23: Racing

In 1998 we moved a bit East into the city of Santa Rosa. We had outgrown our Sebastopol space (were had our production facility and a separate location with offices). We got a 10,000 square foot building with a lot of room to move around.

Today's installment is a factory tour of the new space, after we got moved in. The shots were beautifully set-up and shot by our friend Nick Cedar. Thanks Nick!

Here's a snapshot of how our frames got built back then.

Titanium tubing ready to be cut into lengths and welded into nice bikes.

Leo cuts tubing to length with a sweet cold saw:

Leo miters a tube with our tube mitering machine. Made in Italy EH!

Two cutting heads made for efficient use of time

Tubes were deburred after they were mitered

We had a custom ultrasonic cleaner for the Titanium tubes. Ti is super duper sensitive so contamination, so you need to be very careful.

Tubes were put into the frame jig then tacked together and welded outside the jig. This is a steel frame.

So tacky

A BowTi gusset gets welded

A steel bike gets welded

More Titanium welding

Canti/V-Brake bosses being deburred

This is one of the best shots we have of that shop. Loving the Pulp Fiction poster.

Hand Job!

This is Matt, reaming a seat tube. We repurposed many of the tools we bought in Boston a decade earlier.

Matt is facing and chasing a bottom bracket in this shot. By the way, Matt is an excellent DJ now. Look up some of his mixes here on the excellent Radio OFAD. Jazz, funk rock, soul and everything in between and outside. Just listen to all of these.

Matt was born on 4-20, here he is reaming and facing a head tube.

Aligning a frame. That looks like Peter's nostril.

Peter, checking rear end alignment

Somewhere in there the frames get painted. We switched to powder coating in '98 but don't have any pictures of that. Decals are being applied here.

Final prep

Away they go!

And now, a few other random shots...

Here we are slotting a Titanium stem, Bunky

Maybe it's a guy thing, but we find these machine tools elegant

These tools are all from the batch we got at a big GE auction back in Massachussetts in 1988