For 12 years I've been trying to get my wife into biking. Whether it be mountain, road, commuting, anything really, but to no avail. However, this year she started commuting to work and has been loving it so much that she can't stand driving to work anymore, even lately when the temps have been below freezing during her commuting hours. Naturally as a cyclist this has gotten me excited. So as any good frame-building husband would do, I decided to finally build her how own bike; a bamboo disc brake cross bike with integrated seatpost and bamboo fork.
As someone who doesn't really know anything about frame designs or bikes in general, the only thing she wanted to have was a rear rack for panniers. Also the one complaint she has about her current road bike is that is that her feet hit the front tires often during when the handlebars turn when she starts pedaling from a standstill or during big turns. So with that in mind I decided to increase the top tube 30mm and use a shorter 60mm stem to keep the cockpit length the same way that she currently likes. I used a slacker 71 degree headtube also to clear a few extra millimeters. Final geometry was 560mm tt, 420mm ss, 70mm bb drop, 71 deg headtube, 73 deg st.
For the fork dropout I used 4mm carbon fiber plates I had leftover from another frame build and sandwiched them together for extra thickness and just cut them to shape. I make a quick jig out of wood for the disc brake mounts with a 5mm offset. The fork measures 425mm a/c and the rake is 50mm.
I currently have a handful of Paragon's DR2010 disc dropouts which don't have eyelets for rear racks. With too many dropouts already I didn't want to order another one with eyelets for the racks so I just decided to use one of the disc brake tabs to mount the rear rack and add another tab for the drive side.
All in all I'm happy with the way this one came out. The ride is much smoother than the aluminum she was riding which was to be expected. The longer top tube, shorter stem and longer fork rake makes the bike feel slower but more comfortable than a typical road bike. Almost handles like a mountain bike if you will. My wife loves the way bike feels overall so that's what really matters.
EDIT: Apparently I can build bike frames but am completely lost on how to insert images into a thread. So here's the link instead
As someone who doesn't really know anything about frame designs or bikes in general, the only thing she wanted to have was a rear rack for panniers. Also the one complaint she has about her current road bike is that is that her feet hit the front tires often during when the handlebars turn when she starts pedaling from a standstill or during big turns. So with that in mind I decided to increase the top tube 30mm and use a shorter 60mm stem to keep the cockpit length the same way that she currently likes. I used a slacker 71 degree headtube also to clear a few extra millimeters. Final geometry was 560mm tt, 420mm ss, 70mm bb drop, 71 deg headtube, 73 deg st.
For the fork dropout I used 4mm carbon fiber plates I had leftover from another frame build and sandwiched them together for extra thickness and just cut them to shape. I make a quick jig out of wood for the disc brake mounts with a 5mm offset. The fork measures 425mm a/c and the rake is 50mm.
I currently have a handful of Paragon's DR2010 disc dropouts which don't have eyelets for rear racks. With too many dropouts already I didn't want to order another one with eyelets for the racks so I just decided to use one of the disc brake tabs to mount the rear rack and add another tab for the drive side.
All in all I'm happy with the way this one came out. The ride is much smoother than the aluminum she was riding which was to be expected. The longer top tube, shorter stem and longer fork rake makes the bike feel slower but more comfortable than a typical road bike. Almost handles like a mountain bike if you will. My wife loves the way bike feels overall so that's what really matters.
EDIT: Apparently I can build bike frames but am completely lost on how to insert images into a thread. So here's the link instead
