Welcome to my blog!
Does anyone even do this anymore?
How it all began!
I’m flattered that anyone would be interested in anything I have to say. So, thank you. This is my first, and hopefully not last post. We’ll see as this website format is truly frustrating and counter intuitive.
I do post a ton on Instagram, and make You Tube videos and encourage you to find me there! But this is different. Those are about the specific work I’m demonstrating. Here I guess I can rant about anything I want! This is my frame building website, so I guess it will be mostly bicycle related. Hopefully that’s what you’re here for anyway.
For those of you that don’t know my history. It all began as a child and having my dad teach me how to ride a bike. Then a lot of other stuff happened—and I am writing a book about it that may or may not ever be available in some form—and then I began frame building. I blame it all on Bicycle Quarterly Magazine. They got me just like so many others before and after. It used to be a pretty amazing little Magazine written by a lunatic. It convinced me that I couldn’t be happy on a bike unless it was a 650b Randonneur bike! Probably handmade and super light with lots of expensive parts. Now I’m not saying it was right or wrong exactly. Can you be both right and wrong about something in equal measure? It don’ts sound right, but that’s how most things factually seem to be.
I used to joke when my customers asked me about it or brought it up. They’d say just about anything and I’d say, “Be careful, that magazine will convince you that you need a $7,000 bike!” And I was right too! Although It’s probably $10,000 now with inflation and all. I wouldn’t know as I stopped reading it back in 2017 or so. Part of me thinks I was right to quit, part of me wishes I wouldn’t have, and I think about picking it back up all the time… but even if I wanted to this damn smart phone addiction would probably keep me from doing it.
Anyway, it was a thing I kind of thought, and my roommate at the time, Rando Theo, just build a Kogswell frame up and got all the mismatched and wrong parts for it so he could see what 650b was all about. He wasn’t happy with that bike at all, and it didn’t look like the handmade randonneur bikes in the magazine. So, he started looking around and found M.A.P Cycles here in town. And I being crazy and a broke student found U.B.I. I didn’t’ have the down payment for a custom M.A.P 650b randoneur bike with light tubes and low trail and cool paint and a beautiful chrome rack. And I like working with my hands, and I more or less learned how to braze in Auto Body school back in the late 90’s, and I was learning how to do all my own mechanical work on bikes by volunteering at Bikefarm and bugging all the bike nerds to be my friend and teach me stuff. And, U.B.I’s frame building class only had a $100 deposit!!! And that was something I could almost afford! almost… I had no idea how I was going to get the rest of the money, but somehow, I knew I would. And that would be a relative I’d never met passing away and leaving my mom a little bit of money. And her letting me know this and letting me know she wanted me to have some for something good shortly after signing up for the frame building class. Really lucky timing, because other than $40 bucks most years at X-Mas and on my birthday, that was the only money I ever got from her. Well it wasn’t actually perfect timing, other than the money, as the class was a full time 8-5 thing, and the week of finals! And the finals being half my grade in all my classes and I was taking 19 credit hours, when full time was only 12. So, I remember this was the end of the 2010 school year. Also, my Certificate of Completion says Summer 2010 or something like that on it. I still have it, framed and hanging in the shop. It’s hung in every shop I’ve owned.
So, I took the class and met a bunch of really cool people, Including Ahearne, Tony Pereria and Toothless Gary. Magically, all my teachers were really supportive of me taking the frame building class, and they all let me off the hook and gave me A’s!
We’ll you may not, but I do love an unreliable narrator. And I’ve just become one, so I hope you do too, because I just remembered that I wanted to become a frame builder long before I ever read a BQ (Bicycle Quarterly). In fact, I didn’t know any frame builders existed at all at the time. I believe a bike friend was always telling me about cool old frame builders, back in the day. In fact, I thought frame building became a lost art back in the 70’s, and all bikes after that were made in factories in Asia, which is mostly true. So, I decided I’d be the one to figure it out and bring back this lost art! I Thought I would be the first in decades.
I did promise myself I wouldn’t get obsessed with bikes and take it easy and not take it too far at all and derail my whole life like I did with Model A Hot Rods! That was of course a lie too.
I made my first frame in that class at UBI. Scouring the internet for anything I could find about the lost art. Was how I found UBI, and that’s how I met Ahearne and Tony, and Gary. All great frame builders! I was Shocked. Then Ahearne told me there were at least 30 custom frame builders that he knew of here in the States, and half of them were in Portland. So, I guess I wasn’t the first one to bring it back. Oh well, it was still super cool.
And I didn’t get into it because of 650b, or probably even BQ. I was getting really uncomfortable on bikes and trying to figure out fit and decided my body was just too weird for any stock bike and that I had to make a custom bike if I ever wanted one that fit!!! I still believe this to be true, except when I don’t. I’m obsessed with fit, and think everyone is wrong about it all of the time, especially when they see a bike for sale that looks too good. Suddenly size doesn’t seem to matter at all… for a little while.
I spent months tracking down vintage frame building parts and vintage brakes and derailleurs and all the parts. I was going to make the perfect bike in that class. All 1970’s Campagnolo with the Rally long cage rear derailleur, rare factory Nuovo Record triple cranks, New Old Stock Mafac brake levers and hoods and wide touring Cantilever brakes. I was going to build the perfect 1970’s race bike, but as a touring bike with 32mm tires and room for fenders, and with lugs! The only thing I couldn’t find before the class were NOS Nervex lugs. Anything with Nervex professional lugs I just instantly fall in love with, and anything without lugs does just about zero for me.
I don’t think I’d even heard of 650b as I built this first frame, I wouldn’t even be convinced that I needed one until a few years later. I believe my first 650b frame was the 5th or 6th frame I made. But by then I was absolutely reading BQ, and had met Mitch of M.A.P Cycles as he shared a shop with Ahearne, and made the most beautiful bikes. And that’s the Truth!
A Labor of Love!
I’ve just posted the Miyata 1000 for sale in the Shop section on this website! If you’re reading this way in the future, it’s probably sold but it’s a fun story anyways. I never planned on modifying frames or doing any frame repairs, but people love their old bikes, or just old and vintage bikes. Vintage is just a fun way of saying old. Maybe it means nicer cooler old stuff. In the collector car world, it generally just means anything older than 25 years. In the traditional hot rod world, it usually means nothing newer than about the early 60’s and then only begrudgingly so. It really means traditional 40’s 50’s and early 60’s style hotrods and customs. Sometimes it even means they can only be built with parts or reproduction parts that look like they were built from that time or place in history. I kind of feel that way about bikes!
Bikes should be at least 25 years old or look like they are. But that’s changing fast as many bikes I would consider modern are at least 25 years old! Threadless stems and disk brakes, get out of here, but it’s true. There are probably Surlys and aluminum hybrids with V-Brakes that are more than 25 years old now! wild times to be alive! I really really, and I mean really love the look of classic bikes from the 40’s and 50’s and the most popular decade for cycling the 70’s. even a lot of 80’s bikes look pretty neat still but they started getting too slick, even if affordable high-quality components that preformed really well became more accesses able to more bikes. I’d like to say that’s where it stops, but I do like a lot of 90’s and early 2000’s bikes as well, or really their parts groups. I’m fairly in love with Shimano 9 speed! Made in Japan instead of whatever slave labor sweat shop in whatever underdeveloped country is cheapest. Beautiful small barrel hubs with bright silver anodizing and cassette bodies that don’t break or bend axles. Matching GS, (medium cage derailers), and still the options of downtube or bar end shifters, also available in bright silver. But by the 90 s the steel-lugged bike was all but a thing of the past. Soon quill stems and silver parts would be too, even on higher end components. interchangeability would soon be gone too, and you were stuck with what profit maximizing penny pinching companies with sagging sales numbers were willing to lower their standards too to accommodate bikes built to a price point that would sell, and not for quality or beauty. That’s why Bridgestone America packed it in, they just didn’t want to build junk at a price point instead of bikes they loved and stood behind. That’s why we got Rivendell bike works out of those ashes, makers of beautiful bikes with lugs and cool details and lovely paint schemes. But that’s a whole other rabbit hole.
Today’s rabbit hole is about the 1981 Miyata 1000 I just listed on my store page. It’s a beautiful bike. It was beautiful new, and it’s still beautiful now. It wasn’t very beautiful when I found it, but I saw it and I saved it! It was at a local not for profit bike shop, but aren’t they all... it was covered in about 30 years of dust and neglect. They didn’t see it the way I did, and it was destined for the metal recycler! It was at their scrap sale; it’s last stop before the crusher. A few other used bike shop owners and helplessly addicted to old bikes enthusiasts were there and all missed it. There were things that looked slightly shinier or had some nicer parts on them that caught their eyes. The inches thick layers of warn bar tape, dirty faded paint and 27 inch wheels with rotted tires turned them away. but luckily, I saw something, not much but something so I pulled it off the rack to inspect it. It really didn’t look like much. But there was something about it. It said Miyata but like everyone else I guessed it was a low end one. I saw something on the top tube. It wasn’t really ledge able. Maybe the model number, maybe a 310. I asked if anyone else could make it out. They couldn’t either and lost interest and went about searching for that diamond in the rough we all hope we’ll find. And find it we do, sort of, and just often enough to keep us hooked.
I set it out and looked at it. It was a cool old touring bike even if it wasn’t anything special. My shop was full of cool projects. I really didn’t have the room for another one, still don’t. Then I decided to get it anyways. Maybe the paint looked pretty good under the dust, maybe the wheels with a broken spoke each wouldn’t take that much to get round and true and smooth again… maybe. Maybe it would sell quickly after I put way to much time and effort into overhauling it and have to ask much more than the market could bare for it all the while still selling it at a loss. That’s when I thought to check the other side of the top tube in case it was more legible. And boy was it; I almost lost it. But my brain couldn’t really process it. There it was still hard to read but there it was, Miyata 1000! The holy grail of touring bikes! I can’t believe I didn’t recognize it right away. I guess I’ve only seen a few and they were the later LT 90’s versions. I hung my bag of random bits and parts, and some wheels and fenders id already dug up on it. Trying to hide it, to save it just for myself, hoping that none of the people that had already dismissed it wouldn’t suddenly notice it and try and talk me out of it.
I paid for my booty, $35 bucks for one junk bike, $10 for a probably unsavable wheel, $8 for 4 pounds of whatever. Then they said the wheels were buy one get two free, so I grabbed two more I had been looking at. Two that someone else was holding onto but then put back at the last second. Both good scores!
I always do a YouTube video on all my weird scores. So, I looked over it for the first time on video. Then I did a second one on it trying to decide not to do what I knew I was going to do. Maybe it was in such good condition that I had to just tune it up and sell it. Sell a 27x 1 ¼ old 5 speed freewheel bike in a market of people that believe you must have huge gravel tires on anything to like it at all, even fixed gears and city commuters!??? It was a doomed project right from the start. I looked it over for any reason to do it, and not to go nuts on it. Not to put thousands of dollars’ worth of time and money into it. I didn’t find one, but what I did find was one rear cantilever brake boss that kind of looked a little wonky, maybe just a little off, probably totally fine but not perfect…. And there it was, the excuse too not keep it stock. The excuse too strip it down and clean it off and stop being precious about trying to save that old paint. The excuse to go nuts or full ham if you will and do everything to it!
Once that decision was made, and all the rationalizations as to why I should do anything else with it at all were gone, it was time. So, I had to come up with a plan. Should I do the most reasonable of unreasonable things and just move the cantilever brake bosses down 5 or 6mm to convert it to a 700c bike, then put it up for sale and hope someone buys it and wants to paint it and build it back up? But… no one cares about 700c bikes that only fit 32mm tires and fit 5 speed freewheels. Slightly better than a 27” wheeled bike but not by much. So better realign the rear end to 130mm for modern road wheels too. I don’t do 135 as I don’t like modern mountain bike or hybrid hubs, and 120 to 130 is already a lot of give on an old 120mm frame. And once that’s done and the paint is messed up anyways might as well do a few of my other favorite braze ons, like water bottle bosses in the bridges to make mounting fenders a breeze. And adding a third set of bottle bosses for all that water you need on a long ride through the middle of nowhere. And a pump peg that’s out of the way for that inevitable flat at a bad time, and more rack mounts for some serous camping gear! This is a touring bicycle after all.
… and last but not least, might as well make it fit a cooler wheel size so it can fit a slightly bigger and maybe acceptable size tire, so might as well put the cantilever bosses on for 650b!
I usually hope someone will want it at this point, mangy looking with all the paint sanded off in the spots I modified, so much potential in my eyes and very little in most other peoples. And at a price point considerably higher than the sale page at the hip online retailers get for a new frame, or Craigslist for a whole used bike with nice looking paint. This strategy really doesn’t work. So, I talked myself into coughing up the real cash money and making the trip out to the powder coating place and having to dig through all their color samples trying to find one that’s only a one stage $200 color instead of a two stage $400 color!!! Not as easy as it sounds.
It was around this time someone tracked me down from my videos and rode up to the shop. He was on the prettiest bike I’d ever seen, or at least fairly recently. It was an early 1980’s Miyata 1000! An 84 I believe he said. So similar but just a little different. The most noticeable was the faded dull blue paint on mine and the sparkling emerald metal flake on his. He was talking about Black Magic paint, and their insanely beautiful, but starting at $1000 paint jobs. And I do mean starting at! His paint was so good I couldn’t take my eyes off it. So, I asked, “this one just get back from Black magic?
“No,” he said, that’s he was talking about this other one he was working on for his girlfriend. She rode with him and was standing there straddling her bike.
“This one is from the factory.”
I couldn’t believe it; it still looked wet. Then he said, “I just found this bike brand new in the box from 1984. I just build it up and started riding it!” What a lucky lucky guy. That was the last straw, I had to take the Miyata 1000 to the powder coaters. Yes, not the painters, the difference between $1000 and $200 is the difference in paying shop rent and going right out of business. Also, powder is way more durable and scratch resistant and can be pretty dang beautiful if you pick the right color and the right shop to do it. It still takes a lot of skill to make a bike look good and most shop monkeys shooting toolboxes and ladders aren’t artists the way most painters are and have to be. I think I nailed it on this one. I went in for Emerald Green, but didn’t find one I liked, then accidentally found the pretties blue ever, that was $400. So, I asked the guy if there was a blue just as good in a single stage and he handed me a little key ring of blue and said, “these are all single high gloss blues that turn out better than they look.”
He was right. I was medium excited about the blue I picked. It was the best by far, but the sample was faded from being scuffed up thousands of times on all the other scruffy samples.
When I picked the frame set up I was shocked. It was so much more beautiful than I could have guessed. Photos of paint jobs never do them justice and this was no exception. I’ve taken a hundred pictures and not one in any light ever captures how good it is. I’m saving the color code. I’ll be using this one again and again. It’s so wet and bright and full of sparkle and the sparkles have a subtle rainbow effect. I’m really happy with the choice. It’s exactly what I’ve always been looking for but always came up a little short on. The only anxiety left is hoping whoever is looking for just such a bike in just such a size doesn’t hate blue!
So today I finished up what might be the two last videos on this Miyata 1000 conversion and uploaded them to YouTube. And I put it up on the website for sale. I hope someone buys it and pays me to build it up for them. I hope they’re local so it’s not a million emails and misunderstandings, and so that I don’t have to pack and ship it. But most of all I hope they love it more than I do. That’s not true, most of all I hope they buy it before I end up deciding to do the full build on it out of my very usually drained pockets…
… I’ve already got plans… save me!
And check out my insta for lots of in progress pics and my YouTube for way more hours of videos on everything I’ve done to this bike than any sane person would want to watch in a lifetime. I think I have more hours of videos on making this Miyata 1000 650b conversion than Disney has in their billion-dollar Star Wars franchise!