The Internet is a wonderful place. Well, it is when you can find what you’re looking for. But, it can be a scary place full of demons and confusion. Like when you’re looking for a simple guide on how to lace a Rohloff hub when you’re building a wheel! The Read more
OK – So why wheel building? Well, you know what they say, if you want a job done properly… I’m thinking of the many wheels I’ve had built for me over the years, by a number of different workshops. Of those, perhaps a couple of pairs have turned out well, Read more
As threatened – here’s part two of the post I started the other week. You might well remember that I was slipping on the lab coat and pocket protector to work out if bigger wheels and lower bottom brackets were the key to unlocking extra speed… Regarding wheel size the Read more
Mullet bike: business up front, party round the back… You might have noticed Project S.Y.D. has reached version 2.0 (you can find out more over at www.screwyoudeath.com). One of the key additions to that frame was enough clearance to run either 27.5 plus or 29’er wheels – all in the name Read more
It’s getting late now, maybe 10 or 11 at night and the garage is pretty chilly. I’ve got a furrowed brow and I’m starting to get stressed. For the past few hours I’ve been feeding various cables in and out of the frame trying to work out if the ‘impossible’ Read more
Slack-curious? You may well have spotted that mountain bike head angles are getting slacker. Modern ‘enduro’ bikes are headed towards 65 degrees which used to be reserved for full on downhill bikes until just recently. Should you go slack in your new frame or play it safe with some less aggressive angles? Can Read more
Checking out Lance’s bike a little while ago reminded me that Paragon Machine Works are folks you should definitely know about – they’re probably the most innovative and best known US manufacturer of titanium frame parts. Famous for their sliding dropouts, that let you control chain tension on a singlespeed, they also produce Read more
As I mentioned in the previous post, here’s a quick review of the Victorian engineer’s classic ‘Bicycles & Tricycles’ by Archibald Sharp: There are two distinct elements, on the one hand you’ve got a detailed mechanical engineering textbook, and on the other, a fascinating insight into the Read more
Here we go, I promised myself I’d dig some numbers up to prove this… Bigger or thicker? One of the common things people do to increase the stiffness of a frame is to increase the wall thickness of the tubing, typically going up from 0.9mm to 1.2mm. Now most commercial Read more