g.duke Handmade Bicycles

A Royce Hub

DT Swiss spokes and Pro-Loc nipples

and a Mavic Open Pro rim

Reading-The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
Listening to- The Essential Leonard Cohen

Merino J front

Merino J back

Once upon a time when a cyclist wanted or needed a new item of bike related clothing they would go down to Giramondo’s Cycling and sportswear in Nicholson St North Fitzroy (if Melbourne was your home) and talk to the person behind the counter. You might have thumbed your way through the rack and then if they didn’t have something in your size or you wanted something a bit different you would place an order and know that it would be run up in the back room on the knitting machine by another member of the family company. If he/she, raced with the Northern suburbs combine they might approach John Mcinerney about a pair of Rapide Knicks which he, had made. Bike clothing wasn’t always a staple item of bike shops. They sold and repaired bikes and this was in the days before non racing cyclists ever wore lycra, even for the comfort factor. However, when you did want some you had a connection to the supplier. They were often the maker. The last few years have seen the proliferation of easily available bike clothing and the web has seen the rise of custom alternatives that offer a template for your design, but there is often a lingering question as to exactly where your clothing comes from. A couple of years ago I came across a Sydney company called Lab-Gear http://www.lab-gear.com/. They make a variety of bike and urban clothing to order and just as importantly can provide you with the provenance of each item that goes to make up their clothing. They can tell you where the merino wool comes from, where the zippers are made, where the chamois is sourced from and where the clothing is stitched together. They even flag the facts surrounding changes planned for the future. You get the picture. Now I don’t buy allot of bike clothing but in answer to that question from my partner “what do you want for your birthday this year”? I contacted Gerard at Lab-Gear and had a Merino J made up with artwork pertaining to my frames. This involved quite a few emails back and forth, admittedly more to do with the printing than anything else but none the less, along with the details outlined above left me with that same feeling of connectedness that I used to experience going into Giramondo’s. If like me you enjoy that feeling when it comes to your purchases then Lab-Gear are for you. I might add that not only am I very happy with the final product but believe it to be real value for money

Once upon a time when a bicycle saddle wore out you threw it away. I had a Rolls that had gotten to end of its comfortable life. As many people know these saddles have stood the test of time and were used in the pro peleton for years as the saddle of choice for many and it seemed a shame to dispose of it. Luckily we now have Mick Peel from Busyman Bicycles http://busymanbicycles.blogspot.com.au/ to recycle and or personalise our saddles for us.I decided that this was what I would do and what started out in my mind as a relatively simple transaction turned into a bit of a collaboration. For many people dealing with Mick is probably through email and postage. Fortunately for me he is just on my door step and in fact between home and work. I originally dropped the saddle of with the idea that I would have my name embossed in the covering. I was going to send Mick the artwork but overnight had second thoughts. I felt uncomfortable branding something I hadn’t made myself. After chatting to him that first night I decided to go with the statement that I use to describe my work. “handmade with soul”

I felt it also described the way Mick works. I discussed it with him and sent him the artwork. He got back to me after having a go at cutting the letters with a request. Did I know of anyone who could laser cut the letters?. They were a bit small for him to do a good job on. Fortunately again, I did and he couldn’t have been more helpful. Thanks Jas.. I got the letters back to Mick and, hey presto, a new recycled Rolls for my bike with a description of both the maker and owner. Thanks Mick it was great to work with you and I look forward to many more years of riding on this saddle

Recycled Rolls “Handmade with Soul” by Busyman Bicycles

Another fillet brazed stem this time with a couple of extra additions. Firstly and easily enough a bell mount on the side. Secondly, a built-in cable hanger for a set of cantilever brakes. Nothing too difficult one thinks untill I started to wonder how I was going to hold that little extra bit of metal in the right place to braze it. This is what I came up with.

Cable Hanger brazing jig

The smaller section is pushed into the bottom of the stem and the slot that you can see is so that not too much heat needs to be generated to get things up to brazing temp. It also stops me inadvertently brazing the jig to the stem. I may never have to use this again but along with a number of other little jigs that I have made I know that it has enabled me to do the required job in the most efficient way. It may sound like the job takes longer but the end result is always better

Off to the chrome platers

Reading  Peter Carey’s The Chemistry of Tears

Listening to  Mick Harvey’s Sketches from the Book of the Dead

Ready for plating

In the lead up to the Moscow Olympics in 1980 my friend Martin Gillespie became the cartoonist for the Maryborough (Queensland Australia) Chronicle. He and I had been friends for ever , even then. At the same time,

Moscow Olympics by Pie

I had just taken up competitive cycling and despite the fact that we lived over 2000kms from each other he chose to use a caricature of me to depict the controversy surrounding Australian athletes participation in an event being held behind what was then, the Iron Curtain. He got it pretty right at the time. I had knobbly knees and still do and back then I had a moustache. There are a number of coincidences here. The Australian 4000m pursuit team for Moscow was made up of Kevin Nichols, Kelvin Poole, Colin Fitzgerald and Gary Sutton, whose brother Shane is now a DS with the Sky team of Bradley Wiggins and Mark Cavendish, probably both the strongest and fastest men on a bike right now. On Saturday night Australian time as the Olympic road race for 2012 rolled out of London and onto the roads at Box Hill we celebrated my friends 50th birthday. We now live in the same state of Victoria and this picture hangs over my workbench and reminds me of many things. Not the least is the fact that it seems extremely rare to me that two things that have been so constant in my life, my friendship with Martin who isn’t a cyclist and my love of the bikes could be tied together in a simple cartoon drawn so long ago

The last month has been kind of busy. What with The Tour to keep me occupied in the evenings there has been no lack of inspiration regarding cycling. Anyway away from the telly I did manage to make a couple of stems. The first one for Tim to decorate the classic road bike that I built for him a couple of years ago. Made from Llewelyn http://www.llewellynbikes.com/stem lugs and polished Tim is still troubled by the desire for a new paint job and exactly what he wants it to look like. So the stem will have to wait for paint untill he makes up his mind

The second one is Fillet Brazed from scratch.Made to suit a threadless steerer and inspired by the beautful work of Robin Mather      http://apracticalguide.wordpress.com/   While it was alot of work I really like it and may build myself one in the future

Dazza’s raw stem components

Cut and Polished

Polished and carved

Fully Fluxed and in the Jig

Brazed and ready for cleanup

Waiting for Paint

Making the Steerer clamp for a fillet brazed stem

All the pieces of a Fillet Brazed Stem

Clamping tube brazed on

Jigged up Fillet Brazed Stem

Fully brazed and ready for cleanup

Fillet Brazed Stem waiting for chrome

Along with many other people I rode the Whittlesea Challenge long course last Sunday. http://cyclingprofiles.com.au/  It was a fresh start but turned into a great day for riding.This was a couse that I knew well from my days racing so I was pretty satisfied to finish in under four hours including the one stop that I took in Broadford. Not bad for an old bloke on a steel bike. Back to the workbench

Crossing the finish line

The build continued with a mixture of Reynolds 708 OS and Columbus tubes. Along with the dropouts that I machined and the stainless lugs that had been polished went a Walter BB. Apart from the need for extra cleanliness when joining stainless the construction is pretty much the same as a normal frame and given that the only stainless in the fork is in the dropouts then everything went as per normal.These dropouts go both inside and outside the tubes by virtue of two slots cut into them the same dimension as the tubing diameter. The bit on the outside of the tube after brazing gets filed down and in this case polished

Handcut front dropout after paint

Using any component of framebuilding for the first time is always interesting. You wonder if for some reason, this tube or that crown or a lug with that much cut out of it will be more difficult or pose some challenge that you havent envisaged or seen before. Some builders never face this as they use the same stuff all the time. For me that would take much of the enjoyment out of the process. This frame had a number of firsts. I had never used a Pacenti crown or a set of stainless frame lugs. I wasnt exactly sure how my hand cut dropouts would go and I was very aware of the fact that the cantilever brakes that the frame was designed for would place more stress on the seatstay/seat lug junction than a set of caliper brakes. This is because cantilevers exert outward pressure on the stays rather than being centred around the pivot bolt of a caliper. For this reason I added a couple of extra gussets around the top of the chainstays so that their edges actually overlapped the outside of the stays

. This means that along with the extra material that I could build a fillet on I also have this surface for the braking force to act on if it needs to. The pictures may not show you everything but I hope you get the idea. Despite my concerns I didn’t run up against anything to difficult and was pretty happy with the final product. Once it was complete I masked the stainless for both blasting and painting and looked forward to building it up.

Columbus S bend stays

If you feel like this description is missing some pictures,scan the folio pages for pictures of the crown and the rear dropouts during the process

Front on after paint

Rear dropouts after paint

Full frame after paint

After my Easter getaway and a satifying ride at the Baw Baw chalenge on the weekend I figured I should keep you up to date with goings on in the workshop.

This genesis of this frame was a set of Stainless Steel 204 series oversize lugs which I painfully cut and polished, the Stainless dropouts that you see in the folio pages,which I machined myself from 316 plate and the Pacenti fork crown that is shown being milled on the same page

Stainless Lugs

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The idea for this frame came from the fact that post war and particularly in England there were many people who only owned one bike. This bike often served more than one purpose and could be set up to ride to work during the week and then have the mudguards and some times racks removed to go racing on the weekend.As the dominant form of road racing in England at that time was time trialing most of these bikes had either a single gear or boasted a Sturmey Archer internally geared hub.They were commonly painted either British Racing Green or Black and were sometimes classified as Clubman Bicycles. The concept of a bike that would perhaps reflect the look of these bikes but be made from modern tubing informs this frame. For the sake of a title I am calling it the Nuevo Clubman.Stay tuned to see its progress

Over Easter I spent time away walking, camping and enjoying the peace of Lake Catani at Mt Buffalo National Park in Victoria. No I didn’t take the bike; there was too much other stuff to do. However there was plenty of time around the fire at night to think.
While I am not one to want to put things or people in boxes,it has long interested me that the term Arts or Crafts didn’t really gel with the sort of stuff that I or many other people do. Over the years I have known or met many people who make things by hand. People, who build houses, restore vintage cars, make furniture or wooden boats. While some people may refer to these pursuits of the handmade as “an art” the broader community see the arts as something more confined to the aesthetic; like painting and dance,and things like pottery or macramé are more in the crafts basket. Don’t get me wrong, I have known and appreciate the work of people who pursue those things too but they don’t quite fit in the same box except from the creative angle. I recently came across the term Industrial Arts and started to think about what that meant. I started to wonder, are bicycle framebuilding or traditional house building or wooden boat building Industrial Arts. I have decided that simply by themselves they are not. However the skills involved and learned and the understanding of the materials used to do these things are.
There are many people out there who decide at one time or another that they would like to build themselves a bike frame or a boat or restore a car. Their rationale is often to own this item and imagine that doing it yourself may be cheaper and/or fun to do. While this may or may not turn out to be the case, if they have no prior skills in woodworking and no understanding of different woods and how they respond to being worked, or have never held a file against a piece of steel or brazed a joint of anything let alone a bicycle tube they are simply making the item they set out to. If on the other hand they have served some sort of apprenticeship or training in the related trade to their project then they are practicing the Industrial Arts. Again, don’t get me wrong. There are some very good self taught makers of things who go on to make for others. They would probably have been very good apprentices, but a thorough grounding in a related trade will certainly make the learning curve less steep. I served an apprenticeship as toolmaker. I don’t think I would have had the guts to build a bike frame (even one) had I not had that background, here’s to those who do. But more importantly for this particular topic I would not see myself as practicing any sort of art let alone the Industrial Arts if I didn’t have that broad understanding. It’s not only the final product that matters, its each little invisible step along the way.
When I look at the work of Matthew Boyle who I have known for a long time at http://www.pumphousedesign.com.au/about1.html
or, Peter Ingram-Jones at http://www.canoesandlampshades.com/
or, Ian Barry at http://www.ianbarry.com/the-falcon-ten/
I can see they have a huge understanding of the materials and process involved in their creations. I also see a large appreciation for the history behind what they are making. All this combined reflects in my opinion, the Industrial Arts. I will leave it to you do decide if the building of bicycle frames by hand and in the way I do it fits into this category.