The duo returns for the 11th episode. For this round, they interview Chris and Cody of www.mcgoverncycles.com/ a newer carbon bicycle company out of CA. Chris, a former racer, talks about his experiences as a pro and how they have influenced nearly every aspect of his company. Cody, the engineer of the project, has amazing insight into carbon and its amazing properties. WE chat about tooling, molds, prepreg properties and more. Tune in to this truly awesome episode!
Dan: 00:00 Hello everybody and welcome to the 11th episode of the fiber side chats by Ruckus composites, where your hosts Shawn Small and I’m Dan Stein Lee and we’re here with. I’m cody, I’m Chris Mcgovern, bicycles and today we’re talking small frame construction tube, the tube, the benefits of pre preg and lots of other stuff with the guys and the government cycles
Dan: 00:34 Get into it right away. Then we will start from the top.
Shawn: 00:38 We were just kind of curious like what do you guys each do their coding already were unfamiliar with. You were a little more familiar with Chris, but what’s your involvement with mcgovern?
Cody: 00:46 Um, so Chris and I had kind of started working together maybe I guess to ish years ago, maybe a little bit longer than that. Just kind of getting to know each other through some friends and stuff. And the icon. I started working with him just helping out with some kind of design stuff and little small engineering stuff here and there. And it’s kind of snowballed into what you’re seeing now. Did you, were, do you have an engineering background then as well? Yeah, but I have a day job doing, doing composites stuff. Did you specialize in composites in college? Maybe masters then as well? No, not really. I’m actually, I just went to school for a manufacturing engineering and um, I got a lot of exposure to composites manufacturing and engineering stuff just through um, work experience. Kind of asking the question another way. What are you kind of the design engineer of mcgovern? Not Really, I’m, I’m kinda just cad jockey is probably the,
Shawn: 01:36 that’s why this is so what type of mouse, but I’m pretty,
Cody: 01:43 I want like a classic mouse people out of the ones with like a million programmable blah. What does this batmobile mouse. I don’t understand it. Everything. Have you ever used a cannonball? One of those things and I can’t stand them. Like those 3d mouse, like, know that what? What is this? There’s enough hot keys on the keyboard. Get rid of this thing. Totally agree. Yeah. I did a, my background’s in mechanical engineering in college and did some modeling and I was like, this, this isn’t for me.
Dan: 02:11 So how did you, how did you get your start in composites? Then Chris,
Chris: 02:15 uh, well I was building tie and steel frames kind of grow myself at first motivated actually forced to do it by Paul. Stayed off of rock lobster. Oh. And uh, I raised for him and he was like, dude, you’re such a Dork. Go build the frame. So I did and that I was super excited about the process and I want them to do it, you know, I wanted to do for a living and I tried and really couldn’t get anywhere with a tire steel bike and I was pretty close to stopping. And a friend of mine, jared Nelson, who’s a phd in composites, uh, he, he’s the engineer on the protected bike company, said, hey man, you should try composites. And basically arranged me buying Carl strong carbon equipment from Carl’s first try at carbon. And so I got all this stuff for like no money at all and didn’t really know what to do in. And jared and I are really good friends from bike racing days, but like, you know, he’s a phd and a professor and it was so academic to me. I couldn’t, I just wanted to make stuff and break stuff and do it right, do it wrong, and he just wanted to lecture me.
Chris: 03:32 Yeah, we really got anything done. So I was about to scrap it all again. And then I happened to come across a dave bombs carbon class and Arizona and uh, I ran down there and took the two week course. I was his first student. Yeah. From there I realized, OK, I build a carbon bike, but I know nothing about it. Don’t know that we were like cutting edge with the bike we built down there, not that we needed to be, but uh, so I started diving into the material side of things and just learning best practices, et Cetera. And then I happened to meet cody through a mutual friend. That’s awesome. Do you still have that first bike? Oh yeah.
Dan: 04:11 For some of our listeners that might not be too familiar, what was the construction method of that bike?
Chris: 04:17 It was, it was to, to tube with, you know, pre preg lamp on the joints, which is pretty much what I do today. I just think some of the shaping of the joints and some lab steps or strategies I think are kind of antiquated maybe or maybe not even super effective. I mean they’re effective because the bike never broke, but like, you know, I would show some of that stuff to cody and he’d be like, what are you doing?
Shawn: 04:43 You’re like, I’m making a bike. He’s like, no, stop it. Throw that away. And how long ago was that?
Chris: 04:51 Let’s see. That was, I’m going to stay in five years. This may was about when that was. Yeah.
Dan: 04:57 So was that the first kind of composite, you know, things structure that you had built or were you kind of dabbling and playing around before you got into bikes?
Chris: 05:07 Yeah, I mean I made, I made a dory boat out of plywood and glass fiber, like in high school, but. Oh awesome. But do you still have that? Yeah, that thing’s sank it.
Dan: 05:20 We do love it. Wasn’t sea worthy. We do love the phrase around here. A ship floats until it sinks. So that worked for awhile, but that’s great. And what about you cody? What was the first composite thing that you built?
Cody: 05:37 Oh Man. Um, I think, how did we meet? Abandon skateboard or a surf board? Probably sometime back in high school. Me and my, one of my neighborhood buddies used to just kind of get into trouble building stuff, getting into things and kind of snowballed into there and then I kinda got some formal exposure to it with some motor sports stuff later in high school. And then my first real composite stuff was middle the way through college. Had an internship with a little kind of aerospace defense motorsport shop in southern California, pre preg, you know, the whole whole real deal kind of stuff. And what was the process of learning these materials like for each of you guys? Was it more trial and error based or were they really kind of guiding you through the construction and lay up? Or were you guys pretty much teaching yourselves?
Chris: 06:21 For me, I think it was a little bit of both. Like I kinda got the rules kind of the defaults, like kind of stay in between these two walls and you should be fine. And then I just started playing around with it as things got, like as I wanted to do more challenging things or when I found frustrating, you know, not being able to bend or demple stuff or make the shapes I wanted, you know, that’s Kinda when cody and I met and he started to Kinda why am I defaults a bit or or narrow them in some, some cases as well.
Cody: 06:52 And what, and what about you? Cody? Early on it was, it was just full disc rumpus room. I was just, I was like 14 years old just doing whatever and you know, reading books, learning stuff on the Internet, but later on everything was fairly confined and constrained. Mainly due to the kind of environment that it was in. But from that you can kind of learn, you know, where you can not cut corners, but where you can kind of stretch the limits of stuff and where you know, the rules that you really do have to fall on the stuff that’s super important and you can shape what you do from there depending on what it’s for. One of the things that we always talk about and we always tell our customers is kind of going along the same lines, is the brilliant of carbon is it’s so tuneable and really anything that you could want that you can think of you can essentially achieve whether it’s through trial and error, whether it’s through extremely investigative design, but that’s cool to hear that you guys kind of both started off with a trial and error, then went to some schooling and develop your skills a little bit more.
Cody: 07:46 Yeah, for sure. And that’s one of the funniest thing about composites and I’ve always said it’s like it’s so basic and it’s so like backyard technology in some way, but you know the other side of it that’s super technically involved and like that needs to be appreciated, but you can go on the shop and you know, but some pretty simple hand tools and nothing fancy. You can make some pretty awesome stuff.
Shawn: 08:06 Yeah. We like to say you can make a Kinky, a twinkie or a wedding cake that that one is inherently better or worse, you know? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that’s absolutely right. Cody just arts and crafts. Yeah, we got, what do we say? It’s like paper machete. Yeah, it’s exactly right. It’s just fancy paper. Michelle Rhee. I just say really expensive paper. Yeah, that’s probably more important and sometimes it’s just as much fun to hit with a bat or something doesn’t turn out right. The ruckus. MCGOVERN PIÑATA coming through next year at nab. Trademark trade. My kitchen. I don’t know if that’ll make the trade show guys.
Dan: 08:57 It’ll be uh, it’ll, it’ll be a parking lot that nabs loves that stuff and I don’t know. What materials are you guys using at the shop? Are you using mostly pre preg or are you getting preformed tubes? Are you rolling your own tubes? Uh, what’s that? Uh, what’s kind of that set up?
Chris: 09:13 So at the, at the moment we’re kind of like what kind of hits? I kind of hit a wall, a couple. Well probably the beginning of last year just with the inability to get anything done because it’s not available or couldn’t make it or it was too much to make. And just buying, you know, buying tubes from Rockwell’s composites doesn’t always serve you well because bike bicycle components are very specific sizes, you know, try trying to find a seat tube that’s [inaudible] o d and [inaudible] it, you know, it’s not going to happen. So I just wind it a lot of people for a long time about making specific stuff. So I’m Rockwell’s composites made a complete tube set now ended these tubes for me. Brian Williams at Kelson bikes has made some tubes for us if I can get them to make them for me it turns out to be a lot cheaper than me having to make the tool to make the parts so that you. Yeah, I mean that’s kind of the, the approach we’ve been taking to it. And, and I, you know, just as if I was building metal, I would call it paragon and get dropouts or break bosses or whatever. And that doesn’t really exist in the composite world. So we found ourselves collaborating little lot of people, which I think is actually really exciting because I think a lot more people. I think there’s some low lying fruit and I think once that low lying fruit is establish like a lot more people probably start building and composites
Dan: 10:39 also as the price becomes lower and lower and lower the, you know, obviously the cost to enter and start making stuff also gets easier and easier and easier. Do you sometimes feel that within composites in the bike industry where we’re kind of left to float by ourselves?
Chris: 10:58 Absolutely. I when I first, when I first wanted to do this, you know, I called the five, maybe four composite builders I knew that existed and asked him if I could vibrate bosses or dropouts, you know, and they were like, no way, you know, and, and I know from having built with metal I could call it doesn’t frame builders and not only would they helped me, but they would drive up to my shop and show me how to do it. So that was kind of surprising to me initially, but I understand it with how much work goes into it. Having made a lot of parts now I totally get it. Now I get the knee jerk. No, absolutely. But I still think it’s important for that barrier to fall down
Dan: 11:36 and for the. As far as material goes, now that you’re sourcing tubes, are you also using pre preg as well or are you guys doing what you’re doing pre preg? Yeah. Preparing for our listeners, why did you guys choose to use pre praying?
Chris: 11:51 From my understanding of it, it was just, it’s been way more, um, basically a poxy ratios and resin ratios. It’s way more effective way, you know, via De bulking and the cure process of eliminating voids. Yeah. Much better compassion.
Dan: 12:05 Yeah. Much better. Ability to wrap things a lot better.
Shawn: 12:08 It’s a lot easier to lay up.
Chris: 12:10 Yeah. It seems like it’s easier to lay up. Um, that’s just my layman’s take on it. I don’t, I don’t know. Cody would say,
Cody: 12:17 yeah, I’m, I’m, I’m in line with that. And then just doing a really complicated wetlab is really, really hard and kind of sloppy in some ways. But the pre preg material properties are usually considerably better than that of a, of a wetlab. So take us through the process of building their frame. Are you guys starting from your own molds, are you starting to do production runs? Are you pretty much making one off geometry bikes for single customers? What’s that process of building for you guys?
Chris: 12:49 Right now? It’s pretty much one off. Cody and I have designed and made tools for a couple of different drop chainstay assemblies now, so that’s nice that we have that done in parts available for that. We have a couple of dropouts that have been made that we designed and or made that we can apply to a couple of different bikes. So like seat stays, change days are probably molded, some adjustability in length. And then the front, the front ends of the bikes are all tube. The tube basically I’ll design the part based around defaults of tire with chain rings, links, whatever. I’ll send it to cody and the drawing, cody put it into cad, all kinds of check the drawing. And then uh, once we kind of softly. OK, I will either have something 3d printed one to one and check it with parts or will get a tool made and then have a first article made. So we have the chain stays within seats days and some dropouts we have some bladder molded dropouts, some compression molded dropouts, but front triangles have have been, uh, to, to, to, you know, even if you remember cody did a bike at salt lake that was kind of hybrid construction in. I thought that was going to be the direction we’re going. And he says, you know, he was like, no, let’s stay with two to tim.
Shawn: 14:08 Yeah. That was that pseudo lugged. I can only hit a call log, but it was a pre made joint assembly. Right?
Cody: 14:14 Kind of. Yeah. It was like, it looked like at least where I like the seat tube, top tube seat stays Kinda junction was. Yeah, I mean essentially it was. But that was all molded one piece in the head, two pieces all molded in one piece and the bottom bracket yo kind of assembly that was on more than one bit with some tubes connecting parts of that was built someplace like a full on trap rubber construction. And it’s just so time consuming
Shawn: 14:37 parts on your instagram you were talking about how you never thought you’d be doing one of those again if you weren’t doing one again. But that was for that.
Cody: 14:45 Maybe it hadn’t been a year before the salt lake show. And I was like, I built one carbon tubes tube and I was like, I’m gonna build another bike. And I dreamt up this wildlife and it was pretty neat and I made it like super fancy. Everything was internal, there wasn’t a single cable I’d like this crazy custom to. And it was like just full blown bike building hangover. Like I don’t want to do that again for awhile. But then like Chris was like, you gotTa build a build a bike and bringing the show. I was like, all right. So then I did and it was cool, but it was like, you know, six hours to let one part. You’re like, that’s fine for one or two or whatever. But not for anything more than that. Once we hire somebody else and even then it’ll just be way too much money. Yeah. In each of your eyes than what is kind of the hardest part about making a carbon bike? Definitely like what Chris was alluding to, this is like the lack of the bits and there’s no bottle. Boss was, there was no dropouts. There’s no, you know this, you can buy tubes, main tubes, whatever. That’s fine, that’s easy. But all the little details that make it work, they’re just not available. In. What about, what about for you Chris
Chris: 15:53 percent agree with that. It’s, it’s kind of a tease, you know, he can go and buy all your pre preg you can buy film, adhesive backing materials, everything you need to build a bike except the small little tiny parts that make a bicycle.
Dan: 16:06 So is that where the motive I, we were looking through your guys instagram and we saw a couple of weeks ago you posted a really a video of an awesome new drop out. Is that I. was that motivated by not having any parts? Not being able to find what you wanted?
Chris: 16:22 Pretty much like we, cody and I made a um, an I so disk mount through axle, Yada Yada, Yada. Compression molded dropout that we still use today when someone isn’t like I have to have flat mount, we think it’s just a better, you know, we just think it’s a better fitment for break and it’s a better attachment and it’s a better access to work on the brake and it just a more functional part for us. But as you, as you guys know, well that’s functional and what’s popular doesn’t always land on the same page when we came up sometimes different books, you know, and you never win the argument of like trying to like tell someone their what they think is super cool, isn’t it?
Shawn: 17:02 So especially when they’re writing the check to.
Chris: 17:05 Yeah, see it’s open. You have to like dance the dance a little bit and you know, you can’t just appease yourself all the time so you have to be willing to appease others if you’re going to be in this business. And that’s something I’ve had to realize. Yeah. So I mean we were, we were, we came up with a splice, a change day assembly and we were like OK, we, we can do the whole two wheel thing. We can have to chain readings, we are designed and then um, we were really stuck on the dropouts for some reason we decided that we needed to have this be a flat mount, like just oh wow. Factor everything. And we started kind of doing, doing some drawings and, and cody and I are hashing this like kind of different hanger idea based off how the stigmata Cruz stigmata hanger is, I am a mechanic for a Santa Cruz cyclocross racer in the cross t’s.
Chris: 17:54 And so I know how robust the hangar is and it’s a super good design and I’m like, we should look at that and Dah, Dah, Dah. And then we work with Brian Williams on occasion at Kelson bikes and that guy is a maniac and he is incredible and he already had something very similar and so cody and he’d got together and kind of refined, refined it. And what the product was is what you guys saw on instagram. That was like collaboration of all of us. And uh, it got us the bladder molded, cool little integrated hanger. Nothing.
Dan: 18:23 Yeah. It was gorgeous and everything went together so well. And the way you presented the video to the little step by step was very, very well done. Cool. So what’s your guys shop set up your shop layout like
Chris: 18:37 uh, well I have like a, I think it’s 20 by 20 shop on my property. I’m, it’s super small. Everything is on casters. Essentially. Everything not in use gets rolled to the opposite wall and it’s just the two of you making everything. I’m pretty much meg and everything. Cody’s cody’s pretty much doing all the drawings and like he’s, he’s like, he’s like talking to the, you know, machinists when we use machinists to make tools made. And then like if it’s something cody’s done some, some part building in the past, but obviously he’s just like, no, we’re just going to have someone else do this or you’re going to do it. That’s a good role.
Shawn: 19:16 So you’re late every piece credits right there. You’re laying every reply. Yeah. Are you guys cut everything by hand or are you doing a pre plotted manuals? I’m cutting everything by hand. We might with uh, we’ve, we’ve toyed with the idea with the splice pike if we, if we do a production run of them or if we do a lot of um, um, of getting some, some applies. Cut autometrix does in town here. Those guys all ride. I’d have known them all since like junior high. So it’s like they always want to collaborate with me so I might, I might try that and see how that goes. Yeah, I get I’m on their email list and then they even got one today. They have a, they’re pricey stuff. Price Sheet, yeah. Yeah. And they don’t make a little one. I wish they made like a little one obviously. I know that they don’t, but yeah, there are little. One is like serious way outside of our price point. Yeah, without a doubt. It’s not really something we’ve looked into. Cody has never really pushed me to do it, so I, yeah, let us a day. We’d have to make a lot of sense in terms of like expeditious production time to pay for it. Probably
Cody: 20:20 in your two opinions, what’s the advantage of doing a tube? The tube construction like you’re doing personally think just from like the adjustability standpoint, like you can build semi molded components or whatever, but they kind of have to be like frame size range, tailored like it can do this to that, but in over this you need to hold another tube or whatever. Um, it Kinda of closes in your, you know, what you’re able to do long term and then it’s a huge investment. So for someone really small like us, if you design all that stuff, get all those tools made, figuring out how to make them, you make all your parts than you’re sunk into that and you have to, you know, pay those back to make it worth their time. And whereas to you by tubes you can build a completely custom bike with that just right there.
Chris: 21:05 I think molded bikes, they just all look the same. Absolutely all the same and you can adjust to anything about them. And it’s one of the reasons I started kind of my quest to build bikes before composites even started. Well, it was just because I had written so many bad bikes as a professional cyclist that I really wanted to get back riding a nice bike. I started doing this just so I can have good bikes, good riding bikes. Again, I’m having written such crappy bikes as a professional cyclist. They’re just, they just, uh, you know, everything is getting shorter wheel base and poor handling and I just didn’t enjoy it anymore. So if I didn’t have the freedom to control the geometry, I don’t think I would want to do composites.
Dan: 21:44 And when you, you said you were racing professionally, redoing road mountain, cyclocross all three, one of the road and cross. How many years did you do that?
Chris: 21:52 What? I started racing bikes in 1979 in a race BMX 1979. Started racing or road bikes and 80 six moved to Europe the day I graduated high school and then raced over there from 91 to 96. Quit, went to college. I almost quit college to race again but, but finished college and then started racing again. Turned professional in 2001.
Dan: 22:17 Did you do any big European races? Um, uh, yeah, I did.
Chris: 22:19 I raced for a top competition Dutch team. So, you know, did get well we’ll gum did a amateur. Ebay did flanders. We did all the classics, but it was still when it was like, now it’s like you’re 23 and professional. Back then it was just amateur and professional. So I did all those isn’t as the amateur versions.
Dan: 22:36 Wow. What is racing the classic season like, other than has to be totally brutal.
Chris: 22:42 It’s, it’s pretty brutal. I mean the weather is something, uh, the roads or something and just this, the speed for the distance is incredible. It’s absolutely incredible. When you were at racing, what was your first carbon bike? My first carbon bike was a TV t. uh, that was branded Lamont. Yeah. So it was aluminum lugs and uh, you know, the bike.
Shawn: 23:07 Yeah. What was your favorite bike you ever dig it? A chance to race on.
Chris: 23:13 My favorite bike I ever got to race on was probably before as a junior I had a, a um, another lamont that was built by Roland Della Santa. Yeah. He built most of the, a La Mons initially.
Dan: 23:25 What’s the fan base like over there? I mean nowadays it seems crazy, but has, you know, has the European Dutch cycling fan base always been as crazy as it looks on TV.
Chris: 23:39 It was nuts. It was absolutely nuts. And the funny thing is too is like you’re such a, such a person in the fall cycling. Even if you are in your little bubble, it’s still not very many people. And the mailman in Belgium knows more about cycling than you do. That’s awesome.
Dan: 23:57 Any plans to return and watch any of these? Yours or are you kind of done with. Well, I go back to Europe last year. I was the US national team coach for the cyclocross program, so I was over in Europe
Chris: 24:07 three other 15 days from September till worlds. Yeah. So, and then I uh, I coached quite a few athletes still race in Europe, so I, I’ll get over there at least once a year at races. Should we be on the lookout for a mcgovern and one of the classic racism? Probably more cyclocross oriented. We almost, we almost did it this year, uh, with the, the, the Panamera, the junior pan-american champion and national champion, but I kinda got cold feet with the UCI, a certification for the frames. They don’t have a process for tube. The tube carden approval. Yeah. They have a molded. They have a molded, they have a hybrid and then they have a metal process but they didn’t really know how to answer anything for two to two other than paper rather than paperwork and a bunch of money. So I was like, you know, it’s never even going to get jacked, but feeling really happy if this kid did really well and he ended up being disqualified because of the bike. Didn’t have a sticker on it.
Shawn: 25:04 Yeah, if you need stickers printed because printers put them onto the clear for you guys and for all.
Chris: 25:14 Yeah. I think, you know, we coded united been kicking this around to is doing like a stock cyclocross bike of six, six, six sizes herself and getting the approval and just seeing what we could do with that. We’ve, we’ve crunched the numbers on, on it and it’s, you know, we could, we could have a frame price. It’s pretty competitive with most composite frank like that you would buy in the US, so it’s just a matter of putting in the money.
Dan: 25:39 The other, I think in doing it last bit about the euro stuff. What is your favorite classic race?
Chris: 25:47 My favorite class experiences? Probably liaise only. Yeah. Yeah. That finishing climb to the whole day is super lumpy. Yeah.
Dan: 25:56 Yeah. It’s supposed to be so hard. I can’t even imagine what it’s like. I can’t even imagine
Chris: 26:02 from the, you know, from the onset. Even when it’s not hard, it’s hard just because there’s so. There’s so much you have to focus so much and there’s so much going on, but like it’s, you know, 200 plus k and it’s gonna get really hard and then it’s going to get really harder and then it’s going to get it a lot harder
Chris: 26:17 and then the race started and then you’re going to get into some cross winds after that. It’s a different. Yeah, it’s wild. What we’ll get back to it, we’ll get back to the brand. Uh, why, why started my company in the first place?
Chris: 26:34 It was kind of a two part thing. I was really, really, really satisfied with every bike I had to race as a professional. Disturbingly disappointed because the bike for me growing up was like motor transport and just such a freeing feeling into an amazing thing that I became professional. Thought I was going to be all great and these bikes I was having to ride was terrible. And then so when I stopped, I am, I started racing, cyclocross more seriously and got involved with rock lobster and Paul said off and you know, I learned a ton from Paul about what, about riding characteristics in geometry and what tweaks make effect those riding characteristics. And then Paul finally encourage me to do all the bike, which I did. And that was that.
Dan: 27:20 And cody alter the question a little bit for you. Why, why work with such a small brand? I mean Chris and I just get on well and we kind of like complimenting each other’s skills, but like he knows bikes, like he’s talking about ride characteristics festival, like I have no idea about how that works and I’ll go ride my cross bike on the road and be like, dude, this thing is incredible. It descends like a madman. You can just, you know, sit up at 60 miles an hour and eat a sandwich and just barely put any input in with your hips. And it just drives, like I’m on my road bike to be like that. Then he’ll tell me exactly why. And then on the flip-side of the coin, it’s kind of the same stuff with building things with the anti and it just, you know, the bikes that we build I really quite like. And it just works out well.
Dan: 28:00 So as a brand, why is mcgovern cycles different?
Cody: 28:05 To answer that one,
Chris: 28:06 I would say just summed it up. I mean, it’s every, you know, I, I, I think, I think the word brand is bothers me in the first place because I think that’s what’s really wrong with bikes period. Everyone’s just in a race to have the light, this newest looking bike, but really, I don’t know, I don’t really see the bikes riding any better. And so this, this notion of branding things has become more important than the substance of the things. So for me that putting my name on it and not calling it like, you know, a knife blade or something to me is like my, my stamp of like, this is this, this bike is a product of my experience of every mile I’ve ever paddled. And coupled with that, you know, because we’re dealing with composites, I, I’ve got this guy, cody who and I see eye to eye on everything and when I say something I’m gonna do something really stupid. He’s like, no, you’re not. Or you know, he’s crazy enough to be like, let me do some math and see, see how we can do this. And we’ve just, like I said, I’ve just, we’ve just made really good, good riding bikes.
Dan: 29:14 That’s an interesting take. Especially as far as the. As far as your input on the brand goes, I really like that. Are you currently performing any kind of an dt before or after your constructions?
Chris: 29:27 So not as a whole. I would say some of the parts do. I know that Brian has a lot of testing done on his tubes that he provides for us tubes in parts. He partners with Boise state I believe really I, cody has me overbuild a lot of stuff as long as it doesn’t affect the ride quality and then we refine it as it goes. But the mission of not breaking stuff
Cody: 29:49 seems to be working well so far. It’s hard for small guys like us. I mean we’re not gonna go out and like I know you guys do a lot of ultrasonic and that’s, you know, huge advantageous for inspecting stuff that’s previously damaged [inaudible]. But as far as inspecting something that you built, as long as you’re pretty diligent about keeping your process tight and keeping stuff clean and making sure everything’s compatible. I mean it’s, it’s fairly relatively low risk as long as you’re keeping things dialed in on the process side and not getting way off off basis and doing something crazy or using some expired materials or something in a bad environment that’s gonna cause this bonds or voids or whatever. Yeah, we always say cleanliness and surface preparation is like 95 percent of the total. But it’s kind of amazing how people don’t really understand that the simple things in this construction really, really go.
Cody: 30:38 Yeah, that’s the one thing that like doesn’t bother me, but it’s like, it’s a super. Like if you tried to weld titanium and that’s not cleaned and you don’t have it set up, right, like it’s pretty apparent very quickly that it’s not right. Something’s wrong. Like welds or crack in. Well they’re just blown up. Like you can’t even perform a nice looking well, but you can, you know, bond something together or perform like some, you know, her parents something. And it’ll look good, but it’s not bonded well or it’s contaminated or it’ll pop off, you know, very, very easily. But visually it looks totally fun and you’re not gonna know until, you know, maybe it’s too late or whatever. Or in our case people don’t remove damage when you go and perform a lay up on top of it, you’re like, what are you band-aids on top of it. And it’ll be fine.
Shawn: 31:16 Yeah. Another one we say a primer and paint make what a craftsman. You know, a lot of high bill primer can cover.
Dan: 31:26 What’s your biggest goal for the rest of [inaudible] then?
Chris: 31:29 I would really like to see the spliced bike take off a little bit, get a lot of people riding them that bike spend a lot big. My biggest investment in a bike thus far has been not just the tooling and all the time and the patient’s. I usually don’t have a lot of patients with that stuff. I’m just like, I sent you a drunk yesterday. Where’s the part that. So, so, uh, uh. Yeah. And we’re, we’re kind of, we’re reopening that mold a little bit after the first couple of articles, so I’m just really anxious to get enough air, more parts going and uh, some bikes building and gravel season is upon us. So it’s like we gotta get this, turned around and get the bikes out there.
Cody: 32:11 That’s pretty much in line with that. I’m like Chris was saying about, you know, there’s a lot of cad work to do so I’m driving that stuff early in the morning and late at night after I get home with the day job and I’m trying to get that stuff and support it with machines that are going to be opening up molds. And then we work with Brian on this one a lot. So helping them out with anything he needs and then getting that stuff to Chris and just kind of dialing in on the process side from that. And then any additional tooling and aid sports to like help notching stuff be, you know, you were, you only hit
Cody: 32:40 it once and you don’t have to sneak up on it. And just trying to pare things down where it’s making the process a little bit more streamlined and a little bit more consistent. Hopefully all the nabs coverage is helping with that. I mean that one that you guys showed, they’re absolutely gorgeous. The paint, the entire presentation. That bike was totally beautiful. What was the motivation behind the paint way part? Desperation. So, uh, John John, Slava of Atlanta sharp pains most of my bikes. And so, you know, John’s paints traditionally are pretty wild so that every time I ever send him a job I’m just like, don’t landshark my box. OK, that’s a good way. And I like that.
Chris: 33:20 So I’ll send them, I’ll give them some ideas and some colors and he does a great job for me in, on this particular bike. And the bike was kind of really late in, in, in being finished and ready to go to paint because of just how long it took for us to get everything ready to build a bike
Dan: 33:37 well to nab is by cutting. This one was so close. It was crazy. Yeah.
Chris: 33:43 I mean ups did not help us out at all. But anyway, so I called John and I was like, look, I’m thinking about like desert tan, desert adventure, you know, maybe some topo lines and maybe some like orange scribbles or stump then. And then he’s like, he’s like, I got it, I got it, it’s already got it. And he never says anything that fast. So I was like, OK, sounds good man. I needed that this day. And then he, like, he, before he sprayed clear, he sent me some pictures of the head tube and kind of it was kind of like shot down the down tube. So it was like I could see those copper panels in the blue, the turquoise and like maybe one son, I was like, oh, that’s, that’s cool. I’m into it. I didn’t, I couldn’t see the whole bike.
Chris: 34:26 And then, uh, when we got it, it was just like, whoa, that is crazy. Totally not normal paint job for us. But I really liked it. Then people dug it. So yeah, definitely a showstopper. It came out really, really got gotta get back to that thing I said earlier, I have to stop appeasing myself. Well seems to win awards. Yeah.
Chris: 34:50 Thank you. Yeah. John’s John’s astounding. That guy. He’s a machine. He Paints. He does quality paint. Turns it around so fast. I swear there’s like seven John Slot is working up there.
Dan: 35:00 Also, just the creativity that he puts into every scheme to how have you been doing this for this long and every bike. They’re not liking each other. I, yeah. The guy guys at Wisconsin more challenging
Chris: 35:14 for him to do something like easy. I, I truly think he’s just like challenged by bar, like boring things. Challenging. Not Complicated. It’s not,
Dan: 35:24 it’s not hard for him. What’s your five year plan? What, uh, what are you guys hoping to do in the next five years?
Chris: 35:29 Well, I would like for the, for the, uh, the output to continue to grow a year, see what we could do after that. I’m maybe more and then if I think it wouldn’t be on 40, I would definitely have to have someone else helping the building part of it. As I, as I, I harass cody all the time about moving, you know, every single day, every single day. You just like you. Why are you wasting all your money living in the city working, making someone else rich like gets you wrote up here.
Cody: 36:00 Make someone else pretty much verbatim. Yeah.
Chris: 36:06 Comedy works on like, he has like a race car he’s building and he’s like, he’s like got the, he’s, he’s got a buddy, let’s use his shop. He’s got all this stuff stored at work. He’s got this little tiny apartment or house kind of Split House thing is probably paying more than, you know, a mortgage on a house. So I’m just like, dude, you could have a mega shop on property within an apartment upstairs. Done. Hey, you need some money? Yeah. You guys get on him
Dan: 36:33 when I got your skype to call them and call you every day to. Yeah. That’s great. What is your absolute cannot live without tool around the shop? I’m a good one.
Chris: 36:53 I would probably say A. I would probably say my, I don’t know what number it is, but call it my [inaudible], like a foot actuator. Dremmel tool is pretty, pretty awesome. I find my, I think I lost my teeth, but sometimes it’s, I find more uses for that than anything in the shop.
Dan: 37:12 Yeah, definitely. Yeah. So the last question we’ve got for you guys, real tough, um, might be the hardest question you’ll hear all year. What’s your favorite brand of chips? Chips. There’s, there’s this. I used to go to the sandwich spot by this place that used to work at and they had, I forget what they’re called, but they were like dirty potato chips or something like that, but they’re like the old, like funny looking fancy bag kettle cooked or something and they were pretty tasty. I liked him. I’d always get them when I’m good there.
Chris: 37:41 Chris, I would have to say like I’m a sucker for potato chips. I can eat a bag of potato chips without even thinking twice about it. On that note, like thinking like barbeque, sour cream and onion, all that. There’s a small chip manufacturer out of Durango, Colorado called the chip peddler, so it go by car or bicycle people. They were, it would provide. I was the coach at Fort Lewis College for Awhile and they would provide us ships Galore for our road trips, road trip to Rio, ancho, tasty, tasty.
Dan: 38:15 So that’s all we got for you guys. Do you have any questions for us? No, not really. I kind of seen some aggressive stuff and there’s, you know, a few people out there that do repairs and this and that and kind of keep an eye on it, but it’s kind of out of our ballpark, but it’s good to see that you guys are kind of taking more of like a, a solid approach to it and then kind of more so providing I guess not but more
Cody: 38:36 just information to people about, you know, what’s, what and, and you know, kind of explaining some stuff to, you know, to everyone about what’s going on actually inside bikes out there that people, you know, it’s just right below the surface but people don’t know where to look or find access to it. So we, all we do is talk around, you know, Sean, I’m sure all of our coworkers are like, God, John and Daniel. So we just found that this pot, you know, this podcast was a pretty natural progression for us, but yeah, it’s been a ton of fun. Uh, we can’t thank you guys enough for taking an hour to sit down and talk with us. This has been really, really great. You guys have a great thing going. You guys really, you know, understand the modern industry and where we would agree where it needs to be and where it needs to go. So thank you so much for sitting down with us. It’s been really, really. Yeah. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. Thanks for listening to the nonsense. Thanks for being part of it. And, uh, Shaun, what do we always say about the president? Check into it once in awhile. Thanks for listening everybody and we’ll catch you all next week.
Speaker 2: 39:47 I did.