Cobra Frames

I released a new framebuilding tool today for sale. It's designed to help you hold thin-wall bicycle tubing in a milling machine vise for mitering operations. It is capable of holding .75 / 19mm tubing all the way up to 1.875 / 47.6mm tubing. It can also hold tapered and non-round tubes. You can buy it here: https://cobraframes.net/store/the-miter-daddy... Sorry I tend to neglect this page! I'm generally more active on Instagram, Youtube, email.

The latest bike. // It's an All-Road bike I made for myself. Made for pavement as much as it is for light trail riding and everything in between. I don't want to have a huge jumble of bikes in my possession, but the ones I do have I want to fit my needs well. I don't need race-winning performance out of my road bike, that's why it's not built to win the TDF. It's built to be a satisfying tool that can take me places and look good doing it. That's not to say it's not f...ast, it's not light, or it's not efficient! I'm saying that the compromises that are made for true road race bikes to be able to make racers competitive come at the expense of those bikes being robust, capable, and satisfying in many other areas. This bike and most of the bikes I make is designed to be versatile and capable. // The build consists of an Enve Composites fork, Velocity Wheelset, Sram Rival 1x11 drivetrain, Brooks Cambium saddle, Thompson cockpit, and WTB Nano 40mm tires. I have the tires set up tubeless for low pressure grip offroad without pinch flats. // The frame is designed to clear 45mm tires, hold up to three water bottles, and the tubing and geometry is tuned to my weight and riding style as are all Cobra Frames builds. I don't use stock tubesets or geometry charts when I build a bike because people and the ways they use bikes aren't stock. For instance, I chose a lower bottom bracket height than many other "gravel bikes" on the market use because for the places I ride, having a lower center of gravity is more valuable to me than having crank and chainring clearance over trail obstacles like logs. Custom allows me to make those personal decisions to make the finished product the best it can be for the end user, in this case that's me.

Here's a taste of the latest build.

I've been referring to my personal all-road bikes as Deep Gravy, Deeper Gravy, and it's only fitting that this will be Deepest Gravy. Or that's the working title anyway. I just boxed it up and sent it off to get a fancy paint job. Of note: It's an all road bike for up to a 45mm or so 700c tire. I'll have a Sram Rival 1x11 drivetrain. The fork is Enve Composites carbon fiber. The rear axle is a syntace 142 x 12mm thru axle, which is a really clever piece of engineering.

I felt like taking some pictures of my bike again today. It's been since summer when I had just painted it that I last took some nice pics and since then I've changed a few things like the paint, some of the drivetrain, tweaked the fork, and added a frame bag.

I went out for a rip. I'm so ready for the riding season. Syracuse winters are too long.

Here are some pictures of the big project I've been working on in my shop lately. I have nearly finished building my framebuilding fixture and the rolling stand that supports it. It's been a big undertaking and I've learned a massive amount about machining and tool design. I'm ready to start planning some bike builds again.

I threw together a video of machining the angular scale for part of my framebuilding fixture. As I adjust the fixture that holds the parts of the bike for welding, I need a way to set the seat tube angle, and I want the tool to have it's own witness marks that are accurate. The solution I came up with involved a lot of trigonometry and some creative work holding.

Here are some more parts for my framebuilding fixture. The chips are long and stringy which is not what I would like to see, but the finished product is within spec and looks pretty which is great for an amateur machinist like myself.

This is a part I'm working on in the shop. It will be part of my framebuilding fixture. I modeled it using Fusion 360. Pretty cool!

I've been working a lot on this project the past few months. I'm making a framebuilding fixture, which is the primary tool specific to framebuilding bicycles. The big one. The best ones for sale are easily $5k. It holds all of the individual parts of the bike in the bike shape so you can weld it all up. It's certainly possible to make bikes without this tool, but the real point of the tool is to make you faster, and to make it possible to get more repeatable results. I want to spend my time focusing on more important things than my tedious process, and this is just one part of the puzzle.

I'm loving this photoset of me and my bike from the Philadelphia Bike Expo as shot by Brad Quartuccio

Cobra Frames will be at the Philly Bike Expo in less than two weeks. It's Nov 5-6th and I'll be displaying a few bikes and talking to the people. I've been to the show before and it's a great time.