The first sale: Bike 003

Well, I have the web site name, the DBA business license, working on some wholesalers to do business with and my Friend Michael has asked me to build a cargo bike for him. He has made a deposit and I told him to expect his frame no later than Jan 1st. I have fitted him and started doing some calculations on rake and trail and BB height and Chain stay length. This will be quite the project. Looks like we are going to build a 20" front with a drum brake with a Dyno and a rear 26" wheel with an 8 speed hub with a drum brake. Going to make the cargo bed somewhat of a wood bed with side slats to adjust cargo, kind of like a old Radio Flyer wagon. More info to follow. I'm in Alaska right now spending time with my parents. I'm reading the Paterak book again, this time I actually understand what he is talking about.

UBI Graduate

All finished with the schooling. Man that was a pretty intense two-weeks. Spent about 90 hours working on bike frames and about 30 hours driving my family in our Volkswagen Westfaila. We went from our house via Bend and camped at Diamond lake then toured Crater Lake in the morning and made our way to Ashland. School started at 8AM sharp on monday and I had gary and Ron as our frame building instructors. The first day was more of an overview of the entire process and we dove into silver brazing up some water bottle bosses on som .035 chomoly tubing. The process intensified and by the end of the week we had a fork and front triangle built up. The weekend was spent back in Portland as my wife and child got sick and we thought it would be best for them to be at home. Monday came again and I dove back into getting all my chain stays and seat stays and braze on's added. I built a knock off of an old French style P/R frame similar to a Kogswell. I used a 73 H and a 73.3 S angle alnong with a 25mm rake on the fork. I chose to use a front hub with drum brakes and a rear 3-speed hub with drum brakes. A whole bunch of pictures of the trip is here. http://picasaweb.google.com/Ed.Manning/BikeSchool