Mike Swartz blogs about his experience in taking 9 months to build a bike. I mean seriously build: he started with the designing the bike he wanted and then building it from tubes.
Melting metal
This
was by far the most fun, scary and rewarding part of the build. I
decided to fillet-braze the bike, which means mastering the handling of
the oxy-acetylene torch. If you’ve never seen one, it’s a pretty
hardcore setup. One tank of oxygen, one tank of acetylene, a
ridiculously flammable gas. This potent mixture can produce a flame that
burns at around 6000 degrees Fahrenheit. It can also explode and kill
you. So being careful is pretty key.
It's a really interesting journey. Just as biking will occasionally put you in a space you weren't expecting, so does building.There is something primal about the maker urge.
It took about three weeks to build the whole
thing with the setbacks, parts that didn’t fit, and the wheel building.
There were a few nights out in the garage where I was tempted to just
rip through and finish the build if I had to stay up all night. But I
decided to wait, and give myself some time to think about the problem or
order the right part instead of scrounging/modifying what I had. I
heard a great piece of advice from another guy at the workshop:
Whenever
I think I’m 30 minutes away from finishing a project, I stop and come
back to it the next day. This way I don’t rush, and force myself to be
smart and do it right.
I think about
this a lot and how useful it is when applied to basically everything.
Don’t rush, do it right. You don’t want to ruin 9 months of work because
the hardware store was closed.
Mike's
posts are a short and interesting read.
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