A Slight Diversion

I have been looking forward to the end of the year.  With holiday time off and 1 week of unused vacation I was looking forward to 3 1/2 weeks of time away from work.  Time that I would spend in the shop working on frames.  Well, things are turning out a little bit differently than I had hoped.  The week of vacation was given up due to last minute needs at work and some of the holiday time off will be spent at work also.  It's not all bad due to the fact that I am doing something at work that I enjoy. 

As far as work in the shop goes, I haven't been working on my Fatbike frame lately but I have been working quite a bit.  On the Fatbike project I am waiting to get a crank (it should be here Friday) before I get going on the rear triangle.  So the last week or so I have been working on a repair/modification project.  It is a Niner steel frame that cracked through the rear dropout near one of the screw holes for a removable derailleur hanger.  The customer had some work done previously where a brace was added between the chain and seat stays similar to what is sometimes used on the disc brake side.  He wanted me to do a better job than this and was interested in adding an adjustable rear dropout that could take up chain slack in a single speed setup.  After some searching we came up with rocker rear dropouts made by Black Cat that looked like they would work with his existing chain/seat stay configuration.  After receiving the dropouts, I found that the width of the flanges was not sufficient for the diameter of the stays.  I was able to modify them to create dropouts that would work.

My next task is to prepare a frame for a special treatment by my powdercoater,  It is a Fatbike frame that I started in the spring and finished this fall.  I haven't posted any pictures of it yet.  I plan to take it to the North American Handbuilt Bike Show in Denver this coming February.  It should look pretty cool.