Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Carbon Work

This first carbon frame is done for the most part and its gonna either get ridden or broken this winter.  I decided to put one last layer of carbon around the BB shell just in case I was wrong about what I might get away with.  I only sanded it down and I'm not gonna worry with trying to pretty it up until the ride part is dialed in.  I laid down a couple of nice wraps with the carbon but when I hand-wrapped it for compression I squeezed some wrinkles into it and had to sand it pretty heavily to even it out, you can see where I went into the uni on part of it.  I also may have used too much resin.  The temp was in the 30's in my garage and the carbon wouldn't wet out very well so I think i may have put it on a little too thick. I'm actually pretty tired of looking at that rear carbon stay, I hope to find some nicer stuff to work with in the future, however it was cheap and not knowing how this thing may turn out I didn't want to waste one of the sweet ones.  If it rides good then I'll have to eat crow.  Can I have some green salsa with it?  Red might look a little gross.  I was naive in thinking that I was just gonna epoxy on a cylinder bolt in order to tighten down the seat post.  As strong as some of this epoxy is it snapped off before it even got snug.  Luckily I had this Easton seat post clamp that just happened to fit so we're good to go as soon as I get a headset in it.  I also just epoxied on a hanger for the front derailleur and while it seems secure it may snap off under some stress, we'll see.  But that small stuff will be easily fixed, the ride of the frame is my main concern. I started on this thing around the first part of this year and I remember saying that by the spring I would be test riding it.  Guess I meant spring of 2012.  I did manage to stay pretty busy this year with orders and I hope that the year ahead will be more of the same.  Thanks for checking it out.  Catch ya later.




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