polo frame repair

at the all florida bicycle polo tournament, Joshua Michael "A.B." Maes discovered that one of his chain stays was almost completely severed near the bottom bracket. im unsure how this sort of dent would happen, there is also a dent on the seat tube in the same area, so i assume either a mallet shaft or another bike caused it.
he continued to play on the bike and it lasted through the tournament. he sent it home with me and nice line of the crack allowed me to tig weld it very easily. i have never done a repair in a spot like that, but i would say that it should hold up well. if it does end up failing, its in a spot that shouldnt cause a catastrophic failure/wreck. if it does, its all part of playing bicycle polo i guess.

Randonnee gets some new parts.

as this is my personal bike, it will never be finished, but for now its at a point that im happy with.
just got finished lacing these new wheels for this bike. i decided to go with 36 hole velo-orange diagonale rims. these rims have a classic look with a polished finished which makes them look like steel rims. i was pleasantly surprised by how well these rims laced up. once these rims were up to tension, truing was quite easy. that means that the production tolerances are pretty tight unlike some other rims i have used in the past which end up with a lot of hops that need to be "trued" out.
the rear wheel is laced to a shimano xt hub and the front to a shimano n-71 dynamo/generator hub. the generator is running to a Spanninga Micro FF LED lamp. it has a stand light  which stays on for around 5 minutes after you stop. its not nearly as bright as some of the higher end dynamo LED lamps, but for less than half the price, its a good compromise.
this light is mounted on a rack i built out of stainless steel. mounting the light in this location reduces shadow cast by the front wheel and is low enough to illuminate obstacles in the road that high mounted lights would cast into shadow.


i have also been riding with the VO aluminum "hammered" fenders for a few months now, and they are sturdy and look great. they come with a lot of hardware, which is good when you have to deal with the mounting limitations of many frames.
this post is not trying to plug velo-orange products, but its great that there is a company out there creating bicycle parts that were on the verge of extinction. Their popularity shows a demand for these products which a large part of the bicycle industry has moved away from.

custom polo frame

got finished with this frame recently.
Jason was looking for a frame with as short of a wheelbase as possible and the ability to use large diameter 26" slick tires with disc brakes.
we decided to go with paragon slider disc dropouts in the rear because he is running a single speed setup. the disc mounts are attached to the sliding dropout so that once they are adjusted, they do not need to be messed with if you need to adjust the chain tension. the other nice thing is that they drop out vertically, so once you have your tension set, removing the wheel becomes very easy.
the tubing for the frame is straight gage most of the way around. the frame is a bit heavier due to this but it also creates a very strong frame.
i pondered putting gussets at the top head tube area, but the head tube is so short already, i felt it would do more harm than good.
the fork uses a pacenti moutain crown that looks a lot like the original Ritchey fork crowns.
i used a willits disc mount on the fork to increase the stiffness of the blade. it works to distribute the braking load along a large area of the fork blade to reduce twisting.
as far as the geometry. the seat tube is quite steep at 76 degrees and the head tube is also moderately steep at 74 degrees. Jason wanted the fork rake to be the same as the Fleet Velo Joust, but this frame is designed for smaller diameter 26" tires. so i decided to make the fork rake 37mm in order to get a similar Trail.