29er V3

In process welding non-drive side chainstay to bottom bracket..
Tacks..
cut, mitered and ready for the jig..

First I bend and form both chainstays. Then I miter the dropout/chainstay junction and tack those in place. Once that is complete, these two sub assemblies get loaded into the jig for the mitering of the chainstay to bottom bracket junction. Last step is to clean it all up, remove all the dirt/grime, measure 4000 times throughout the whole ordeal, while squinting at it making sure it passes the stink eye test and then load everything into the frame jig to be tacked and welded. Just a few steps naturally..

44 Logo 2009

Been working on refining the overall logo of 44 for a while. Slowly but surely getting there-kind of like the cobblers kids have no shoes scenerio... I do this sort of thing for a living, but naturally, when it comes to your own stuff it takes 10 times longer to figure it out. But I'm pretty stoked on the next generation and wanted to somehow incorporate a heart shaped/shield thing going on. That and move to a double headed eagle and push more duality. A little wikipedia research and those pesky double headed eagles have been around for a while.. and apparently have their origins in the representation of tradesman. That kind of works. That and masonic ritual.. Which reminds me of a great story that my grandfather told me before he passed away. So he and bunch of friends were going through the whole indoctrination in some sort of society, and the fellow ahead of him was sorting through 4 stations of the ceremony. He absolutely had a passion for frosty beverages, the hops kind of beve. Anyway, when he got to a certain part in the ceremony the gentleman would ask him "What do you seek?" The answer was supposed to be "Light!" Well when he got to that part, he had forgotten the words and when asked "What do you seek?" he blurted out: "BEER." The gentleman behind the question wispered, "No, LIGHT, you seek light..." His reply: "Light... Dark. As long as it's BEER". Couldn't agree more myself. New site too btw.

SNAKE DRIVER: Ride Report

Went for a ride on some unmaintained roads the other day. Great ride. Nice to be out on the Snake Driver and soak in the sun / cool air. Starting the new 29er for the spring. Should be interesting. Subtle changes again with a slightly lower bottom bracket, steeper head angle and a cockpit of 23.25" which I've found coupled with a 90mm /0 deg. rise stem is just right for me. More to follow in the coming weeks.

SNAKE DRIVER

So the story starts like this with my dad's friend, Marshal. We spent much of our time at Marshal's house as kids. He always had something going on in the shop and always had the best / craziest stories. His spirit is a memorable one of 'this is good but how can we make it even better?' He's always taken a road less traveled, embracing the unexpected and pushed his skills to the limit. A carpenter by trade and had owned a business for some time doing custom work with a friend of his. They named their business "Snake Drivers". But as they found out, they kept getting calls from people asking them if they'd get rid of this animal, catch this and dispose of that. So one day Marshal gets another call for the Snake Drivers, this time from an elderly woman insisting that the ad stated Snake Drivers and she has one that needs catching.. Snake Catchers does not = Carpenters for her. So he figures "why not?" and they decided to scope this job out. The following adventure was two lefts and a right from no-where, them running around like idiots trying to catch this huge black rat snake, just a complete fire drill... In the end they managed to wrangle the beast for the woman.

But its that sense of adventure , the grin of finding the road less traveled and that exploring the unexpected that always left a big impression on me growing up that Marshal possessed with pretty much everything he set out to accomplish. That's the spirit of this build: a sense for adventure, exploring the unknown and the road less traveled. So I'm calling this one "the Snake Driver"...

GIDDY UP

Finally back from paint

Stainless photo-etched badges for the head & seat tubes..

DETAILS

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.

29er V2

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..