Quote:
Originally Posted by Butch
Punch the ticket with Brad. Beyond his skill as a welder, which I feel is beyond great, the process, dropout design and materials are spot on. The precision with which he does flat mount alignment and final frame alignment is outstanding.
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Yes I did back in '97, he was 20. I taught him what I knew, gave him some guidance and then whoosh. For about 6 months to a year I welded frames, then the road frames and then he was just plain better. Don't know how many frames he has welded but it is a lot.
Also I went to part time for 7 years and he took over as production manager. He did all the custom frame drawings in AutoCAD, designed the Cinchpost and we worked together on tooling, he did much of it. He now works with Ed, who has been a mechanic for 30+ years and his wife Hanna.
I've been in a lot of frame shops over the years and I have not seen a better 1-2 man shop, tooling and process are dialed to deliver consistently excellent results, I feel the biggest challenge for any builder. He has never stopped working towards improving.
A pet peeve of mine with any bike is the use of Syntace style dropouts where a builder needs this "crutch" to make the rear wheel fit evenly between all the stays. At Moots it was a priority that a properly dished wheel fit correctly in the rear triangle. A big challenge with thru axles. This takes proper fixturing throughout the process as well as bending, shaping, mitering, tacking, weld sequence, facing and alignment steps to assure each frame is as good or better than the last.
Sorry for the rant...