It never got above zero all day, but boy, what a day – blue skies, crisp snow and frost covered trails.

Simon’s plan (Simon Kirkness from the Edinburgh Tri Centre) was to set off from Ronde in Edinburgh with the plan to follow a circular route around the city on cross bikes using as much off-road as possible – linking trails through the Pentland hills to the South of Edinburgh.

After downing a coffee in Ronde (to be recommended at any time), we hit the tails by following the Water of Leith and straight away encountered the challenge for the day – ice. Off-road trails through cities are great, but as they follow the more hidden parts of the city they’re usually in the shade and untreated. The water of Leith was no exception and kept us locked in cold until we climbed its banks to head up Poets Glen and onto Red Moss using some great link trails though natural woodland.

From here we followed the reservoirs with low sun making the iceier patches in the snow difficult to see, and once onto the hill proper it was a slog along the drove road with deeper snow making progress difficult. At the col between West Kip and Cap Law, we headed down the farm track in deep snow with brakes so frozen as to be useless (discs were definitely the way to go today), but nerves were soothed with a wee nip at the farm before slithering down the remainder of the road. Reaching the A702 it was bitterly cold (and snow free) so we pressed on hard through wooded trails in John Cark’s estate and then to the disused railway line leading from Penicuik to Dalkeith. On reaching Bonnyrigg, we decided to cut the route short due to fading light and head back by road to Edinburgh (rather than continue to Musselburgh and back along the innocent railway through Arthur’s Seat).

All, in all, a brilliant day out and a fantastic way to end the Scottish Cyclocross series – and only a few of us ended up on the deck! Thanks to Colin ‘single speed’ May for the pic and if you’re interested in some video of the day and the Scottish CX scene in general, check out Dave and John’s Dig in! channel on YouTube.

Well, despite its good intentions, #Hurricanebawbag didn’t ruin a weekend of racing on Mull, although it did for an unfortunate few who had accident heading to Oban in Friday night’s blizzard – luckily with no injuries.

On arriving in Mull, there was a power cut at Craignure, and when we got to the north of the island Craigmore Castle was in the dark too – although, after a quick trip to Tobermory for a bite to eat and a pint, the power was on when we got back, along with snow piling up nicely outside.

Come morning the snow had all but disappeared, resulting in two days of fantastic racing with a technical mud on Saturday and a fast blast with a bit of climbing on Sunday. Both days made for an exciting finish to the series with a spectacular backdrop over the sea to Moidart and the Islands beyond. A good effort put into the Santa costumes too with nearly everyone dressed in red adding to the atmosphere of the weekend. Surreal!

Final results for the series and the weekend are on the SCX website, but a big thank you should go to Davie Graham and everyone who helped and took part during the series – it was a hoot and I for one cannae wait till next year!

It was cold and sometimes wet, but we had fun at Auchentoshan making this short film. Originally we had two cameras, but the battery on the first was dead before we started… and the other ran out part way through. However, a mobile phone came to the rescue and with some subtle editing and black and white treatment we just about get away with it! Enjoy.

A picture’s worth a hundred words, so there’s not much to say about this post other than here are some frame graphics ideas we’ve been working on.

The intention is that these will be painted under a clear-coat lacquer rather than using decals. From an objective point of view, number 1 is probably the front-runner, but I personally like 4 as it’s gotta stripe – and as everyone knows, stripes make you go faster!

As ever, feel free to let us know what you think.

Alongside frame designs, we’ve been thinking about frame graphics and ideas for headtube badges. We’ll have frame graphics to share in the next week or so, but thought we’d show our preferred headtube badge design and would be keen to hear some feedback – good and bad!

The badge will be cast in pewter and although we’re in two minds about best method for attaching to the frame we think the no screw option is much cleaner. In the meantime we’ll be using this as our new Facebook and Twitter icons!

We’ve had a load of interest about what we’re doing with production frames for next year so I thought I’d do a quick update.

Brief history for those who’ve not been paying attention….

Shand Cycles have been hand building one-off custom frames since 2003. Custom building can be a slow process and with a lead time on orders of usually about 6 months, the ordering/building/receiving process could be frustrating for those wanting to get hold of a frame. So, for 2012 we’ve decided to introduce some ‘production’ frames.

These won’t be production frames in the normal sense of the word. Each frame will still be completely handbuilt by us in our workshop in Central Scotland but instead of offering an unlimited choice of geometry, tubing etc, we’ll have 3 models in 3 or 4 sizes. Planning up front like this allows us to make huge efficiencies in both buying our tubing and setting up tools to speed up the process. We will still offer ‘full custom’ frames as normal so please get in touch if you want/need something that isn’t covered by our production models.

We’re moving to a new much larger workshop and we’ll need to do an amount of retooling for this to work but we expect to be up and running, ready to start accepting orders in February 2012.

Here’s some more detail on what we’ll be offering.

Road frame: this is still at an very early stage in the design/planning process. We have some good ideas but the truth is we don’t want to get to crazy with a road race frame. Geometry has pretty much evolved to where it is right now for a reason, it works well, so our road frame will be steel with almost certainly an (optional?) steel fork.
Fairly standard geometry. Super lightweight steel tubeset (maybe Reynolds, maybe Columbus). Almost certainly with clearance for winter tyres and mudguards.

Cross frame: This will be an all-out, no compromise, cross racing frame. Reynolds 853 tubing, S-Bend stays for tyre/heel clearance. Steel straight blade fork. Agressive geometry. No bottle brazeons, no rack or mudguard mounts. Slightly sloping top tube for good standover without compromising the ability to shoulder the bike. Available with
cantis or disks.

AllRoad: This will be very similar to the Cross frame but with a *slightly* more relaxed geometry (slacker head-tube and slightly longer chainstays. Again, 853 tubeset with s-bend stays for clearance. Lots of room for big tyres, mudguards, racks, bottles etc. Disk brake only. Steel fork with brazeons for low rider front rack. This will still be a fast lightweight frame but more versatile than the Cross frame.

All frames available in a wide range of colours, either traditional ‘wet’ paint or powdercoat. Price will include any additional brazeons you want and any configuration of cable routing with internal cable routing optional but at an additional cost.

All frames are handbuilt, fillet brazed. Each frame is built to order and we anticipate something around a 21 day turnaround from order to delivery. Demand will be high for these and as a small operation our output will be relatively low.

Prices are still to be confirmed but we expect to be in the region of £1100-£1300 for frame and forks depending on the model.

We’re still working on a lot of these details and they’re subject to change. If you have any input you feel would be useful, let us know.

In the next few days, our site will be updated with detailed specs of each frame.

Rain on the bedroom window at 7:30am suggested it was going to be a wet Sunday and a wet start to the 2011 Scottish Cyclocross series in Irvine. However, by the time we’d driven West, the sky had brightened and there was even views up the coast to Adrossan and across to the Isle of Arran.

At £12, the entry fee is a bargain and the course is a cracker with undulating loops around the Marine Drive beach park next to the sea. The course was a mix of grass, gravel paths and moorland singletrack, but the real kicker is a 200m sandy trail through a small band of dunes next to the beach.

After the first practice lap it was clear the sand was hard going, but the worst part was the protest from the oily bits that sounded like sand and mud had been poured over finely tuned drivetrain – which of course it had… The only course of action was to ignore it and pretend that it was time for new shiny bits anyway.

As it happened, the sand wasn’t actually that hard and it ended up being the part of the course you could catch your breath on.

Having not done any speed work in a while, a good beating was anticipated, but as it happened ended up mid-field and enjoyed some close battles on the course – even coming off at one point as a rider cut in front too soon. John McCaffery won the Vets with Craig Hardie coming first in the Seniors and Genevieve Whitson in the Female category.

If you’ve not tried it before, cyclocross is definitely worth a go. Walkers Cycling Club put on a good day and there was a real mix of abilities and the Scottish series has a great family-friendly atmosphere. The junior race was well attended too with the kids having just as much fun as the adults.

The next race is at Plean, near Stirling with full details on the Scottish Cyclocross website.

As part of our relaunch and building up to our first production frames, we have a survey up and running to find out a bit more about what our (potential) customers are looking for. It’s providing some useful information. This particular stat jumped out at me as being really useful data

Brilliant, that’s that sorted then.

You can click here if you want to take part in the survey.

Got some new tubes in from Reynolds this week that I like.

Over the years I’ve developed a feel for what tubing diameters and wall thicknesses work for riders doing what they do. A lot of my frames have a 35mm downtube, 28.6 seattube (for a 27.2 post) and a 31.8 toptube. I like the way frames like this ride. I like the stiffness you get from a big downtube. It’s alway a compromise between stiffness and comfort but this is what I like at the moment. And I’m the boss.

Anyway, the one problem with those tube diameters is that the toptube to seattube join is problematic because you need to join a tube with a bigger diameter (31.8 toptube) to a tube with a smaller diameter (28.6 seattube). In order to miter the tube to get a good fit you need to ovalise the top tube so that it’s taller than it was, but the sides of the oval are now less than the 28.6 of the seattube. This is a pain in the arse to do and it’s not a task I’m fond of.

So, the good news is that I now have some custom drawn Reynolds 853 butted top tubes that are tapered from 31.8 at the headtube (front) end, down to 28.6 at the seattube end. This makes life much easier and building that part of the frame less stressful.

If you’re interested in how these tubes are drawn there’s a nice wee blurb here: Reynolds Butted Tubes