While I am waiting on a few stem building components to arrive I spent a couple of hours cutting and fitting the tubes for my first carbon frame and other than sanding some of the rough edges off its pretty much ready to bond. The main tubes I am using are from Enve Composites while the rear end is a Dedaccia Firefox from Nova I believe. I bought it quite a while back and have forgotten which one it is. While everything is pretty much the same process as building a steel frame so far I have been as easy on the tubes as possible. After building quite a few steel frames I am pretty comfortable handling that material, being able to tell what you can and can't do with it. With the carbon tubes I feel like I am playing with crystal. So far I have done all my cutting with my tube notcher and hole saws but you have to be extra careful. You can see that I put masking tape around the ends to prevent it from fraying but you can also see the repair I made on the down tube up next to the head tube. It was the first cut and I tried to push the hole saw all the way through and it frayed a couple strands of carbon so I took some epoxy and touched it up and will sand it down later. It will be covered up by carbon patches so everything should be ok but after this initial mistake I started stopping the hole saw just short of a complete cut and then I took a Dremel with a little cutting wheel to finish it up and this proved to work better for me. To fine tune my miters I basically just used these sanding drums in my drill and they did a pretty good job. It is always a good idea to wrap some tape around the ends when cutting or sanding because you can see where I let the sanding drum slide over on the side of the seat stay. It just barely scratched it but it happens really fast. I am sure there are better ways of mitering carbon but these methods got the job done you just don't want to get in a hurry. I only had one down tube so I didn't need to butcher it. The dust that comes from sanding these tubes is my least favorite part so far. The stuff just feels toxic if you breath it and when it gets on your skin it can itch pretty bad, doesn't seem to wash off either so long pants, long-sleeves, and a breathing mask aren't bad ideas. In time I plan on dialing in the process a little better but the mistakes are a golden part of the process of anything you choose to do. I have to remind myself of this on a regular basis. Anyway, I am not far away from breaking out the Elmer's and gluing this bad boy together. Just kidding, I got some super aerospace epoxy somewhere in my junk draw that I have been saving for just the right moment, I think this is it. Time for all those intense gluing exercises from the first grade to start paying some dividends. Just when you thought you would never need to know this stuff for the real world. I have a few tubes leftover to start on the second frame. I already know what kind of frame its going to be and who's gonna be riding it, factory MEECH cyclocrosser Larry Yancey. Yep, I'm gonna build this first road frame for me and give it a little test and if all seems solid then the next frame will be a cross frame for Larry to put to the real test. I just like to pussy-foot around a little on my bike but if you really want to try and tear something up you send it to Yancey. Stay tuned. Chao amigos.
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