I attended the Welding and Light Metalwork course at the Hammersmith learning centre in late 2011; I can highly recommend this to anyone who has an interest in getting started with welding. I had been using a MIG welder for my previous projects since that was what was available to me, and because it's so easy to use; this course allowed me to experiment and learn a number of other welding techniques. It also allowed me the opportunity to start a new project; it had to be another bike frame really, didn't it?
At this point I had ended up buying a 29er hardtail frame; this was proving to be an excellent commute and XC bike and I decided that what I needed was a general "play bike" to suppliment this - something to take to the occasional DH course, something to hit the bigger trails on. An all-mountain bike, or maybe an "Enduro" bike, possibly a "Super D" bike, or if you're still in the last decade, a freeride bike.
With more than a little inspiration from the Orange bikes website (here) I resolved to make myself a version of the new Patriot bike that, at the time, was only a rumour. I have owned a couple of Orange Patriots in the past (one of the original 5" travel bikes, and one of the 7+ freeride bikes) and they always were great to ride - a wonderful balance of simplicity, great geometry, relative light weight, and effective suspension.
The design design I settled on was:
- 7" travel using the 222mm shock from the DH frames
- 65deg head angle with 7" travel forks
- 23" top tube (going with the trend for longer top tubes and shorter stems)
- clearance for a 3" tyre on a 26" wheel (outside diameter of 28")
- an eccentric bottom bracket to allow the BB height to be adjusted allowing the use of a wide tyre range without adversely affecting the ride height (also because I had an eccentric BB shell spare)
Unfortunately I only got time on the welding course to get part of the front-end of the frame constructed; this project is currently in limbo but certainly not forgotten. It is my intention to resurrect this frame design in the very near future as a 650b bike.
Why 650b?
Well I'm a sucker for trends! But also because the 650b wheel size will fit my existing design with almost no change (I might adjust the position of the rear drop-outs but it's not actually necessary since I designed the frame to fit huge tyres) and the 27.5" wheel size is perfect for what I want out of this bike - I want the grip, stability and confidence of larger wheels but this bike is all about having silly fun (something that feels a bit lost sometimes when riding 29" wheels).
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