What's the Deal?

I'm interested in this because I like working with cool structures, it's a craftsmanship-type hobby, & it seems like Boulder's the right place to do it. It's hard to find a structure more elegant than a bike.

This is not a profit deal: I've got a day job. I'll charge you mostly just for materials. Probably it would come to something like ~$40 for a tube repair. By the way, sanding away everything around the damage (and at least a tube diameter beyond) is necessary. I'll happily do it, but you could save a few bucks by doing it yourself if you want. I know it hurts to take sandpaper to your bike, but it's got to be done. Maybe it's even for the best to do it yourself, like in a western when the lone ranger's gotta shoot your own horse, to be merciful.

I'm an aerospace engineer with some mechanical background and a modest athletic history, so I know about lightweight, high performance structures, and I probably understand you as an athlete a little bit, too. All the work will be done by me personally, except maybe with a kid hired to help out with the sanding. We can discuss the job as much as you like, or you can just drop the bike off at Vecchio's and come back when it's all better, you pick.

It won't be pretty afterwards. Well actually I think it will be, but but I'm an engineer and I think engineering IS art. It won't look new. It will be as nice as I can make it of course, but I'm not interested in painting or cosmetics generally.

Lastly there are legal implications. People have discouraged me from doing this because "what if it breaks?" Well, I don't think it will break but you could have some hidden damage elsewhere that we don't find. There will be inspections and test rides and load tests to ensure things are done right and the bike is sound, but you'll have to sign something anyway, the essence of which is that I'll guarantee the work but the risk is yours and the remedy is just your money back.

Broken Chainstay

Some kind of crash broke off the derailleur and smashed it into the chainstay.  After sanding it down it looked like this.  Trivial to repair: the best kind!

Kestrel repair

Here's my bike in better days, and before the surgery.

The fault could not be seen under the paint, but doing some NCAR repeats I heard a faint creaking, but I just wrote it off. Don't do that, if it happens to you! Pay attention to sounds: you could be accumulating damage.

Later, on another quiet climb (rabbit mountain) I heard it again, worse & felt alround for it. I could feel the tube going soft, and stop the sound, by grabbing it in my fist. That night I sanded it down to find out how bad the damage was. There were 1.5" long cracks, all the way through, on the top & bottom & both sides off the tube! This damage had been growing for a while. Ever since that crash in October, I bet. Here's a picture of the cracks.

Anyway, I went to see Peter at Vecchio's and they said only Calfee repairs carbon and you have to strip & send the frame in for them to provide an estimate. Yikes.

I decided to do it myself. I thought, "I've played with epoxy a lot, fixed my sailboat one time, got an engineering degree: I can do this." Haha! In no time I had covered myself with a fur of carbon fiber and sticky epoxy and began to rethink the project. Luckily I know some guys who've done real construction, even made actual human powered airplanes out of carbon, so I got some much needed advice.

One friend Marc can identify a dozen different kinds of epoxy by smell, and he hooked me up with perforated "mold release" shrink tape which is an absolute necessity. Anyway, I ordered that, and a bunch of different kinds of carbon fiber cloth and tape and twill and a few days later:

Note the carbon is kind of shiny looking. That sheen is from the epoxy. This is after it's all cured: it is no longer wet, but does look it. The repair was a complete success, probably stronger than new and doesn't look bad at all! (or so I think.) It doesn't look new though and never will. I'd have to sand it smooth to get a paintable surface and I'm not going to do that. That would make it dull and I'd never turn in a perfect paint job anyway. The point is what to expect with your own repair is: Light, functional, rock solid, but definitely repaired. (Also, the peeps? It was pure happenstance, but once I got the peeps thing started, they kind of became a theme.)

CarbonTopia Begins

Ok, a first post. Basically, this blog is a carbon toy fabrication page. Toy means bike, of course. I have a Kestrel Talon that got cracked and required repair. It's all better now, after a couple layers of carbon fiber splinting.

This was trickier than you might imagine, and exactly as messy as you might imagine. More about that later. For now, the blog shall launch with a picture of my first creation: an Actual Carbon-Fiber Cell Phone Case: wooooooooo! (Yes, luckily, I was able to get the phone out afterwards.)

Now who doesn't want one of these, eh? The point was to learn some technique and I'm sure glad I did. This first project would've been a disaster on the bike.