Winter built BDB Pelicans

[EricEstlund]

I debated a little bit between putting these here or in production bikes, but since they are still handmade and very small batch I decided this was the place for them.

At the last NAHBS a couple of the fine folks from Box Dog Bikes in SF stopped by my booth. In addition to chatting about the bikes I had on display they also inquired if I would be interested in working with them as a hired torch for their Pelican series rando bikes. I was.

After a fair bit of discussion, planning, parts sourcing and working through my normal queue to their spot, I was ready to start. The plan was to build a trial run of 6 frames (3x of two sizes) in one go to get a feel for the project and to map the work flow for future refinement.

On the 5th I started in on forks:










By the end of the first week I had a pretty good start on the project:

[EricEstlund]

The second week saw the beginning of the frame production:


Layout and prep work:




Tacking:




Stays:


Brazing- these will be unfiled "raw" fillets; good motivation to keep it tidy:

[EricEstlund]

Details (bridges, braze ons, etc):






After final soak:


Off to powder:

[EricEstlund]

Today I picked them up from powder, finished the prep (chasing 114 M5's!) and packed them up.











Tomorrow morning I'm hitting the road down to San Francisco for delivery. While I'm down there the god folks at Box Dog are having a little meet and greet starting at their shop at 7:30. If you are in the area, stop in and say hello!

See you there!

[Cat3roadracer]

Very impressive work. I'd like to see a few built.

[Force]

Very nice. Thanks for posting this.

[EvanOT]

Thats early but ill try and make it!

[EvanOT]

Beautiful work.

[Andrewlcox]

Eric,

I love seeing all the great work you are doing. I'm so excited to be in your queue.

Can't wait for my call,
Andy

[EricEstlund]

We're 6 bikes closer with these wrapped up! Can't wait to work on yours, Andy- sounds like a fun one.

[RudAwkning]

I ride a lot of brevets with the Box Dog boys. Great guys.

[559Rando]

The Pelican is one bike that's tempted me for a while.

Your Pelicans look great. I love the unfiled fillets, too.

[EricEstlund]

Thanks, folks!

I just returned from delivering the bikes.

First look:


Photos of photos:


That magic first sale! (Have fun with it, Jim!)


More to come!

[goonster]

Beautiful work.

Eric, roughly speaking, how much more efficient would you say it is for you to build batches like this, vs. one-off custom frame production?

If you average x custom frames per week normally, how many frames-per-week does the BDB batch average out to?

[EricEstlund]

I would say efficiency is the same. There are real differences in time, but that is due to other factors.

For the Pelicans, I don't spend time designing a new bike with a custom fit. I don't trade emails and phone calls with individual clients. There is very limited change over time (per unit) with the tooling, etc.

The Pelican's have a lot of well thought out functional bits, but have very little clean up and hands on detail that many of my custom clients come for. I am really quite pleased with them, but they are not a "discounted Winter", per se, so much as an improved Pelican. I'm really quite pleased with them, but they intentionally don't overlap the Winters in that regard.

My typical custom bikes take a week or two based on the level of detail, integration, and things like special carving, racks, lights, stems, etc. I made 6 of these in that time.

Talking about the economy of scale for a one man shop is a challenging thing. At the end of the day, regardless of how time efficient I make my systems, I still only have two hands and can only do so many hours in a day. That is part of the reason that I ask for batch orders to meet certain parameters to both keep things moving smoothly and to not bog down the system.

I am excited for these to compliment the fully custom bikes, and I believe that doing both will compliment and improve both.