Tuesday 12 September my buddy Ruben and I left for our 7 day trip to pick-up/build-up the finished Ti SS frame. Our first part of the trip (1000km) would lead us to Lago Maggiore, south Switzerland. This would be our âhome-baseâ for the upcomming days, since my bike would be displayed at Milan Bike Show (50 miles down south). We slept there and left for the second stage of our trip wednesday, to drive another 500kms down south into the heart of Italy, to the lovely Tuscane place called Castiglion Fiorentino where Darren Crisp builds his works of art. Late that noon we arrived at his place.
With an impressive view on the surrounding hills around Castiglion Fiorentino we shook hands with Darren and had some small talk about our trip. Letâs go to business, gimme my frame! ;-) Direct aside the drive way to his house, the workshop is located and with the doors open I could make out some fine lines of a titanium structure, hanging in a work stand.
The hack saw and steel piping you see in the entrance where there, since Darren was busy completing his booth-structure for the Milan Show.
I already saw pictures of the frame coming to live and from the completed front traingle, but I didnât have any picâs of the completed frame with the rear end as well. The tubes for the chain and seat stays where only a few days at Darrenâs place and Iâd almost say my frame was still hot from being welded ;-) Despite 4 days of continuous work on my frame, another frame and the booth for the show, Darren delivered awesome work on my frame! My frame is finally ready to be build into a complete bike. First impressions are important and after 5 months of intensive thinking, drawing, debating, calling, email, etc. about a frame, the expectations where obviously high and being a detailed-kinda guy, I expected at least one thing to be not completely satisfying. And there was one thing that I didnât planned originally; I wanted zip-tie cable guides for the rear brake. Darren made others to the frame, but I soon noticed they were spot on and should work perfectly, so actually thereâs nothing to complain!
As said, I didnât saw pictures of the rear stays. Having drawn the shape of the tubes myself and carefully measuring all the parts that could/might interfere with these tubes, it was good to see it actually all worked out as planned. The curves I drew where closely matched and made a very solid and clean impression. Im glad this last hurdle turned out just as planned as well. I designed the chainstays such that they didnât need to be crimped for either tire or chainring clearance. And as with all tubes in this frame
100% round, no ovalizing or whatever. Too bad the company that we used to make these tubes took so long to get them made. Darren had the front traingle already completed for like 3 weeks or so.
Nice to see what a framebuilder like Darren keeps track of during a built. He had a complete file with all my emails, pictures and reference materials I sent hime for this built. Aside he also had numerous sketches of each tube transaction where welding took place. Little notes to how he tacked the tubes and needed to adjust his welding procedure to keep the frame aligned during the first and second pass weld. This way he has a complete fingerprint of the frame and its specific caracteristics during the build.
Every single detail came out as planned and yes, this incorporates even the smallest, perhaps useless details. I drew out every single detail on this frame and Darren build the frame exactly as I wanted it.
Right, we still have two things to do;
- mounting the head tube badge I made myself out of stainless steel onto the frame:
- deburr the BB shell so the PhilWood EBB would fit perfectly:
Finally its a
100% completed frame, ready to be build for the Milan Bike Show which would be 2 days later during the weekend. I just had to have a picture of this âat last!â moment⦠and where better than straight out of the olive garden at the back of Darrenâs workshop with on the background Castiglion Fiorentino in the Tuscane hills:
My bike, Darrenâs personal 29er (also equipped with my headbadge), a complete road bike, road frame and a mtb frame would be featured at Darrenâs booth at the Milan Bike Show (
www.eicma.it) held from 15 till 18 September. For Ruben and myself the task to build up my Sser, prefferable direct
100% rideable ofcourse. It got darker and darker and with fire flyâs, mantii and a nice moonshine keeping us company, we steadily proceded to make it into a complete bike. It didnât took us long, but the brakeâs turned out to be a terrible problem. For some reason the inner and outer cables didnât work well with the DiaCompe aero levers. I had to drill out and modify the levers and yet still we didnât get them to work properly. At midnight we decided to leave it this way for now and look into it when weâd be home after the show.
Well, some pictures;
The bike was finished at around 0.30hr, but the brakes didnât work great. Still we decided to give it out hand to Darren and head towards bed. Next morning Darren already left at 4 oâclock, without sleep, to Milan. We left that same morning at a more desent time, back to our rented appartment in Switzerland to come back to Milan monday the 18th to pick up the bike at the show to take it home.
At around 5 oâclock the show was closing down, time to take the bike home. Darren detached the bike from its stand and couldnât resist, although it only had one pedal and we took of the saddle (borrowed for the show from Selle Italia), making a small ride through the shows hall. âNow its officially passed the quality control and you can it home with youâ. The many nights without sleep made this Texas guy pretty blurry, but he still was focussed enough to make practicle jokes and give us a good laugh and great time at the show. Finally we shook hands and took the bike back with us.
Resumé; from begin May this year till that very day I spent quite some time on this project, drawing, thinking, emailing, phonecalling etc and its pretty âweirdâ to finally have something completed that is a direct copy of that what I had in mind. Despite the cost made for this project and the trip to get it here, its worth everything and every effort we took and I can look back at a wonderfull collaboration with a fine crafstman who is very passionate about what he does. We came back with a lot of good memories and this trip will long stay in my mind as being very fun, educational and overall inspiring event.
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