2024 PVD Bar-ins

In the world of flat bar all-road bikes, it’s certain. Bar-ins are REQIRED for performance riding. I wouldn’t have been this absolute a few years ago but it’s now become the primary hand hold on my bike. Facts are facts. When covering ground that isn’t extreme, this is the more relaxed and efficient position for … Read more

The failure of the titanium bar end

On Wednesday (06/19), I was doing a ride around the Tamarancho loop. Simple stuff for an end of the day ride. I was a bit frantic, though, as I was working hard trying to keep ahead of a group that I had passed earlier. I was on my 2023 M2-F2. I love this bike. It’s … Read more

Drop bar dropper levers 2024

When I first put Windy’s new road+ bike (the Electra) together, a lot was going on. Finishing a bike project is a messy undertaking. Several details had to be left in an early state of development for expediency, just to move on. One of those that was left for later was the dropper lever. Using … Read more

Lasers and optics for Fixture Tables

Within the 2024 PVD Samantha Frame Fixture, I designed a way to calibrate the crank shell and axle towers. The tower axis needs to be orthogonal to the plane that lays out the frame over the fixture table. While pretty important for the crank shell, it’s crucial for the rear axle axis. How do we … Read more

Rhino Cart Calibration

Like many, I have a small problem with the Rhino Cart in my shop. I love the BuildPro system and Rhyno Cart is a really good product. The issue is the flatness of the surface, specifically, I have a low drop in the middle of the raster table. I’ve known since the Rhino Cart showed … Read more

The shaft

Last week, I had a tool fail in the shop. A shaft. A flexy one. A moment of carelessness combined with over a decade of use snapped the end of the shaft where it connects to the motor of my  Foredom SR flexible shaft tool. This can happen as it is the consumable part of the … Read more

The Correct TH47 Wrench

I had a problem a couple of weeks ago. I was coming off of a ride on the M2-F2. What developed through the ride was a feel coming from the cranks that was horrific. It was grinding and feeling lumpy as I pedaled. I was lost as to what it was. I put the bike … Read more

Bar-in shapes for all-road

I finally got a chance to dive deeper into the all-road bar-in concept. In December, I got the bar-ins installed on the all-road bike and the value (again) was instantly obvious. It’s grown to be one of my preferred positions on the bike. This is strange because you’d think that the wide grip position would … Read more

2024 PVD Electra Road+

This is a new Road+ bike for Windy. Her last new bicycle frame was the 2023 Vega MTB. That bike was named after Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed 5B Vega. In my mind, it’s one of the nicest looking bikes I’ve ever produced. It’s really an eye catcher! Staying on theme, this road+ bike is named after … Read more

Samantha with Electra

The time has come for the Samantha fixture to be used to make a bike frame. Wow! Finally. I feel that it helps to show the fixture just before real use so I produced another video showing the tubes in place before tacking and how they end up being held. The ability to space the … Read more

Setting Samantha

After posting all the information that I could about the new Samantha frame fixture, I realized that an important detail was missing. How to set it up! So, I made another video where I begin with a bare fixture table, mount the tool, and set it up for use according to calculations. Since I’m about … Read more

2024 PVD Samantha Frame Fixture

It started as a quick upgrade to the Cyberdyne System frame fixture, back in November 2023. Snowballs snowball and the ‘quick upgrade’ became the fully re-designed fixture shown here. This project has been moving forward in plain sight, with some interim posts and videos for the last six months, and the Samantha fixture is now … Read more

Presta Valve Dice

This is a golden oldie. About a billion years ago, I’d make special valve caps for presta valves from small dice, either six or 10 sided. Dice on tire valves is an old hot rod trick. It then got adopted by the BMX kids. It never quite made it from Vg8 to Vg5,2 Shrader threads. … Read more

Calvin Norstad and the new Paragon

It was time to interview Calvin Norstad. This January, Calvin took over from Mark (Calvin’s father) in running the whole show at Paragon Machine Works. This is some of the biggest news effecting custom bicycle framebuilding in a long time. One of the most influential and important companies has a new captain. This is important. … Read more

Accountability Mechanisms

I have a concept what I call ‘accountability mechanisms’. It’s not too different from what others talk about. These are tools that keep me working hard and in good ways without having to ‘pay’ someone to do that. An extrinsic motivator; a teacher, trainer, or editor, would (hopefully) do the same thing but those come … Read more

Samantha – Foundation

Major benchmark for the Samantha frame fixture. The plates are mounted and linear motion is proven. The slop in the movement is down below 0.001″. I’m stunned it was that good without any calibration. I did do a calibration for the parallelism and height of the plates and things are looking great. There’s more than … Read more

More Samantha Fixture Updating

As promised, I made a new video explaining some of the improvements to the Samantha Frame Fixture design. Not too much to write that isn’t in the video. Lots of simplification. Better in many ways.

The FN M1900

This is a fun little toy. So slim and delicate. It’s an FN M1900. This would have been produced between 1900 and 1911. One of the first slide pistols and the intro for the 32 ACP round. (7.65×17mm Browning SR). It was given to a friend of mine. Her father had gotten it from her … Read more

Sticky Pedals

I’ve been working with the HT AE05 pedals lately. I just upgraded the pins. Now I’m looking at the spin. Out of the box, these pedals are very bound up. They have an insane amount of resistance to them. I wanted to figure out how to improve that. These are simple bushing pedals with a … Read more

Downgrading the shifter

I’ve made it clear that I’m not a fan of the new SRAM Transmission system. I’ve found that it shifts very poorly. It’s painfully slow. The shifter ergonomics are terrible. There’s no clearance under the new stealth master cylinder reservoirs for a better clamp. And the shifter pod perch is very weak. That’s a lot … Read more

Finders Keepers

finders, keepers; losers, weepers I have a several general rules that I follow when I’m riding trail. One of them (and the topic today) is that I stop to pick up any small parts that I see on the ground. Even if they are fairly beat or weathered. I do that. Why? The logic is … Read more

HT AE05 Pins

I said in the last post that I was going to be making some nicer pins for my new HT AE05 pedals. These were made from stainless steel M4x8 set screws. A basic 4mm x 34.7 degree taper. Sets up for a nice 1.5mm tip. The performance gain here is that it is now a … Read more

All-Road Upgrades

Yesterday, I made a couple of changes to my all-road bike, the 2023 PVD M2-F2. I figure that both of them were worthy of comment as this is always a work in progress. The all-road platform is fairly exciting for me to work with. The ‘answer’ to the puzzle is relatively undefined in the bike … Read more

Trannies

Back on November 2, 2023, Transition bikes dropped their new hardtail bike, the TransAM. This is a bike carrying a name that they’ve used for hardtail models many times in the past. While I try to keep up with comments on some of the more interesting products that come onto the market, I just didn’t … Read more

Numerical Suspension Modeling

I’m probably known best these days for my hardtail mountain and all-road bikes. What some may not know is that I have a long history riding and tuning suspension bikes and sport motorcycle. I’ve had big enduro bikes and downhill bikes. I’ve changed shims, fluid, and springs to alter the performance of these systems. This … Read more

The Fixturable Sine Bar

This is a project that I had been working on last year. It’s a fixturable sine bar for use on fixturable fabrication tables. Sadly, I got distracted before finishing it but it might be at some point. For that reason, I delayed posting on it until now. With a good design and an hour at … Read more

A Low Profile Table Clamp

There’s a funny thing in the world of fixturing. Most of the pin holes on the smaller side of the range for metalworking rasters are 5/8″ or 16mm. In the wood working world, they use 3/4″. This is frustrating as there are some nice products that would work fine for some light duty work. So, … Read more

Samantha Bicycle Fork Fixture

Last week I posted here about the new bicycle frame fixture (Samantha) that I’ve been designing and am hoping to produce. I mentioned that I was wanting to produce a fork fixture that fits in with the rest of the ecosystem. Well, in the interest of economy and ensuring that any extended considerations of the … Read more

G6

The skate truck project continues to move forward in the background of the other big projects and developments. Nothing ever stops. Movement is important. Initial designs for the G6 started almost as the G5 trucks got finished. I had a lot of ideas that I wanted to get ‘on paper’ when I was setting them … Read more

Samantha Bicycle Frame Fixture

Thanks to our evolutionary push to modern bike design, back in mid-2020 I brought the PVD Cyberdyne bicycle frame fixture into the world. Since, I produced designs for the SKYNET (2021) and WOPR (2022) frame fixtures. Now, in 2023, we have the big update. Samantha !! The first 3 fixture designs were each different enough … Read more