The Stainless Report: XCr - 05

Now that she is welded and aligned, it's time for the parts. First the brake bridge gets mitered.
After mitering it is deburred and double checked before cleaning.
Same for the chainstay bridge. Holes are also drilled in that frame within the bridges to allow the argon to flow into them while welding
After welding the bridges in and completing the welding portion of the frame build, we move onto the finishing area and visit our head finisher Finn. He has lots of experience brazing the bits onto stainless frames and Bella is more than safe in his hands.
Finishing includes much more than just brazing, when Finn is done working on the frame it is, for all intents and purposes, a ridable frame (minus the surface treatment). After reaming, slotting and drilling the seat tube, a stainless steel reinforcement washer is brazed onto the the area at the bottom of the slot.

Then the water bottle bosses are brazed into place. Finn added the fancy pointy reinforcement gussets around them for added bling and sturdiness.



Then all of the cable stops are brazed on.
The headtube is then reamed, completing the finishing process.

I left out a bunch of stuff, such as: tapping and facing the bottom bracket, drilling and tapping for the headbadge bolts, doing the wheelcheck, and a whole host of other things. These parts of the building process will, no doubt, be covered at some point.

So now it is time to polish, build and ride..

The next entry in The Stainless Report will be focusing on the completed bicycle, she already has 100 miles on her....

Focus: I.F. RAW!

This is Jim's everyday bike dubbed IF RAW. It is an XS singlespeed with road geometry, 120 rear spacing, and set up for both front and rear brakes. It weighs in at 16lbs 3oz.

Most solid drive train ever.

Phil Wood BB, Campy Record 165mm track crank with mounted 46t "Bling Ring" made by local chainring manufacturer 3RRR. In the rear is a 16t Euro-Asia "Superstar" track cog. Linking the two together is an Izumi "Super Toughness" track chain.

The Stainless Report: XCr - 04

Yet another early morning stainless session. I couldn't resist any longer, I had to weld her. I checked Bella out on the surface plate to figure out my welding sequence, then set her up in the welding stand, fit her up with all of the purge fittings/heatsinks, sharpened my tungstens and laid some beads.

The XCr tubes welded like butter. Very clean and predictable. The seatstays were mighty thin but welded up fine nonetheless. Below are a couple of shots of the raw hedtube welds, still ragingly hot.


Upon completion of the welding of the main frame I checked her out on the alignment table and only found minimal distortion. I gave her a slight nudge and put her in the parts making area.

The next step is to cut the brake and chainstay bridges. That will have to be later. There are quite a few customer bikes that need welding.
It is here that Bella will rest until the next installment of: The Stainless Report.

The Stainless Report: XCr - 03

This installment of "The Stainless Report" chronicles an early morning framebuilding session by myself (Tyler) and Jamie. These are the tubes, chainstay sub-assembly and the build sheet:


The first tube that we cut off was the headtube on the lathe:
Then we cut the front end:


Then the rear end, seat stays pictured:

Once all of the tubes have been mitered the fit-up is checked:


Then the tubes are washed in "The Clean Express"... Choo-choo, all aboard.... The Clean Express is a water and detergent based environmentally friendly cleaner that works fantastically. So steamy...

Once the tubes are dry they are set up in the jig, purged with argon and tacked together.

The tacks themselves are just enough metal to hold the tubes together.

The completed tacked frame:

After the frame is tacked it is given its serial number. In this case the frame is given a name. She shall be named "BELLA" in honor of her Italian lineage (that is also the word Mauro kept saying during his tour of the factory).
Now Bella is all tacked together, ready to be welded...
Viva Bella!

FOCUS: Stickers

It seems as though stickers are all over the factory. Before the fridge became the target for peoples need to stick a sticker to something people stuck stickers all over the place. In my search for vintage IF stickers stuck to stuff I came across some winners on our walls.


Behold "The Naked Man":

"The Martini Glass":

One of the rarest, "Divine":


This one is REAL old, "The Dragster":


The "Race Puppy":


Here are some other stickers that are stuck to stuff around the factory:





This one is a magnet, but awesome nonetheless:


If there anything you would like us to FOCUS on, let us know in the comments below...

The Stainless Report: XCr - 02

The Columbus XCr chainstay sub assembly is completed. The sub assembly includes bottom bracket, chainstays and dropouts.

The pieces were mitered, slotted, cleaned, argon purged then tack welded together in our sub assembly jig.

The XCr stainless steel tubing cut and tacked together well. Below you can see the small metal tack welds holding the sub assembly together as well as the purge holes that allow the argon to flow (eventually) through the frame as it is welded.


All welding (and tacking) is done with a special alloy wire. The wire is actually the same alloy as the XCr tubing itself and is provided with the tubeset by Columbus .

These are actually not the dropouts supplied by Columbus, they are the same "Indy Fab" 17-4 dropouts we use on our 953 SSR's. I talked with our metallurgist to find out about alloy compatibility and and got the go-ahead.

I polished (sanded to 1500 grit) the inside and outside faces of the dropouts before tacking them together. The final polish with cloth and rouge will take place after the frame is completed.


Look for more installments of The Stainless Report coming soon.