Sliders

Some design work on the sliding dropouts idea. I still have to decide the best way to handle the disc side... and not have it turn out ugly. This design allows the axle nut/ QR skewer to apply force to the face of the steel part and the sliding AL part at the same time. The steel part will likely be water jet cut and the mating portions would be machined to tolerance.

More 22" wheelers this week. A few of which are pretty unique- one with a disc mount and another will be a super-light race frame.

new bike: 22

So the tires I have really suck. They are rated to 80 PSI but probably shouldn't be. One lap around the driveway and the bead blew off the rear tire. It might be the cheapy rims, but the tires go on far too easily. I will have to get a new tire. Hopefully it was just a defective one. The biggest hurdle for the 22" bikes is obviously the extremely limited tire/rim selection.

Other than that, the bike manuals ridiculously well... even while riding with a 20" up front.

I built myself a 22" (wheel) BMX frame so I can get back to having fun at skateparks. Notable features are a straight gauge heat treated downtube and a thicker drive side chainstay (both for added dent resistance)

...and a chain tensioner on the peg side

What's worse than a knee injury? I had some metal drilled out of my eyeball over the weekend... so work slowed up for a few days. Back at it with some more colors for the minis and finishing up some BMX frames.  For some reason, the flat colored powders lay down easier and more consistent than translucent or glossy colors. 

One of these is not like the others:

Some external brake bosses that sit flush with the stays with the help of internal allen head:

 The recent humidity has made coating frames a pain so I'll wait til next week to finish them all.

A run of minis hopefully done by this Wednesday, then some 20"s, a 22" a 24" MTB...

 A new tapered headtube that will make some frames look a lot sleeker but might make work a little more difficult: Tube mitering top and downtubes against a tapered tube should be harder. Making a larger cone for my jig will take some time too. The tube itself took some major machining skills thanks to 18bikes in England.

I've (we've) also got some new sliding dropouts in the works...

Smaller diameter tubes, internally butted ST and offset ST-BB for a ~21" actual TT with ~20.6" effective reach

 Apparently tapping threads for a 6-32 bolt through a 4130 plate is much harder than just welding a pre-threaded part to the inside of the dropout. (the small tap wants to twist and break off inside the hole)

My old sander took a nap last Thursday so I upgraded to one with replaceable bushings.