3/4 Fillet Road Bike.

I'm trying to stay creative with the blog titles...  Stainless BB and fillets the rest of the way around.  Building a lugged fork for it tomorrow.

Miller Blue

Same color as the welder.  Get it?

More of the same, but way different.

I just finished a large road frame and am starting work on a large road frame tomorrow.  See the pattern?  Ohh well, nothing to complain about though. 

 I'm glad to have this one ready to go to the powder coater.  I built this quite a long time ago and for awhile I had sorta thought that it was just going to rust away to nothing, but now it's going to be ridden by a fast rider that is articulate and thoughtful enough to give me some really useful feedback that I can use to make the bikes that are yet-to-come even better.

Speaking of bikes getting better, the BB30 standard seems to be a real improvement over the 38mm shells that have been used for generations, at least to some degree.  I'm mostly excited about it because the larger shell area should give me a place to attach some gigantor chainstays to stiffen up the tallish bikes I have the tendency to make lots of.

On a final note, I've got a birthday coming up next month and I asked for a camera, so these might be among the last of my terribly blurry iPhone shots.  Or so we can hope.

TIG welding and other delights.

I spent the last two weeks up at a trade school in southern Oregon learning to TIG weld bike frames.  This frame represents not just my introduction to welding frames, but really my first attempt at welding anything.  It made me glad to be back in my own shop with my Oxyacetylene torch, but soon as I can afford it I'm going to score a TIG machine of my own.

I built it up a little slacker in the HT than I would normally consider and am going to pair it with a low rake Wound-Up 'cross fork.  My brother is going to be racing on this thing.

My welds still have room to improve, obviously, but I really like the process, especially how relatively clean it is compared to brazing.

Went with a slightly sloping TT, 1x10 braze-ons and clearance for 34s.  Should be perfect for racing Northern California cyclocross, but may be a little tight for super-PDX-muddy racing.  I doubt we'll make it up there this season anyhow.

I was sort of kicking myself for including an unfinished picture of this frame in my last post, but I was eager to show it and didn't have a finished shot on that computer.  Here is how it turned out with the fillet finished and the loose ends tied up.  This thing has some really steep geometry for a road bike and is more of an experiment than anything else.  We'll see, but I have a feeling that it will be fun.

Both of these frames are going to Greg, will be rocking Wound-Up forks and will probably be powder coated to match.

First post, ya heard?

So, I've been building bike frames for about 10 months now and am coming to realize that maybe I should start showing people some photos of what I've been up to...  My skills are still coming along, but I'm beginning to get a handle on at least some portion of the process of designing and building a steel bicycle that is fun to ride and, hopefully, up to the task of winning a race or two.

Here's a few examples of the doo-doo I do do:

Fillet brazed extended ST sprint frame.

Pretty HT with a a mix of joining methods.

The frame said HT belongs to.  I build this for my brother and never got around to getting it painted for him...  Sorry Greg.

The ass of my first cyclocross frame.

Here's the same frameset mocked up with some random parts.  Don't ask me why I took an amazingly crooked photo of it with that weird cockpit...  I have no idea.

Road bike I built for myself and never built up.  Paul Sadoff says that builders only do the super-low fastback stays after they jack up their miter, but I swear that in this case it was to plan (or maybe a combo of planning and only having dropouts on-hand that dictate the angle to you...)  This photo is pre- any sort of clean-up or finishing and not an example of a completed piece of work.

I can doo-doo a fork too.  This is a straight-blade example, but I've got a nice bender for doing-up all sorts of other styles as well.


On a final note, I realize that "Carl Shawver Cycles" is possibly the most boring name ever bestowed upon anything, but I had to call this blog something.  Rest assured that if I ever get around to selling a frame it will be called something cooler (assuming that my brain is up to the challenge of dreaming up anything better.)