD |
| 2.5″ MTB | 2″ 27-five | 32mm 700C |
I do not know of anyone who’s actually set up a bike with interchangeable wheelsets in different sizes, but it must’ve been done. It’s probably common in some circles.
* The rolling diameter is important-ish, because a big mismatch can affect the handling, standover, pedal clearance, etc. I’ve happily and comfortably run 25s through 40s on my Quickbeam, but that’s the best bike in the world and can do anything.
Gazelle – Ladies Sport Luxe, originally uploaded by montclairbobbyb.
My friend Bobby B, of the Renaissanced Bicycle group just showed his in-progress Gazelle.
He’s changing the wheels to a modern 3-speed with drum-brake and a drum-brake dynamo. I don’t think the fork-crown is even drilled for a brake, since it used to be a coaster-brake one-speed.
He modified the chaincase to allow for the rear shifter mechanism, and also removed the chainwheel cover to show the leaping gazelles.
Beautiful, spare lines, and I think the rear rack is lovely.
Joe Kochanowski builds crazy-looking homebuilt recumbents that have “good ramming capacity in traffic.” My son Max calls this guy “bicycle Einstein.” “Who’s smarter than that guy? The answer is ‘no one.’ There’s no one smarter than him. In bicycles.” Linked from Wallingford (wallbike.com)’s blog.
From the same site as the Joe recumbents, (Jim Gallant’s Human Powered Vehicle page) is this kid-first triplet tandem, called a “trandem,” which gets the Max Nod of Approval as well. “That’s such a great word. ‘Trandem.’”
On its way from SpeedGear’s eBay shop. It was exactly the length I needed, with no extraneous canti bosses. I’m going to put it on the Quickbeam.
Bahahahaah! No, really, it’s replacing a bitchin’ Rock Shox Metro hybrid fork on a project bike. If that bike doesn’t work out, this is still a fork I’ve wanted for a long time. Except the 26″ canti-post version, of course. This one is 18″ from axle to crown (463mm), disc-only, for a 29er. Steerer is actually longer than the current fork, so I might be sourcing more spacers. I don’t want to cut the steerer, since the kid’s only 10.
He might grow.
Swapped out the cranks on Angelina’s new Belleville, and added her Wald fold-out baskets to the sweet rear rack. The stock cranks and pedals are horrible. When I mentioned that we could lower her seat 5mm, because the stock cranks are 170s and her old Ritcheys are 175s, she was like, “Oh! So that’s why it feels like my legs are spinning tiny circles!”
Seriously – I’ve had arguments with people who say you can’t feel 5mm of crank length. If my wife, who likes her bike (Angelina “do you like kids?” my dad: “I like my kids…”), but appreciates most bikes at a remove (because I like them, analogous to the way I know what a peplum is), can tell the “microscopic” difference in cranks, then those people can just STFU appreciate their lack of hyper-sensitive OCD detail-noticin’.
Next up – the saddle. I need to re-mount her B66 leather on a new sprung frame. By new, I mean used and free, from the RBW list charity drive. And I’m totally stealing Jim’s white rubber block pedals… how’s he going to know?
It turns out that one of our clients at my day job (Toy Store Website Designer) has a blog, which came up on the phone. “Oh you have a personal blog? Me too, it’s called Re-Velo.com. I make bags out of inner tubes.”
“That’s cool! I have a blog called Bike Tinker. It’s about, um, about tinkering with bikes.”
“My housemate’s a bike mechanic! He repairs carbon bikes. Do you know anyone else who does that?”
“Yes. But it’s a pretty rare skill!”
Anyway, it’s a funny small world, and I really like her shoe-remake, and I’m trying to get her cast off shoe tongues for bike mudflaps…
I visited the show with some friends – really nice to circulate, show each other stuff and talk about bag designs. I got some really nice feedback on my bike, which was gratifying, and met a fellow named Tony who had a really nice green-themed fixed gear in the Pimp’d area.
Jim bought a $10 “bucket pannier” kit – everything but the buckets. I think that’s a dynamite idea, especially if you’re buying by mail. Buckets are almost free, but not to ship. The guy said CityBikes carries them, too. Jim’s going to make some luggage that works on both his CETMA rack and his dual-sport motorcycle. I want to get some of that hardware to turn all kinds of weird things into panniers and rack-mounted luggage.
The show was much more about stuff than bikes, but there was a bike fashion show, guys on bikes jumping massive gaps, trials and roller racing. Also, there were some bikes. The standouts for me were the mixtes – English, Vulture and Linus. Vulture admittedly outside his normal range, “It’s not a one-speed 29er!” and English as well, being a time-trialist and HPV record-holder. Linus – I just saw two of their bikes randomly parked inside.
And… I always love the bikes locked up outside. I think the Pimp’d bike part could be made much much bigger – basically indoor valet parking, with the valets ‘curating’ the churning show.
And, some bad pictures – I’m seriously shopping for a new camera (a NEX-3 or 5 for my beautiful antique lenses), but I don’t expect it to make my shots any better. I just like tools.
