I don’t get a lot of requests for road bikes but oh, how I love to build them. And even more so if the person definitely needs a custom frame. And especially so if the person I’m building for is one of the nicest people on the planet. In this day and age niceness is always appreciated and it’s what I respond to best. Lucky for me, all of my customers are pretty awesome. Melinda is a petite woman who needed a bike that would be scaled down to her stature. I immediately knew that standard 700c wheels were out of the question. The smaller wheel options that were on the table were 650b, 26″, and 650c. We ended up designing the bike around 650c wheels because that is the size that gave the bike the most balanced look. I wanted it to look like a normal road bike so everything needed to be just a little bit smaller. If you look at the pictures, it might look like she’s pushing a giant front chainring but it is just a 52 tooth.
Because of the small scale, I was able to use a combination of some of the lightest steel tubes available including some vintage Reynolds 753 fork blades and chain stays. Melinda liked lugs and these Prugnat S4 lugs have a lot of character and history. She wanted something a little more whimsical so I ended up cutting them up a bit to get this final design you see in the pictures. Lug shorelines were carved, windows were filled, and brass fillets were added. The fork crown was also cut up a bit to match the new style of the lugs.
Picking the paint is always one of my favorite parts of the process. After narrowing it down to two colors, Melinda went with this malachite blue whose metallic flake clearly highlights all of the details underneath. A couple of polished stainless accents on the frame like the seat stay caps, chain slap protector, and front derailleur braze-on add a little bit of flash to this understated ride.
The build on the bike is full Dura-Ace 7700 from top to bottom. It is perfect in every way. The bars are short and shallow Nitto M106 NAS “Chinook” with a classic 70mm Pearl stem. 28 hole Velocity Aerohead 650c rims on Dura-Ace hubs make for a strong wheelset on this bike. This bike was not assembled by me so I had not seen the final build until a week ago! I had actually finished the frame and fork back in April and have been excited to finally shoot some photos. Check out the slideshow for the whole series including process pictures.
See the full slideshow of pictures.
A scaled down road bike for Melinda
October 16, 2015
I don’t get a lot of requests for road bikes but oh, how I love to build them. And even more so if the person definitely needs a custom frame. And especially so if the person I’m building for is one of the nicest people on the planet. In this day and age niceness is always appreciated and it’s what I respond to best. Lucky for me, all of my customers are pretty awesome. Melinda is a petite woman who needed a bike that would be scaled down to her stature. I immediately knew that standard 700c wheels were out of the question. The smaller wheel options that were on the table were 650b, 26″, and 650c. We ended up designing the bike around 650c wheels because that is the size that gave the bike the most balanced look. I wanted it to look like a normal road bike so everything needed to be just a little bit smaller. If you look at the pictures, it might look like she’s pushing a giant front chainring but it is just a 52 tooth.
Because of the small scale, I was able to use a combination of some of the lightest steel tubes available including some vintage Reynolds 753 fork blades and chain stays. Melinda liked lugs and these Prugnat S4 lugs have a lot of character and history. She wanted something a little more whimsical so I ended up cutting them up a bit to get this final design you see in the pictures. Lug shorelines were carved, windows were filled, and brass fillets were added. The fork crown was also cut up a bit to match the new style of the lugs.
Picking the paint is always one of my favorite parts of the process. After narrowing it down to two colors, Melinda went with this malachite blue whose metallic flake clearly highlights all of the details underneath. A couple of polished stainless accents on the frame like the seat stay caps, chain slap protector, and front derailleur braze-on add a little bit of flash to this understated ride.
The build on the bike is full Dura-Ace 7700 from top to bottom. It is perfect in every way. The bars are short and shallow Nitto M106 NAS “Chinook” with a classic 70mm Pearl stem. 28 hole Velocity Aerohead 650c rims on Dura-Ace hubs make for a strong wheelset on this bike. This bike was not assembled by me so I had not seen the final build until a week ago! I had actually finished the frame and fork back in April and have been excited to finally shoot some photos. Check out the slideshow for the whole series including process pictures.