Ten Years – part 6.

Where the years 2005 and 2006 were more about keeping things rolling, 2007 was a year of change.

I’d been working some with new tubesets and while I very much liked individual tubes from these sets I was not thrilled with the sets as a whole. The new hot tube was Reynolds 953 and in my opinion while the main tubes were just right the stays left more than a bit to be desired with the seat stays being too heavy and chainstays being much too light and flexible. It was at this time I worked with Reynolds to come up with my own proprietary chainstays. The new c-stays differed from ‘normal’ offerings in that they had less taper so that the small end was larger (15 mm instead of 12 mm) and the wall thickness at the BB end was slightly thicker. This made for a c-stay that was much stiffer than most any steel stay on the market and this gave the bikes a wonderful jump, snap, life….etc. when pushing hard.

I wasn’t a fan of the 953 seat tube either as the seat post fit was too loose for lugged work (really designed for TIG where one would get more shrinkage and distortion with the higher heat) so I went in search of a light seat tube. I found it at True Temper and the entire package was finally put together in a prototype in the summer of 2007. This prototype was the first bike I’d built with lugs from Darrell Llewellyn (Dazza) from Australia and the fit and look was just right for this project — simple, clean and modern with nothing precious or baroque about them.

This mix and match approach to picking the tubes reminded me of how some sports car guys were making ‘specials’ in the 50’s when the post WWII supply of race car stuff was really limited. They would take the chassis from one brand and the engine from another and cover it with simple and light homemade bodywork and have a car that could compete with the best in the world……….and these cars were often called ‘specials’. I realized I’d made something of a special myself so I named the new frame the ‘JK Special’ after my father John Kirk who, before he passed away, was a race car mechanic (hence the wrench in the JKS logo).

I rode the bike hard sans paint for many months and was very pleased with the ride. I made a few small tweaks with the lug shape and the chainstay taper/butting and I was very happy with the outcome. The prototype was built to work with the Reynolds Ouzo carbon fork and this was the first time I’d spec’d a carbon fork on one of my bikes. In retrospect this is the only thing I regret. I rode my bike with the carbon fork and it worked fine but in time I made a steel fork for it and the entire package finally felt just right to me. It both handled and rode better, alignment could be made spot on and I could make any rake I wanted instead of having to design the frame to work with a set fork rake. After coming to this conclusion I stopped offering the carbon fork as an option and since then all JKS have come with a made-to-match lightweight steel fork.

I built the second JKS for Karin late in the year and she loved it. It doesn’t get talked about much but Karin is a natural and gifted cyclist with a strong racing background and getting her thumbs up assured me that I was on the right track with the JKS. It wouldn’t be until the following year that I would offer them for sale.

This was also the first year that I attended the North American Handmade Bike Show. It was in San Jose, California that year and Carl Strong, his wife Loretta and I all piled into Carl’s pickup and drove the 22+ hours from Bozeman to San Jose. In retrospect it all went fine despite the truck developing an ignition miss just a few hours into the drive, very icy roads as we left Montana and then a storm going over the pass in the Sierras. As we got close to the Sierras we saw that the pass was in bad shape and we learned that we would need to have chains with us so that they would let us drive over the pass. So we stopped in a small town before the pass and looked everywhere for chains and finally found some. Chains in hand we drove over the pass and the roads were fine and we never needed the chains. I think it took us so long to find chains that it gave it time to warm up some and the roads melted out and it was an easy drive over the pass.

I had no idea what to expect from the show and was a bit shocked to find it was in a huge tent held up with air pressure — kind of cool and kind of odd. But it worked well and the attendance seemed strong. I’d brought just framesets and no complete bikes as they would not have fit in the truck and that was a mistake…….people like frames well enough but what they really want to see is bikes. Live and learn. This first show was a real learning experience and a lot of fun. Aside from a serious back spasm on the second day that had me bent over and looking like death NAHBS was a very good thing. I took a number of orders and shook a lot of hands and it was a very good show.

2007 would also mark the end of my using my homemade jig to set up and tack frames and forks with. I built my own tooling for this back in 2003 and it worked very well but it was dreadfully slow to set up. Business had gotten good enough that my real limiting factor was how long it took to put a frame together so I went to my friend Don at Anvil and bought his frame and fork jigs and between the two of them I saved a solid hour of time on each bike without any downside in quality or accuracy. Money well spent.

Last but not least it was the year I went back to visit Saratoga Springs and ride with a bunch of good folks from the Serotta Forum. As I recall Serotta had scheduled an open house with rides and a BBQ but they were forced to cancel the event. The guys and gals from the Serotta Forum really had been excited for the event so they decided to hold one on their own in place of the official company event. I was pleased to be invited to attend so I flew out and visited my parents, did some great rides on some of the best riding roads in the country, visited my old Serotta friends and got to hang out with Ben a good bit. It was good to be ‘home’ if you will. As epic as the riding in around Bozeman can be I still miss those roads around Saratoga. The photos below are courtesy of Dave Kraus – www.krausgrafik.com

The following year, 2008, would also be a year of changes………some good and some not so.

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