What the hell are you doing here?

I'm happy to announce that there's a new website for Shawver Cycles, so I never have to screw with blogspot again!

Shawver Cycles

From now on that's the spot to find any and everything having to do with my frames.  Thanks for bearing with this blog for a year, the new site was worth the wait.

Euro 'Cross

   Fillet brazed Platinum OX cyclocross frame.  This puppy is going to a racer in Sweden.  The last few frames that I built for customers have been going to all corners of the globe, now if I can only get some more orders from the Bay Area...

Rainbow Brite

Big Tire Road Bike

PlatinumOX tubing, brass brazed, dual crown fork.  All my favorite stuff.

Set for centerpulls.

Disc 'Cross

 Fillet brazed main and TIG dropouts.

Lots of cable routing options for either hydraulic or mechanical brakes.

'Cross Dressed to Impress

    This just came in from the "Centennial State" (what a crappy state nickname) and my guys out there did quite a number on this one.  The color's somewhere between a coral pink and a super light orange.

   My new theory on cyclocross cabling is to sorta split the difference between top tube and down tube routing:  Rear brake and derailleur over the TT and front derailleur down the DT.  Avoids the super-lame pulley required for top-routed FD and still no worries of excess mud interfering with the more delicate rear shifting.

  I'm also doing the hannya logo nice and over-sized now.  Kids love it and old ladies think it's the devil.

1x Centerpull Road Bike aka The Bike Path Sunday Special

   I built this for my step-dad, a great guy who's super stoked on Shawver Cycles but not someone you'd consider a hardcore cyclist by any stretch.  The idea was to build a cool and simple bike, well suited to weekend cruises down the path behind his house, that is also mechanically simple and won't require too much upkeep beyond lubing the chain.  It's going to be getting Paul centerpull brakes, an eight speed cassette and a single bar end friction shifter.

 

   The fork came out well, though the combination of centerpull mounts, this fork length and crown made for a little bit of a strange fit-up.  Lost some of the lug shoreline to the fillet but I'm actually quite pleased with the finished product. 

 

More Betterness

  

   Fancy tools for making simple bikes.  Pretty sure I gave myself a hernia moving it into the corner.

Der SS

a stupid pun that I regret.

   This one came in today, a lugged straight-blade CX fork.  The customer opted for an upgraded finish and went with telemagenta accented lug windows.  Pretty sharp, if ya ask me.  Spectrum Powder Works can do some amazing stuff, if you plan to order a frame do us both a favor and take advantage of their skills.

   It also just occurred to me that I spend an inordinate amount of time updating Facebook and Flickr and often forget to post that content here where people will probably go looking for such information, so it would probably be a good idea to provide links to those places...
 

Shawver Cycles Flickr

Shawver Cycles Facebook

   Check out/follow/like/friend/stalk me on these sites to give my ego a little boost and share 'em with your friends so I can be internet-famous.

Purple Rain

   This what it sounds like when doves cry:

    

   This Prince-ly road frame just flew in from the magical powder coating gnomes in Colorado.  They always do a great job, but something about this purple just pops like crazy.  The photos do it no justice.  It's going to be getting an EDGE fork, HED wheels and a SRAM group because we all know that the best components are caps locked.

   For those of you that keep asking, I'm going to be able to offer the head tube logo as a snazzy silver badge here in the near future.  Hella.

1x10 29er

dat fork

    Built this one this morning, it's the fork mentioned in the previous post.  I managed to make a bunch of extra work for myself by choosing this crown.  It didn't want to play nice with the combination of these brake mounts and the required axle-to-crown length.  Lesson learned.

Paul Racers

    I was sitting around moping about only having 18 people "following" the blog and it occurred to me that there's really very little content here still.  So, to that end, I'll be posting more of the in-progress work that is around the shop.

    This one's getting a lugged fork, bar-end shifters, big cushy tires and Paul Racer brakes.  Should be a pretty awesome ride.

    This was my first time doing a frame for center pull brakes, which require brake studs to be placed differently than the cantilever brakes that we normally associate with these braze-ons.  They are supposed to work really nicely and of course anything coming from Paul Components is going to be clean and functional.  I actually have another frameset (or maybe two) in the queue destined for these same brakes.

    It's sorta hard to see in the photo, but at the seat tube I used a through-hole braze-on normally used to route hydro brake hose.  The idea being that you run bare cable from the front brake housing stop, through the hole and back to the rear brake, thereby cutting out the need for two more braze-ons and more housing.

    Also hung up this banner today.  It pleases me to no end, but it's probably reflects poorly on my advertising savvy that I hung it up on a wall where only I can see it.  Whatever.

T-shirts, Bottles and Stickers

    Taking a queue from every crappy band ever, I've just added a link over on the right side of the page with some Shawver Cycles merch that I've picked up.  My apologies for the wait to the people that have been asking me to post these things up for the last month.  Buy something small to help represent a new framebuilder, or order a frame or fork and get it for free.

SSCX Love

 

    UPS Dude just brought this puppy into the shop, the TIG SSCX frame I did last month.  I'm quite pleased with how it came out.  I'm planning to ride this thing next season and (assuming my painfully slow self can qualify) race it in the Single Speed Cyclocross World Championships here in San Francisco later this year.  

    To do my part to contribute to stoking folks on SSCX and hopefully get more people racing on locally-built frames, I'm going to be doing a special price for TIG SSCX frames up 'til the eve of the World Championships:  $750.  That's $200 off the normal price and literally as cheap as I could possibly make these things.  I'll also extend this price to the folks I've already been discussing frames of this type with, so ya'll don't have anything to worry about.  Is this the best price out there for a custom frame built with quality tubing and a world-class finish?  As far as I know it is.

    Try and stay warm while you're getting your base miles in this month.

Workin'

    Finally done moving into the new place and the torch is blazing again.  Relocating is a serious time-sink and I do not plan to do it again for a long time.  Frames and forks are in the works though and there's a few frames off for powder coat that should be back soon to show off a little bit.  There's also a bunch of boxes of water bottles, t-shirts and stickers with the Shawver Cycles logo sitting in my office right now and a blog post with info on getting your hands on some of that is imminent.  I know at least a  few people out there are planning to hit me up for a SSCX bike this year and there's also news coming that will get those folks stoked.

Enjoy your 2011 and ride hard.