Tri's Katsura

A testimonial from a satisfied customer, he is a good friend so he may be biased, but the bike looks pretty nice regardless. Also thanks to Feride for her expertise in devising colourways. Tri managed the project and built the bike, I did the saddle, you may recognise it from "The Art of The Bicycle".

Tri says:

"Been working on my second bike, it's nearly there only missing a head badge
and a "Katsura" scripted on the top tube. It's named after prince Katsura
from the Japanese royal family.
The Frame is a Royal Harbour?????? (tried to look this up but no luck) from
Japan made from tange 2 tubing. The seat is a one off custom from Mick Peel
and to me is the real highlight. It makes a totally unique bike that has
it's own personality that I love cruising around on."

Looks nice Tri!

Off The Shelf: Jaffa Mocca Latte

The brown and orange bike is finally finished. I managed to pick up a set of Miche 36h track hubs at a very reasonable price. The set up on the fixie conversion includes the following:
- CroMo Frame (top tube 57.5, seat tube 55.5), powder coated
- Tourney 170 alloy cranks
-52t chainring
-20t Roselli cog
-1/8th inch 1/2 link chain
- Powder coated alloy rims
- Custom covered leather saddle; Selle Italia
- Alloy pedals powder coated to match
rims
- Miche low flange track hubs
- Alloy seat post
- Custom leather bar wrap and toe straps
- MKS toe clips
- Alloy stem and drop bars

Now I need to sell the bike so I can afford to finish the next one, the red Mixte. Drop me a note if you're interested.

Padded Pants: Bent Frames: Nice Cranks

Cycle Shorts #1, the first prototype of a pair of pedal pushers in wool lycra with a padded seat. Here are a few images of the work in progress. I guess I'm a tailor too. Not just leather saddles and bikes but pants as well.

I've been contemplating some trousers such as these for some time now, but the final inspiration was this:

Just before Christmas Ged and I joined a small group of riders for a 70km ride from South Morang to King Lake and back. There was a serious climb and a serious descent and plenty of km's in between. When we arrived at the designated place TC asked "you guys have free wheels on those bikes don't you? I should have advised that it was a long rod ride." So we managed to finish the ride but with a pretty sore butt.

Pants will be finished today (I keep telling myself).


The Mixte project make slow progress. Most difficult and painful was the re-spacing of the rear dropouts. With the extra set of seat/chain stays it becomes extremely difficult to manipulate the frame. In the end I managed to get the exact spacing for the coaster brake hub, 110mm, but in the process managed to seriously buckle the middle stays. Never mind, everything else lines up nicely.

These Sugino VP cranks have polished up nicely with a bit of extra elbow grease and emery paper to cut back a lot of pitting. Feride says "they look like cranks", Ged, Simon and Thuy all say "the cranks look really nice"..... The cranks presented another problem, the first set I fitted with a shorter BB spindle had a completely stripped thread on the right and the chain line wasn't straight. So I spent most of the day trying to fabricate an alternative crank removal tool, but in the end the angle grinder and the rubbish bin were the only answer.

51t Chain ring and 22t cog from Abbotsford Cycles, Wheels built by Shifter Bikes, forks still at the electro platers. The tyres will be white, along with white leather saddle and bar wrap with red stitch detail. Incidentally, I found a nice set of rusty bars on a bike at the Phillip Island Tip that will be used on this bike.

It's not just bikes and saddles I make.

Check out the Dolma (Turkish) also known as Dolmades in Greek. But we do the Turkish version in our house. I guess I just like making stuff, including food. In the third image you can see MDF, the happy (I hope) owner of the yellow machine from an earlier post.

Plenty of other delicious Turkish dishes where this one came from. I learned it from Feride, one of the toughest food critics around. If she doesn't like it she'll let you know, and forget about messing around with the traditional recipes, no surprise ingredients.

What's With the Skulls?

The sequence of images is not really chronological (having a bit of trouble with the blogger interface). In any case, here's a little bit of an out of sequence pictorial story of the skull saddle. The latest is at the top and everything else is scattered randomly thereafter. There are trial swatches trying to figure out how to represent a skull in pink, in leather whilst keeping it functional as a saddle. That means durability and comfort. The machine embroidered option wasn't really under consideration because the stitching would disappear in no time with the abrasion of the cyclist's back side!

I'm starting to wonder what will come next in the skull series or whether the skulls have reached their logical conclusion. Maybe something like family crests?

Evil Pinky & Some Golden Treasure

Here's what I got up to on the weekend. Recovering / restoring a battered old Rolls with a little of the busyman signature stitch. I estimated a week for this job but once I get started I can't stop til it's complete. I even had to wait for a break in the relentless rain to ride over to the Maiike Studio for some extra long rivet shanks to re-attach the golden trim. As usual an exciting job that caused anxiety at every stage. I'm happy with the end result, even though the gold wasn't real and pretty much polished off when I cleaned it.

The Evil Pinky: What can I say, this was an exciting job because of the different and dramatic application of this embossing technique. I'm really happy with the outcome. The Evil Pinky and the Red Flame are for Mr and Mrs Shifter respectively.

Next post hopefully there's an update on the Mixte, currently it's at the powder coater and electro-plater. The rims have just been polished, the coaster hub is waiting at Shifter Bikes, the red tires are still in Japan and I think I might have to make a special saddle.

The Next One on the Bookshelf: Top Shelf of Course

It's the Jaffa-Mocha-Latte sitting on the bookshelf now. Still waiting for the appropriate 36 hole back hub to arrive. The solution for the yellow bike isn't going to work for this one because the 36 hole rims have been powder coated especially for the build, pedals are matching too. So here it sits now waiting patiently for things to start moving again.

It's an exciting week ahead though, there's plenty of work on the studio table. The skull embossed saddle is looking rather nice and needs glueing along with the new red flame model. I'm also off to the powder coaters and the electro platers this week for the mixte and another fork I thought I'd get chromed just for the hell of it.

Where's Thuy?

A beautiful day for an afternoon ride, great tail wind heading out, surprising head wind coming home. We missed you Thuy and hoped Michael could make it on the "Yellow Machine", maybe next time. Here we are loitering around the back yard / workshop, talking bike and fitting some toe straps to Tri's new bike. So new in fact that not only was it missing toe straps but he hasn't managed to organise his brakes yet. I think secretly he's planning to go brakeless forever. Also waiting around for Samantha to collect the bike she just won in an Ebay auction. It was Feride's Christmas present last year, I guess the Mixte is this years present. Thanks again Feride for the pictures.

Black and White Speed Stripes

A couple of nice shots of Feride's Speed Stripes bike. It's the old red Giant road bike converted to a three speed internal hub gear using the original right hand shifter. Looks great photographed against the Beardleyesque wallpaper in the laundry/bike studio.

Saddle Sunday

It's a saddle Sunday. the saddles have recently returned from "The Art of the Bicycle". Managed to convince Feride to photograph a few of them in more detail. These are some of the more intricate ones with embossing, fancy punched contrast holes and stitch detail. On the tables is a sneak preview of what's on the way. The pink embossed skull model for Emma. Thanks for the photos Feride. Check out her images in Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/10145176@N05/

Yellow Machine is Done

Now that happened much faster than expected. My solution for the 36 hole back hub problem was solved by an idea I had on Thursday night, why not use a new 32 hole rim instead! So I got the rim on Friday night, polished it up on Friday night, delivered it back to Shifter Bikes on Saturday morning. Then Dan called back on Saturday afternoon to inform me that the wheels were ready, I took the bike in and he fit the wheels and drive train for me. That was it, complete. I guess things were just working out on Saturday. Here are a few nice shots by Feride.