Day 5 at Brew and Things are Looking Pink

Friday dawned beautiful and sunny once again, though the alarm went off a bit too soon for my bleary eyes and soggy brain. Yes, my brain was pretty full and I was
feeling a strange combination of deep tiredness and the excitement of yet another day of building my first frame. It is amazing how our minds can push our bodies further than we feel possible, kind of like doing a long, hard endurance race on the MTB. A truly rewarding experience and similar to the mountain bike race, I am still recovering a bit five days later. Some say this is how I look most of the time anyway!

In any event, day 5 was the biggie; the culmination of what we had learned so far and the application of our knowledge and skills with various machinery and tools in BREW's wild laboratory. Steve could weld on top of just about anything, just shuffling various tools, welding consumables and miscellaneous debris with a wave of his un-gloved hands. BTW, this guy literally has hands of steel; he doesn't get burned or feel the pain of heat blistering the skin on hands and fingers. A gentle soul residing inside a carcass of steel, heheh.

Moving right along, the tacking of each tube together was taken care of by lunchtime and we didn't break for long. Steve warned us that we were in for a bit of a late night and we wanted to make the most of our waning hours at school. Grant was also planning on hitting the road for Wooster, OH, home of Groovy Cycles for Rody's 2nd Annual Open House. Fortunately, Grant made it out of Steve's shop just before a brilliant sunset, wielding a beautiful copper hued 29er with some cool custom touches. If you click over to Rody's blog (and scroll down a few blogs) you'll see that Grant not only made it to the open house, but won an award for having travelled the farthest to make the trip. He really went out of his way heading all the way south to Boone, NC from north of Toronto, CA and then looping through Wooster on his way back to the Great White North. Hopefully the Zamboni will still be in one piece upon Grant's arrival home...

The first pics to your right are of Grant's new frame prior to that bee-u-tee-ful powder coating job. The second set of pics is after Steve's amazing-powder-coating-magic-wand-waving experience. Happiness indeed! Grant also brought along a custom handlebar made by none other than Rody at Groovy and he had the foresight to have them done to match his frame. Smart guys, those Canadians!

So, off went Grant in his Subaru and Just as I thought I'd be lonely, my good friend Jared arrived from his current digs in Durham, NC where he is at Duke for Nurse Anethesiology. Try saying that three times fast! Actually, he arrived a couple hours before Grant departed and he brought his awesome boxers, the ladies Zoe and Telula. I sure have missed them all.

Jared helped me finish some final details (Thanks Jared!) on the frame and was able to experience the "BREWru" at work as Steve welded in the bottle bosses and cable guides for my rear disc brake and internally geared rear hub. I will be running full cable housings, btw.

Then it was time for me to commit to my new frame's color and we hit the powder coating lab in Steve's barn. This place is super cool, no doubt.

We prepped the frame and Steve prepared the powder. After the frame spent about 10 minutes in the oven burning off impurities and the like (amazingly, I didn't disapear into the ether), we were ready to spray the dry mist of powdery paint.

Voila! Here is my new frame cooling with a lovely new coat of "Pink Panther" on its tubes.
Yes, I am one happy guy and no, for those of you keen enough to notice, Jared and I didn't ask each other what color shirt we were going to wear that day!

And this last pic is the following morning, in a Hardee's parking lot saying farewell to Jared and heading back up to the 'Burgh as we like to call it in Pittsburgh. An amazing trip and one to remember forever. Thanks again to Steve Garn, lovely wife Kim and their family and also to my new buddy and classmate, Grant Dickie.

Oh yeah, my parts are on their way for the new build, so stay tuned as I turn this frame into a complete cycling machine.

Finally, I will be posting more about my new business as things happen. I have ordered my TIG welding system and shop tools and I hope to be rolling by early next week.

Get out and ride!

Catching up on the BREW Experience

Life in the mountains... a great way to start the day. Grant and I stopped for a minute on our drive in to catch some pics of a normally sunny mountain view, only to stare into the ever changing clouds and fog on the ridge. Beautiful stuff nonetheless, just not quite the mile long view. No complaints, for sure, and we were only minutes away from working some raw tubing into something resembling bicycle frames.

Self taken pic of me backing myself up against the guard rail. Good thing I am wearing safety orange in the apex of the hairpin turn!

Grant trying to run from my camera lens. No chance buddy! See that perma-grin on Grant's chin? He would later say that grin is a by-product of the "smell of bikes being made." A good scent indeed, eh?

It still seems amazing to me that our bike frames started as fairly nondescript tubes on shelves in a little room off the back of the shop. Just hanging out, silently chanting, "pick me, pick me!!" in the hopes of being more than a single tube alone in their lonely tube world. As it turns out, the key to building a truly custom frame is selecting each tube to work best with each other tube (duh), but instead of choosing a complete tubeset from a single manufacturer, a blend of many types of high quality 4130 tubing gets put together. My frame has True Temper OX Platinum chainstays and seat tube, Reynolds seatstays, top and down tubes and a Columbus head tube. That is a coming together of U.S., British and Italian quality steel. Take that, U.N.!

Measure twice or three or four times is not a bad idea. Cut once or in the case of tube mitering, grind and file so much your eyes start to cross and go blury.

Here Grant checks his seat stay miters. As Walt of WaltWorks stated recently, seat tubes are truly the biggest headache of all the tubes.

More checking of alignment between wrestling with grinders, sanders and files. Grant was checking things out with BB shell just like the one already welded to his seat tube and residing in the frame jig. All this machining really is like making a sculpture. Fortunately, this will be one fun sculpture.

Here I am working with the grinder fitting up the top tube where it will lovingly mate with the head tube. Brits joining with Italians! BTW, that is not my morning coffee next to the grinder; rather that is some cold water to help cool the tubes as they get very hot from all the grinding friction.

How are things mating up? Pretty good so far...

The chainstays are interesting because they should be treated as a pair to keep good alignment in the rear triangle. After tacking the Paragon sliding disc dropouts to the stays, I was mitering away. Here Steve checks my progress before we welds the chainstays to the bottom bracket shell.

TIGing up the seat stays and dropouts. Steve made sure all the welding was taken care of while Grant and I did all the machining and mitering. Welding takes much more time and practice than we had during our 5 day training. Though we did spend a good bit of time getting the feel for the TIG torch, foot pedal and feeding rod into the puddle. Steve gave us such an amazing education about everything TIG that I will be buying a machine tomorrow. No more shopping or comparing necessary. Thanks Steve!

Finally, bending those pesky seatstays. As I learned, and somewhat to Steve's surprise, not a lot of the seat stay tubing wanted to cooperate with the bending process. It was heartbreaking to watch some beautiful tubes get kinked and tossed into the recycle pile... Alas, that is how the life of a frame builder goes sometimes. Good news is that we finally got it right and much was learned in the process.

Well, this wraps up Day 4. I will have Day 5 for you tomorrow with lots & lots more pics and accompanying tales from BREW Racing Frames in Creston, NC.

The Gloves Come Off (actully, they went on)

Day three was an intense but incredible day here at the BREW headquarters. I took lots of pics, so here are a bunch to stare at for now until I can get more time to type the words that accompany them. I figured most folks just like to look at pictures anyway, so have a great time. More soon...




















See you soon!

Learning From A Guru

Greetings from Boone, NC!


I'll begin by saying that I have so many more words and thoughts than time to share them from the first two days at frame building school. I am leaving in 25 minutes for my third day with Steve Garn at BREW Racing Frames in Creston, NC (a beautiful, mountainous 30 minute drive outside of Boone) and my excitement continues to rule over my mounting exhaustion.

As you can see from the pics above, Steve lives in a stunning part of the world. So much natural beauty surrounds his place that it would be hard to be uninspired here. Breathing the clean, crisp mountain air while glancing at the surrounding mountain ridges is good medicine indeed. Ironically, I would love nothing more than to hop on a bike and explore for hours, but my bike is still just a set of random tubes waiting for me to select them from a mundane looking cardboard box. I promise that I will share everything I can over the next days and week, little by little, as I find the time and energy to do this right.

This morning we will finally put the TIG torch to steel as we have spent the first two days deep in the laboratory learning all the secrets and methods for building really good, high quality, non-trendy, steel bicycle frames. Of course, we spend our breaks outside, listening to Steve tell tales of all his experiences over the past 30+ years in the bike industry (and motorcycling, too).
It is a hard life of suffering at Brew, heheh...



Oh yeah, I guess I need to mention that my classmate is a guy named Grant Dickie. Sorry TeamDicky, this guy is the real deal and you may need to turn in your name badge at the front door and select another...
Grant has been imported from north of Toronto, Canada where the men have real jobs (Grant drives a Zamboni, so take that!) and summer is shorter than I would prefer. We are like two peas in a pod, geeking out over everything bike and looking at each other like little kids getting ready to light something on fire. At least today is the day to start turning metal into molten puddles and hopefully glueing these tubes together into something useful.

More continued covererage as soon as possible.

Big Bear Race Video (finally!)

Well, I am nothing if not stubborn. I fiddled and tiddled and poked around and finally got this video up on the blog for your entertainment and enjoyment.
Not long enough to enjoy a popcorn, but then again, you can keep that 9 bucks in your pocket when viewing this 40 second masterpiece.
Please note the awesome Rob "RiddleMeThis" Riddell coming through near the front in his handsome but soon-to-be-updated red WLC (West Liberty Cycles) jersey. That's right, I'll be on the design job. And stay tuned for some fresh new T's as well (maybe even a cycling cap-please-please-please Rob?)



Don't fail to notice Jonathan coming through near the end of the video. Also, don't be fooled; he looks to be buried deep in the netherlands of toe-clips, platform pedal and "my rack is handy for my commute to the grocery store" racers, but Jonathan was getting ready to dominate his class and come out on the top podium step. All while wearing that unmistakable WLC jersey (man, I am a marketing whore... wait a minute, I don't get paid extra for this so I am not even a whore... crap, what's worse than that?!)

Tomorrow I will be shedding some light on how I arrived at this point; blogging and starting a frame building enterprise. A bit of background and some yarns of my cycling history. Not all at once (my hands would be arthritic trying to type up 24 plus years of crap you don't really want to know). Remember, I am a blogger of the people so don't be shy- chime in where it says "comments" and let me know what you're thinking. Critique my crap. It's a democracy, ya know. Or just tell me that you are even out there, reading my ramblings at all.

Hugs. See you tomorrow some time...

They Raced, I Rode (at Big Bear)

Sunday, the 19th, was the first WVMBA series race of the '09 season down at Big Bear in West Virginia. A pretty easy ride of about 90 minutes from Pittsburgh on I-79 and I-68, past Cooper's Rock, where Sarah and I plan to camp this coming Sunday.

The weather held out pretty well and was quite warm when Rob and Tad (Riddell Bros and fine new owners of West Liberty Cycles) showed up at my casa to load up the new Cannodale Rize. I was not going down to race but rather support Rob and sweep the course on the Rize's maiden voyage; and my first real ride on a bike with 5" of suspension travel. As you can see from the pic, it is a very handsome devil but the best part was how it rode. Like a cloud moving at warp speed. I was ready to rename it the WisperJet. The suspension was very efficient, especially in the rough stuff and I was surprised and happy with how quiet the bike rode in all conditions.

Big Bear is one heck of a fun set of trails. Challenging and rewarding and certainly no place to doze at the handlebar. You can go really fast on the rocky and steep downhills, especially on a bike like this or the '09 Scalpel that Rob piloted to 7th place (way to go Rob!), but if you make a mistake, the penalty points are steep.


Anyhoo, Tad and I set up early in the first lap at the bottom of a fast and fun set of singletrack that was sure to prove interesting with all the racer traffic about 3 minutes into the race. Tad is a pro picture taker and has some impressive gear.


Indeed, his lens is mucher bigger than mine, so I made sure to keep out of his way, and clicked a few shots with my pocket sized digital memory maker and even grabbed a short video which shows Rob cruising in a great spot early on. Also, Jonathan, winner of the Vet Sport class made it into the end of my short clip. Way to go on your first big win Jonathan!

*Edit* (apparently I don't yet know how to properly load a video up on this blog thing) Stand by while I figure it out and I will get the video posted soon as I can. Here's a pic of the scene for now...

After everyone in the sport wave cleared thru, I hopped up onto the Rize and cruised the race course. 13 miles of really fun (I know I said that already) and challenging (yeah, redundant) singletrack. A true mountain bike course. As I very carefully worked my way through various racers, making sure not to alter or slow their personal ride/race, I found Mary (also part of the WLC family) doing battle on her Cannondale 29er 1. We rode together for much of the course and it was a real treat watching Mary pedal her bright green machine up some super steep and muddy inclines, politely asking the guys to step aside as she rode what they could merely walk. At one point after a bunch of climbing, we found ourselves in this awesome pine forest. The trees were all in measured rows and it gave you an odd sense of perspective, kind of like being on the moon. It was at this point that I realized I did not set up my calorie intake method for racing and would have to remove my hydration pack to get to an energy bar. I let Mary know that I was going to stop to feed my empty stomach and was able to click a few cool pics while I was there.


Luckily, the WhisperJet was so fast on the insuing downhills that I was able to rejoin Mary at the bottom of the crazy creek descent and follow her to the finish line. Man, this bike is soooo fast. I actually got into a bit of trouble at one point, going slighty off the main line into rougher, leafier terrain. All it took was a bit of rear brake and my weight distribution to go even further behind the saddle and I popped right back on the line. Funny thing about my descending is that there were spectaters all along the downhill, especially near the bottom and they were applauding me. I didn't even have a number plate! Fun, fun, fun.
BTW, Mary was 2nd in her class and really had a great ride. Thanks for letting me tag along Mary!

I ran into some old buddies, Jessie and Casey, at the finish line. That is one thing I always love about going to races (even when not racing) is seeing good folks and catching up. In fact, it was a real treat hanging out with Maximum Max Kellogg and his root beer singlespeed. We need to hang out and ride more!

Thanks for reading and looking at my pics (video soon, I promise!). Meet you back here tomorrow?

First time... go easy on me!

Well, I have jumped in with both feet. Not that blogging is such an exclusive, big deal these days. Anybody who is somebody has a blog, right? For me, the words that tumble out on this electronic page represent my complete foray into the world of bicycles. Specifically, my own frame building venture, coupled with my daily bike shop life at West Liberty Cycles in Pittsburgh, PA. A bike shop life that I have not been able to "escape" for the past bunch of years while I was seeking a rewarding career for the long haul. Problem is, I haven't found anything that is truly rewarding and realistically achievable employment-wise. And thanks to the help and prodding of my wife, Sarah, I have searched high and low.
I love bicycles. I believe in what bikes do and what they do for us. Think of how much fun riding your bike is (or was the last time you rode as a kid), they are the most efficient form of human transportation (fact! clicky here: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/10/quote_of_the_da_9.php), they are great for your health and the air we breathe.

Anyhoo, I won't go on boring you with these points and I'll get to my point:
I have signed up for a frame building course in May. When I return on May 23, first frame in hand, I will be officially ramping up my own little biz that I am calling, "A Circle Squared." Yeah, an oblique way of saying two wheels.

I plan on using this blog to update the few folks (thanks Mom, Dad, Nancy and maybe Sarah- she isn't an online junkie like the rest of us) of my progression with A Circle Squared (ACS, for easy typing) and my ideas on a day-to-day basis. Please bear with me while I smooth out my blogging technique and hopefully I may not only entertain but also share some tidbits of useful knowledge and info based on all things bike.

Feel free to throw your two cents in. I value your constructive criticism; just be sure to give me a hug afterward so my self esteem doesn't fall down below the level of BMXer's pants, heheh.


Go ride!