Brown Bike

My friends Colin and Kevin and I got together to design and build our own steel frame versions of the Evil Chamois Hagar. We built three bikes, each with slightly different geometry for our personal fit/riding style. Special features include a chainstay kickstand mount, dropped stay reinforcement tube, bag/rack mounts, and provisions for a 100-110mm suspension fork.

We got our material all pre-Laser-Mitered, and most of the rear triangle uses 3D printed stainless steel yokes. This made for a relatively simple build, just clean and weld.

We hit out first roadblock pretty quick when trying to bend our down tubes. Our pre lasered bottle boss holes ended up causing the tube to buckle when bent. Pretty expected in hindsight, but not something we thought of before hand. We ended up ordering tubes on mcmaster and remaking these tubes on the mill

Our seat tubes feature external bottle bosses to allow a dropper to be fully inserted while mounting a bottle.

Group dinner after a long day of mitering, cleaning, and welding tubes.

Front triangle welded first

Some human fixturing for welding the seat tube gusset

Full frame in jig. 3D printed stainless dropouts, seatstay yoke, and chainstay yoke. All openings on the frame were masked with powder coating tape and then the frame was backpurged while welding. This keeps the stainless from oxidizing on the back while welding, and keeps the stainless welds strong.













Brazing on the bottle bosses and cable guides

Bike in bike transportation

I made an engraved stainless steel head tube badge using some super glue fixturing. Then bent and brazed it on to the head tube.

I bought a suspension corrected chromoly fork, then added a few fender mounts to the bottom

Got the frame and fork powder coated a "king midas" brown/gold. It's color changes a lot depending on the lighting, ranging from a dark bronze, to a bright sparkly gold.

IMG_5440.MOV

Needed to cut the bearing crown race but didn't have the tool. Instead I put the fork backwards in the lathe and cut it with a left hand tool

Assembly in process

Overall super pleased with how this bike turned out. It's my first and only "regular" bike, and much lighter than any of my previous creations. It's super fun to do a build with a group rather than on your own. Now I just need to put some miles on it!