Brrrrrr

Olivier and I were talking today about how utterly Canadian we are. I'm on to number two in my Canadian Nationalist Biographically-Themed Bike Series (Jocelyn Lovell, check; Greg Curnoe, close). He's building a replica of Canada's most famous bike, the CCM Flyer (which Curnoe also painted, though I can't find a copy online).

And we're doing it in sub-zero temperatures! It's been below freezing all week in Toronto, and our unheated shop has been spared none of the mayhem. We're working in winter coats, toques, and mittens. Those beautiful and seasonal ice crystals are on the inside of our window.

There's been some mayhem in the shop as well. I got quite the scare this week when I went to add some silver to a little gap on the (sort of important!) drive side upper headlug. When I added my spot, I got a little on the shoreline... so I decided to clean it up by melting it down to the lug point. Much to my surprise, however, when I got everything up to temperature, a good portion of the lug just melted and flowed away. You see, as Gertrude Stein once said, "There [was] no there there." In my over-zealous quest for thin lugs, I had filed away the steel, and was down to the silver filler. (This must have been one of the spots where the lug wasn't sitting very flush to the tube—a hazard of my preferred stamped lugs.)

There is an element of Canadian-ness to this screwup also: it was because it was so dark in the shop that I couldn't see the very obvious fact that I had filed through my lug.

So all I could do was add a big blob [haha, I caught a typo that said "blog"] of silver and try to "reconstruct" the lug. This I did, and it actually doesn't look too bad, except for the pinholes:

It's also a bit uneven (overly thin... again.) As stupid as this may sound, I think I'll actually go in and add some more silver rather than try to get Noah to fix it with Bondo. This is a learning experience, so why not just keep at it until it's right? Right?!

Besides that little flaw (and the fact that I needed to un-braze the brake bridge, since it was about 2mm too low for perfect fender lines—another learning experience!), the bike looks really nice. Right now I'm fiddling with the fenders (I decided to use smooth fluted Honjo 42mms). I'll just try to make that lug look as good as possible, wait patiently for my stainless steel brake cable stops to arrive, and keep messing with the fenders. (The new Bicycle Quarterly has yet another article on setting up aluminum fenders, and it's useful. Details in the next post.)

Here's how the bike looks, positioned very deliberately in the Canadian snow—and pictured from the (thank God) properly Curnoe-ian non-drive, non-missing-lug-spot side:

Despite the absolutely innumerable errors on this bike, I really love it.

Speaking of my other Canadian Nationalist Biographically-Themed Bike, I finally put the finishing touches on the Jocelyn Lovell bike build. Namely, I added some of the new Kool-Stop salmon Mafac 4-bump pads. They look nice! But, alas, I will not be testing them on the road until the snow goes away...

Greg Curnoe Bike Progress

While I have been too busy lately to do my work and work on bikes and maintain this blog regularly, I have had sufficient time to do items one and two. And so now, a belated report on some exciting progress on the Greg Curnoe bike.

I am actually now almost done. The rear triangle, as I am increasingly learning, is by far the hardest part of the bike. There are a million things to get right, and no fixture, however awesome, seems quite able to hold it all together. Then there are the specific challenges of the Curnoe rear triangle: mostly that weird and beautiful fastback attachment. This presented added challenges of fixturing, mitering, and brazing—and did in fact result in the rear wheel sitting very slightly off-centre between the seatstays. A half milimetre or so of dropout filing fixed that, however.

Now I'm in the midst of adding the braze-ons. It's always really hard to get bridges perfectly straight when you're doing everything by hand and checking straightness by eye—but they came out alright. The rear cable hanger was a bit tricky but come out pretty well. I'm now officially good at Mafac braze-ons, but I did end up putting one on backwards this time! I must say, though, it was pretty fun and easy to take it off and flip it over. Screwing up is always the best way of learning.

Now, the specifics...

Here is the bike with a faux-build. I'm afraid it's getting dark up here in Toronto, and I couldn't get any decent indoor lighting to take this photo. (This is also a big problem in the shop -- it's hard to see anything past about 3pm!)

Here is my pride and joy. Good Lord I love this seat lug and stay attachment! There's a lot going on: the old stamped Cinelli CS lugs have a reinforced binder, and the 11/14/11 double-tapered Deda seatstays are silver fillet brazed straight on to it. It doesn't look exactly like the one in the Curnoe painting, but it's pretty damned close—and even nicer, if I may say so myself. The cutout on the side of the seatlug (present in the Curnoe painting) is pretty cool too. You can't argue with a seatlug that looks like an angry bird mid-scream.

I'm also pretty fond of this whole aspect of the bike. With normal wrap-around stays, it can be tricky to place the Mafac bosses, since the brake requires 60-64mm pivot spacing, but with 130mm spacing and wrap-around attachment, you really have to miter the bosses to the extreme inside of the stays. With the fastback attachment, I was able to miter by bosses exactly to the centre of the stay. (And the stays are 14mm at the brake boss—nice and wide.) Since no brake is attached to the SS bridge, I was able to use a nice thin tube (9.5mm), which I think looks very nice. There's plenty of room for the 37mm fenders I'm going to use.

This picture tells a slightly more disappointing story. I went to the rather insane trouble of moving the derailleur hanger on this bike (normally it sits right at the "front" on the dropout slot)—all so that I could reduce chain gap and thus get good shifting performance from a Huret Jubilee derailleur. Well, let me tell you, the chain gap is very reduced: so much so that I won't be able to get the derailleur to shift on to the 21-tooth cog I had wanted to use. I could maybe get away with a 13-18... but since I actually want to ride this bike, it's a no go. I could just move the wheel back in the slot, but that would mess up my fender lines, and sort of defeat the whole purpose of getting really low chain gap. So I'm going to use this Chorus 10-speed derailleur. They shift better, anyway, aren't very heavy, and will allow me to use my preferred 13-24 rear setup. (Of course they don't look as cool as Jubilees.) Anyway, not quite a tragedy. (And I have a rear dropout that won't look like anyone else's!)

Here's the stop for the rear brake cable housing. It's offset a bit to the non-drive side and also pointed up, both of which should help the cable path to the brake. This little fellow also serves as a second SS bridge, which is nice since fastbacks are reputed to be weaker than wrap-around attachments. I'd think they're stronger than anything else in tension—there's nowhere to go!—and I'm sure my double-bridge setup will keep things from shifting around side-to-side. So should be very strong! I might even use this setup on my randonneur bike; I don't see any disadvantages... (Yes, there's still lots of clearance for 45mm fenders).

Brazing on the downtube bosses was an immense pain. I would get them centred (held in place with a c-clamp), but then during tacking one of them would slip—or I'd get them just about brazed and then the whole boss would shift slightly. Anyway, I finally got them just about right—and the shifters definitely look centred mounted.

So what's next? Well, I still need to add water bottle bosses (one set on the DT) and brake cable stops (I'm going to use single stops, placed at 12 o'clock on the TT) and a derailleur stop. Then I need to file the lugs some more... and then paint! I have (I think) decided to hand-paint the bike. Obviously this fits into the whole Curnoe theme. But I'm afraid it will look awful. I am obsessively trying to work out how to do it by hand and make it look really good...

Jocelyn Lovell Bike: Build 1.1

Since I wasn't happy with my shellac colour, I took it off, wrapped some new white tape, and then applied somewhere between 20-25 coats of clear shellac. Now it looks right! Everything still needs to be polished, and I still need new Mafac brake blocks, but otherwise this is pretty close. It looks great now—and seems to ride very well too!

Definitive Answers about TA Track Crank BB Length; and Jocelyn Lovell Bike: Third Look

First things first: let no one every again wonder what bottom bracket spindle length to use with a TA Pro 5 Vis "Cyclotouriste" Track/Piste/Pista cranks (abundance of words to help Googling.) The answer is: 107mm JIS. Using a Shimano UN72 bottom bracket, this gave me exactly 42mm chainline. Now, mine are newer-production arms with laser etchings, and from what I understand, the newer ones occasionally need longer spindles than the older production. But any shorter than 107 and the spider would bottom out against even the remarkably low-profile UN72. So I can confidently say: pretty much anyone with TA cranks, with the exception of some hypothetical people with laser-etched arms different from mine: use a 107mm JIS spindle. (So much for TA's recommendation of 111.5mm—maybe they were talking about ISO taper BBs to fit in their JIS-taper crank arms. They're a funny company.) And do use really low-profile BBs like the Shimanos. The SKF 107 would NOT work: the "fixed cup" side sticks out too far, and the spider would bottom out.

Well, that's settled. Here's a look at the first iteration of Jocelyn Lovell Bike's build. I'm happy with most of it except (a) the tape colour, which is too brown—I'm already about 15 coats of clear shellac in to fixing this problem, and (b) the Wippermann Connex chain has a lousy master link, which I had to remove since it severely messed up my drive train. Who needs master links anyway, though, on big fat healthy chains? More photos of the bike when I'm completely happy with it.

Jocelyn Lovell Bike: Second Look

Some direct sunlight brought with it a better chance to take nice photos of this brilliantly painted bike. Here they are.

I had been planning on using the polished Dura Ace track cranks I used on Niles... but one look at these TAs up against the frame and I was convinced.

The only problem is getting the BB spindle length right. Some rough measurements suggest 107mm is going to be the way to go with these arms (the newer production ones). Unfortunately I can't use an SKF—the way the fixed cups are designed would make the spider bottom out.

Thank you, Wyndham Lewis.

Thank you, typeface designers at the Bauhaus, French logo-makers, Wes Anderson, and people who know Illustrator better than me.

It's a shame the 531 decal won't be in plain view—but the painted Silca is actually probably prettier. Lots of nice points at the seatlug...

Pump and seat tube.

Bottom bracket area. (That half-installed SKF, a 116mm one, is definitely not staying. Too bad, as the non-DS "cup" is red anodized and would match!)

Schopenhauer and Jocelyn Lovell Bike: casting shadows.

Jocelyn Lovell Bike: First Look

I went to pick up the completed frame today from Noah at Velocolour. I must say, I was totally blown away at how beautiful it looks. I remember Doug Fattic telling me that the key to success in frame building is very simple: have a good painter. I think Noah has made me look very good.

I doubt the colours will come across that well in these indoor shots, but they're absolutely beautiful. The blue is very light, the cream very creamy, and the red nice and bright. The masked headtube looks wonderful, and the painted pump is fantastic—I'd thought about having a panel on the seat tube, but this sort of has the panel effect while preserving the minimalist feel.

Noah used masks instead of decals, and the logos all came out looking great. I love the way the red jumps out of that massive white headtube. (And the Mafac spring retainers look so good that they almost seem worth the incredible effort...)

Again, not the greatest photo—but you can see the white-painted triangles on the Nervex crown, the 531 fork decal, and a bit of the downtube logo. Literally every possible tube on this bike is 531: all the frame tubes, the chain and seat stays, the steerer, the head tube, and the fork blades.

A better look at the fork and the lower headlug. I'm very proud of how nice the crown looks now, given how ugly it was when I started with it. (My lug work is far from flawless, but isn't so bad. I generally like the shapes, even if they're not filed as thin as I'd ideally like them.)

The colour contrast is really, really nice!

This is the other creative paint detail: the tops of the tack ends are painted white. I hear that a few people who've seen the bike in the shop have commented on the angle of the dropouts/track ends—they should be parallel to the ground with the TT level (so that the head tube angle/BB height is constant regardless of the position of the rear wheel), but they're angled with the chainstays, like on a normal bike (so that the rim stays in line with the brake pads). It's a minor thing and it won't bug me too much—and I was only following the angle of the track ends themselves.

So now it's time to build it up—I have a feeling JL will look even better with all his parts. I'll have some professional-quality photos taken when it's ready.

Jocelyn Lovell Bike in Primer

Noah from Velocolour sent me some pictures last night of my frame in primer. It's really useful as a learning exercise to see things at this stage. As tricky as it is to actually file lugs flat and evenly thin, one of the hardest things is just having a way of telling if you've done a good job or not. Primer seems to bring out all the imperfections very clearly. (And then a good painter hides all of those imperfections, and makes you look like a genius when all the painting is done.)

There's the bike from far away, where everything of course looks very nice. That's truly a massive head tube.

This is the inside tang of the fork crown. I knew the old Nervex crown had some "holes" in it, from the casting process that produced it. But I didn't realize how bad it looked! I should have added brass before brazing.

It looks like I simply forgot to clean up my filing on the (drive side!!) seat lug before attaching the stays. Really rough and ugly in there! The shorelines are a bit on the gobby side too, which is actually a bit of a surprise. The reinforced binder looks pretty rough as well, though probably the ugly stuff will be hidden by the actual binder. This picture definitely makes me wish I had a sandblaster, which would even things out enough so that I would be able to see mistakes like these.

This one's not too bad (and it should look good, being the drive side lower headlug), but the edges could be filed better, and there's a brazing gob along the shoreline.

Very useful to see this now, since I'm working on filing the lugs for the Greg Curnoe bike right now. Patience pays off in lug filing, I see, and the ridiculous among of time it takes to do it right is worth it.