So after close to a year of riding the 1st prototype 29er...
I've gathered sufficient feedback to feel confident to put that to good use in a second revised version. Revisions include a slightly tightened head angle, lower bottom bracket height, longer tt to increase the cockpit just a bit, shorter chainstays, custom formed chainstays with room to spare for 2.5 tires, more stand over (approximately 2 more inches..), shortened the seattube length by an inch, headtube grew by about .125" and bottom bracket is now 73mm. New drops allow you to run single/gear setup. To achieve the16.75" chainstay length, (yes 16.75 with 29" with 29" wheels and a 2.5" tire..) the seat tube needed a radius. A few trial and error methods, a lot of feedback from very generous builders from all over the globe, and I got what I was after. Stoked.
Can't wait to fit the seat stays and put all the jewelry on-this should be a unique ride for sure.
This is pretty much the look I was after with the first one, but time and tooling did not permit. Side note: Another thing that's been in Ted's shop have been a bunch of motorcycles. I recently learned that Ted was quite the accomplished flat track racer at one time. But a good friend of his races vintage motorcycles and he stores them every so often at Ted's shop. I finally remembered my camera to take a shot or two of them. Unfortunately only 2 of the 4 were present this past friday, but my favorite was still there.
This little honda is pretty damned cool for its lack of size..
Clearance for 2.5+ tires, 16.75" stays and an additional 2" of top tube clearance from the previous version..
Welds are starting to come together. Not happy with the heat effected zones here-but as Ted Jokes "It'll be ah-right.. It's just your frame." 
Still have to add the jewelry and disk mount as well as shorten the top of the seatpost/slot it. But you get the idea here. Lots of stand over clearance, fairly active and compliant rear triangle and lots of tire clearance. This one was a challenge to put together that is for sure. But, that's what makes things interesting. I'd like to make the bends in the seat stays a little more gradual/sweeping but tooling on hand did not allow for this. We shall see when I move to production quality tubing. Still using 4130 strait gauge tubing to experiment with angles, etc. So far so good. Can't wait to finish this up and go for a ride.
Posts
