Repairs!

Repairs are something many framebuilders don’t like doing. Repairs are very unpredictable and that makes it risky for a framebuilder to spend time on repairs and still make money. A rear dropout replacement should take an hour or so. Sometimes, when the fatigue has spread and the dropout doesn’t come out cleanly, it turns into a chainstay or seatstay replacement job which multiplies to work by a factor of 3 or 4. It is hard to go back to a customer and explain how things didn’t play out as expected and the bill is going to be double the original estimate (and I’m still losing money!).

I mention it because over the past few months, I have had more repair work coming in. More work is great. I enjoy seeing how other framebuilders (large and small) make bikes. I like cutting up bikes to see how they fail and how I can make my bikes better. And I love seeing bikes that are being used. Cars break down when they are used hard and no one questions it. Bikes are the same. When a bike leaves my shop, I hope it is used enough to serve it’s full life. Obviously, a ‘full life’ depends on the type of bike and what it was designed for but I hope that 15 or 20 or even 30 years down the road the owner says, “Damn, my frame cracked but I got 2 tours across America out of it. I should call Duane to see if he can fix it !”