Things came together today - in one long session of intense heat (and yet more intense concentration) my fledgling frame came into being. There's much left to be finished tomorrow, but I think we'll make it.
It was a good moment, popping that wheel into the rear dropouts to find it in perfect line with the rest of the frame. (Note the neat closeness between wheel and seat tube - that's the kind of detail you can choose when you build one of these for yourself!)
The end of the day was helped by the detail in the next picture coming together after much fiddling, filing and shaping:
That is a neat 'fastback' seat clamp sitting at the top of the double-taper seat stays. As I'm learning fast - where bespoke bicycles are concerned God really is in the details...
Much of today's activities were watched by a very attentive guy from Bikeradar who was investigating the wonderfulness of the Bicycles by Design emporium. I hope my patient tweaking and shaping wasn't too boring to watch!
I'm much looking forward to my triumphal drive back down the M40 tomorrow with a retro-styled steel racing frame in the boot after five days focused effort. However, there's still immense amounts of work left to turn it into a bicycle to ride with pride from Rome to London.
That fast back seat cluster is looking really neat - excellent work. Looking forward to seeing how it all looks at the end of Friday afternoon.
Posted by: Robert Wade | January 31, 2013 at 09:52 PM