Saturday, October 30, 2010

Hopefully this scores me some points


It was time to mix it up a little bit and build a bike for a normal-sized human being.  This one is going to my novia and it's her first road bike.  If the speed with which she tears around town on her beat up track bike is any indication, she's going to be fast as hell on this one.

I'm quite fond of doing the low-rise fastback seatstays, I might try and sneak this style onto as many of my road bikes as I can.

Friday, October 22, 2010

Submitted for your approval




Keeping this one for myself.  I don't own a shop scale, but this one feels way light for how much bike it is. 

Monday, October 18, 2010

Things are happening

Started this today, the first bike being done in the new shop and with my new welder, a 29er with a mix of Columbus, Dedacciai and True Temper .  The machine is working great and the shop's perfect when the roof's not leaking right above boxes of tubing.




I want to build more TIG mountain bikes, but everyone seems to be talking lugged road bikes.  I have another set of tubes here that would be perfect for a racey 29er.  Email me if a MTB be what ye seek and I can probably build you one for a really good price.





Thursday, October 14, 2010

New shop and an old-school fork

The lack of updates around here over the last few weeks is no reflection of the amount of energy that has been going into Shawver Cycles.  The whole shop has been transplanted down to South San Francisco and the process of turning my garage hobby into a business is a bit more complicated than I would have assumed, but all of that junk is starting to wrap-up and I am beginning to be able to concentrate on building bikes again.



Today I did the clean-up work on this MTB fork.  Well, I call it a MTB fork because the crown is Kirk Pacenti's version of the old Grant Peterson-designed Bridgestone lugged mountain fork that the MB-1 had before they went unicrown, but this one is actually going on a cyclocross bike.  I brazed it together almost three weeks ago but today was my first chance to throw it in the vise and finish the thing.  It looks like I didn't do much to it, but these crowns are actually cast with a big flat section (to make it easier to drill for a fender or maybe just ease of casting?  I can't imagine using a caliper brake on one of these) right in the center that throws off the graceful curved lines, so it had to be filed off.  I'd like to build with this crown again, so if your vintage mountain bike needs a replacement fork send me an email and let me put one together for you.