About Me

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Back in my hometown of Jonesboro., Arkansas, United States
My name is Dimitri Harris and I have been building frames for over 9 years now. I learned the basics after spending two weeks with Koichi Yamaguchi. He is one of the most interesting people I have ever met and I am thankful to have worked with him. Since then I have just been building one frame after another and learning as much as possible along the way. I build steel fillet-brazed frames that go by the name of MEECH, which is an old nickname that I have had since I was a kid. I build mostly cyclocross frames because I love their versatility however I also do road,single-speed, and mountain bikes as well. Custom frames start around $1400. All the frames are handmade by me here in Jonesboro, Arkansas. I am insured and guarantee all of my work so if you are in the market for a custom steel frame I would be glad to build it for you. I am also building frames from carbon fiber so if you would like to ride a prototype frame give me a shout. Thanks for stopping by. You can email me at meech151@hotmail.com or call (870)897-6703 or visit www.meechcustombicycles.com Thanks.

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Old Project

I got caught up so I got this cross frame down to do a little painting prep work on it.  This is the one with the tapered head tube and its been hanging up in the garage for a few months now waiting on some attention.  It has been primered all along but it needed sanded and smoothed out in order to paint.  I saw a Mini Cooper the other day that caught my eye and I'm gonna use the paint colors off of it.  No I'm not gonna tell you, its a surprise.  

Bell-shaped head tube.  This is pretty smooth but you can still see a little area where the down tube comes in that needs a little more work.  Pictures come in handy because many times you think everything is super-smooth until you see a picture of it and then you realize you didn't go as far as you could've.  The yellow primer is the epoxy primer for protection and painting purposes whereas the grey is the filler primer and is used to smooth out any imperfections, providing they are not significant.  When sanding the frame I usually sand the filler primer down to the point that the yellow starts to show and then stop.

This is still pretty rough and needs some more work however I've already gone back and smoothed it out.  Contrary to belief, paint hides and fills nothing, it enhances everything.  That little spot that you thought paint would fill in, lets multiply that times 3 and make sure even the cross-eyed bear can see it.

This is what it should look like...


 ...and this.

The filler primer doesn't seem to fill up much unless its your serial number.  I had to scrape some of it out.  With 2-3 coats of primer, then 3-4 coats of paint, the letters can disappear pretty quick.

Paragon dropouts.

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