I’ve got a hard-tail mountain bike in the build queue.
I’ve been poised to start fabrication for a little while
now. But there were a couple of (critical) hold-outs.
When I fabricate a frame, I usually start from the ends and
work my way to the middle. The fork determines the location of the bottom of
the head tube, so that has to come before the final jig set-up for the main
triangle. When the fork is an “extra” part that can be swapped into the frame
in place of a suspension fork, as is the case for most hard-tail mountain bikes,
the crown dimension is known, so the frame and fork can be made separately, but…
When fab’ing the frame itself, I start with the assembly of
the rear dropouts to the chainstays, and then that to the bottom bracket. Then
that assembly goes into the jig and is joined to the seat tube, then the rest
of the frame. But…
But there were three missing pieces: The fork steerer tube,
the rear dropouts (all from the same company), and some jig cones for the
oversize head tube.
I sourced the cones and they arrived fairly quickly. The
other parts I had ordered in November… Where were they? I contacted the supply
company, and somewhere between charging my credit card and the shipping
department, the order was lost. They sent me a T-shirt in apology along with
the parts.
So now it’s all together. Time to start making flakes.
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