Sacha what the F#&! is up with the countdown, right? Well I’ll tell you what’s up with the countdown. It’s the end of August and today was our deadline for shipping bikes. Did we make it? yes we did make it and every bike (save a couple of locals) shipped either yesterday, or today.
The bikes turned out spot on and beautiful. Props to Scott, Mike and Beans in the frame shop and Patrick, Glenn and Eric in the paint shop. I couldn’t be more proud as a boss.
This is a heads up that we’re only taking deposits for SV road for another 5 days (September 1).
Yes September first!Cutting off orders sooner allows us to finalize designs sooner, get to fabricat’n sooner, get bikes off to paint sooner and deliver them; ideally at the beginning of the season, when the air is still frosty and people are in the height of excitement about racing and long rides with their pals.
Coolhand out the door!
This is a one-off paint scheme, which is not really what Speedvagen is all about, but sometimes we need to try out new ideas and this is part of that process.Thankfully I have gracious customers, who’ll put their trust in me and let me loose with their bike and their money, (too crass?).
Here’s your bulk countdown update:
The pain(t) shop has been killing it and as of right now they are on track to meet the deadline.
Carbon Post heads are in (hallelujah). They’re prepped, primed and half have color on them.
Army, Blue, Army, Blue, Army
And the two finger technique? Well, it’s not something you learn in trade school…..
Blue accent stripes laid down on the celerys today…
Speaking of Airbriushed palm trees and freehand Speedvagen text, I have this idea to do some surprise me schemes totally freehand carney-airbrushing-a-teeshirt style paint job complete with starbursts coming off of the corners of the shield and the unicorn horn.
The base color has been laid down (as have some smooth Friday afternoon portland beers), some dropout masking for the single speeds and the inside face of the geared drops. During the build process the owner of the bike is on a piece of blue or green masking tape on nearly every tube of the bike along with any instrictions for mitering, aligning, etc. Since we can’t use masking tape of the frame during the painting process (for obvious reasons) the name goes on the stainless that caps the ISP. The 5 pictured are the 5 gents getting Celery from this year’s cross run.
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Countdown to railing it in the mud on new cross bikes…
Our goal is to have this year’s Speedvagen Cross Machines finished and out the door by the end of August. At this point it’s going to be tight, but the boys in the paint shop are dialed and we all like a challenge. So twenty days in the paint shop leaves … doing some quick math in my head………………….. one week for the frame shop to finish prep (frame saver, face and chase, bolt on headbadges and dropout faces, etc) build the complete bikes that we’re doing and pack and ship all of the out of towners….
Doable.
those vivid dreams that you have as you’re waking up… well, I had one. I woke up and grabbed my coffee bike and it was a Ray-vagen, Speed-ray. Ugh…. in another life…
