I feel it is a responsibility I have as a bicycle frame builder to use my personal bikes as a platform to push the envelope of design innovation and then do my damned best to tear that envelope to shreds. Hitching a trailer loaded with over 400 lbs of cargo and schlepping it over a hill proved to be the undoing of the undulating, thin walled chain stays that I’d hammered out for the first time for use on my cross frame. The crack that was noticed developing during the Ron de, was by my own admission, something that is considered a frame failure. Had it been a customers bike, I’d have been mortified. Given that it was my own bike, and that I knew I’d pushed it beyond its intended parameters, I looked upon it as an opportunity to find out how to make sure the “failure” wouldn’t be repeated on a future design and to use my materials in a new way to make the repair. Repairs and amendments to steel frames are usually pretty feasible, it is a forgiving material as long as it hasn’t been allowed to rust beyond saving.
With some careful thought and a little elbow grease, I feel like the crack that was pointed out helped my frame of steel come out stronger than it’d been before. The crack that has been pointed out in my frame of mind is going to take an entirely different sort of failure analysis, but it is my hope that despite losing sight of what is important for a time, that too will come out stronger from a repair as well. It is all a process.
Anyone out there able to tell me which mushrooms from the fells I can get away with eating? They all looked kind of delicious this evening
