Ten Years – part 8.

The year 2009 was better than 2008 from a business perspective but not by a lot. Or maybe it just felt better. Either way I had enough work to more than keep me busy when a good number of builders called it a day so I’ll call myself fortunate.

2009 was a year of a number of firsts for the business —

– Photos of my work were published in a very nice coffee table book called “Custom Bicycles — a Passionate pursuit”. Cool book.
– I started my own blog on February 20th. I was hesitant to do so fearing I’d run out of stuff to say………this hasn’t happened yet.
– I built the first tandem with my name on the down tube. I’d built plenty of tandems in my previous Serotta life but this was the first Kirk tandem.
– Carl Strong and I expanded our idea of a group or guild of sorts for handbuilt framebuilders and with help from the other founding members the ‘Framebuilders’ Collective’ was formed.

2009 was the year that NAHBS traveled to Indianapolis, Indiana. To be honest I wondered how good a choice this was considering Indy is not the place I think of when I think travel in February. But it was great….in fact one of the best shows ever. Turnout was strong but not out-of-hand crazy and sales were good. Indy turns out to be a great place for something like this even in winter with cool restaurants and clubs. You learn something new everyday.

It was the year I noted my 20th year working as a full time professional builder. I started work as a builder in October of 1989 at Serotta and with some very short exceptions it is all I’ve done since. I recall feeling a bit old when I realized that 20 years had passed but I still love the work so life is good.

I designed, prototyped, tested and introduced the Triple F dropout in 2009. The idea for the dropout came to me about 15 years earlier but this was the first time I’d had the chance to make it happen. The idea behind the design is to use as little material as possible to transition from the stay tubing to the part the wheel can clamp in to and to have this transition take place in as little distance as possible. By having them be super small and short I was assured they would be very stiff and light at the same time. Using balls where the stays meet the drops makes for a very simple and strong joint that is very quick to prep for……no slotting or cutting of the tube and no bending of the assembly after the fact to get the drop-to-stay alignment right. Lastly they needed to be easy to clean. Working in a bike shop and on race bikes for so many years made me really appreciate how much time is spent fussing to get the drops clean. But making all the curves finger sized so a rag fits over your finger and into clean everything makes keeping this tough part of the bike to clean a bit tidier.

Despite the fact that the dropout is simple in concept it was not all that easy to cut out of a plate of cr-mo steel it turns out. Makes sense when you think about it……machining steel plate into a shape with two balls on it isn’t all that straight forward.

Once I became determined to make them I made a mock-up out of big steel ball bearings, a chunk of plate and a good bit of brass filler. I brazed the balls to the plate and then started carving and taking away everything that didn’t look like the dropout design I had in my head. With this mock-up in hand I could double check all the fit up issues and be sure there would be no conflicts or interference. I then had to defining all the hard-points so I could take it to someone skilled in CAD work and have official drawings made. My good friend and machinist extraordinaire Norm knew just the guy to draw them for me. So Joe then drew them and Norm cut two pair of them for me to prototype frames with and test. I built those two bikes and brought them to the show. Once back from the show they got the crap beat out of them trying to expose any weakness or problems. A few small adjustments were made and then the good folks at Paragon Machine made tools to hold the little parts and cut my first batch. The first ones would be built into frames the following June.

A few small changes have been since then to make it easy to cut the parts or easier to build with them but the changes have been small and they are working very well. If I had to pick one piece of metal to represent my idea of how stuff should be designed and made it would be this dropout. I tried to operate on the same premise as the founder of Lotus cars Colin Chapman did — keep taking away stuff until you can’t take away anything else and only then are you done. “Simplicate and add more lightness’ as Chapman was quoted saying.

Lastly – I’d be remiss if I didn’t take a second to note something since we are in look-back mode. This past week marks the actual 10th Anniversary of my business as I started the business and became officially incorporated the first week of June, 2003. Tempus Fugit!

Thanks again –

Dave

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5 responses to “Ten Years – part 8.”

1. steve garro says:

   June 11, 2013 at 8:42 am

   Holy cow, Dave – that tandem is stunning!

2. Tom says:

   June 11, 2013 at 9:27 am

   Those welds on the tandem are pretty impressive. The orange paint looked great. One
   Nice bike.

3. kirks says:

   June 11, 2013 at 9:48 am

   Thanks man – high praise considering the source! It was a lot of work but I love doing them.

   dave

4. kirks says:

   June 11, 2013 at 9:49 am

   Thanks so much for the kind comment.

   Dave

5. Mike Noble says:

   June 13, 2013 at 7:08 am

   Thanks again for sharing your journey. My first NAHBS was Indianapolis and it was a ball.

   Mike