While I have formally shut down Pallas Athena, I’m not getting out of framebuilding, as I’ve mentioned before. The next few years, while the kids are small, I am going to spend my time honing my craft and getting treated for my ADD so that I can take a legitimate shot at doing the framebuilding biz the right way. I’ve determined that every year I am going to build some practice frames and kit them out with the slew of parts I have in the garage.

It is time to build my first skill-honing frame. Tomorrow, I am placing an order for the materials to build my CX/gravel crusher. Why that particular frame style? Well, I’ve got a few gravel events I’d like to tackle this year, along with a chunk of the CX season, and a few years ago, I sold off my Las Cruces frame/fork while Eddy was in the NICU. Thus: new CX frame.

The Dirt (Pun Intended)

Full steel frameset, made from a mix of Columbus Zona (main tubes, seatstays), Columbus Life (chainstays), and Nova Chromoly (head tube, fork blades). Fancy-shmancy s-bend stays, straight-blade unicrown fork, Paragon dropouts rear, Llewellyn dropouts on the fork. Planning on using my existing canti brakes, but I’m also going to build it out with the cable guides and tabs to handle disc brakes, should I ever feel the need to change.

CX Frame Geometry and Blueprint

As for geometry, I’m basically making a copy of my old Salsa Las Cruces CX frame, which served me quite well. I decided to drop the BB a little bit (5mm) to improve stability for the purposes of gravel crusher races, and the C-to-C on the seat tube is a little shorter, which will provide a (small) incremental increase in stiffness. (Click either image to embiggen.)

Here’s the BikeCAD work:

Next Up

Prep work. I’ve got to haul ass on this — I need the frame and fork powdercoated and ready to ride by the Almanzo 100. Holy shit.