Join us on Saturday night, February 12th, 2011 for the 7th annual Nut Factory Open House and Schlick Cycles Shop Party. The shindig will be happening in the historic Nut Factory building at 3720 N. Fratney St. in the Riverwest neighborhood of Milwaukee 1 block west of Humboldt Ave between Keefe and Vienna from 7PM to 11PM. The happenings at Schlick Cycles will once again be in Unit 2B.

Save the date we will have more info to come.

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I’ve been working on this Smitty as a candidate for some extended riding and touring for next season as well as a ride that can handle lots of gravel and occasional off-road excursions. Sort of a Monstercross meets Touring bike.

In keeping with the Smitty theme of doing many things as doing them all well, I set this bike up as a more traditional touring-type rig than the more urban-oriented Smitty’s we typically build with an internally geared hub.

For this particular set-up, I went with a Large Smitty frame to stretch the cockpit out a bit because I know I wanted a fairly short stem with some rise to get Woodchipper bars where I wanted them and to get the handling of the bike crisp both on the hoods and in the drops.

The drivetrain is pretty traditional with a sweet, gold RaceFace Dues mountain bike front triple crank and a 12-34 9-speed rear cassette. An Ultegra rear derailleur does the job in the back while the Shimano SLX front derailleur in the short cage version does the trick up front.

Since this was one of the first Smitty prototype frames we had gone with linear pull brakes on the back (current production Smittys have a disc in the rear as well as the front) so an Avid 5.0 V-brake is the choice in the rear while a Shimano disc is on the front.

The Salsa Delgado rims, laced to Shimano XT hubs with DT 2.0/1.8 comp spokes, are shod with Continental 700×42 Cyclocross Plus tires. The Continentals offer good puncture protection and the reflective “Reflex” sidewalls are super when the ride runs late.

For the present I’ve been working on getting the bike as comfortable as possible while doing 25-30 mile rides in preparation for longer jaunts to come. So far, so good. The basic riding position is very close to what I want with only minor tweaking left to do.

Remaining to be done are the addition of fenders plus front and rear racks. I don’t see myself doing fully self-contained touring yet but the versatility of being able to carry a couple of days worth of gear and provisions seems like a good idea plus the bags sure coms in handy around town!

A possible upgrade to STI levers is also a possibility. I really like the bar-end shifters but the wide Woodchipper bars coupled with the way the Woodchippers angle out puts the shifters out in the breeze quite a bit but to date that has not been a problem so we will see what we see!

More on this evolving rig as it happens.

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I updated the building queue with the information I have available now. Of course it is subject to change!

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Here are a few quick shots of Tony’s Smitty CDS, our Smitty built using the Gates Carbon Drive System, before it goes to powder coating.

Using the Paragon Machine Works belt drive slider drop!

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On Saturday night, February 20^th Schlick Cycles was part of the 6^th annual Nut Factory Open House  Located in the historic Nut Factory building at 3720 N. Fratney St

The following artists had their studios to show their work and working environments: Christopher Poehlmann, Gregory Klassen, Michael Davidson, Schlick Cycles, Tom Jelinske, Shana McCaw + Brent Budsburg, Annoushka Peck, Will Pergl, along with some special guests Cody Frei, Alec Regan, Dan Lawton and several others.

Schlick Cycles was a pretty busy place! We had several versions of the Shark, Smitty, SuperFast and Simplified Bikes as well as Tom Teesdale’s Mountain Bikes.

In addition, Greg’s friend Tom displayed his art – really cool, LARGE pieces, accessible and somewhat ironic art. “Spokes Model” Dave’s metal pumpkins got a good reception.

This year there is a good website showing photos, artists and other pertinent info. Have a look at:

http://nutfactory.shutterfly.com/

Hope to see you at the next party!

Photo by our buddy Tracy Brown!

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Schlick Cycles | The Nut Factory Open House 2010

Join us on Saturday night, February 20^th for the 6^th annual Nut Factory Open House  Located in the historic Nut Factory building at 3720 N. Fratney St. in Milwaukee.

The following artists will open their studios to show their work and working environments: Christopher Poehlmann, Gregory Klassen, Michael Davidson, Schlick Cycles, Tom Jelinske, Shana McCaw + Brent Budsburg, Annoushka Peck, Will Pergl, along with some special guests Cody Frei, Alec Regan, Dan Lawton and others yet to be announced.

The Nut Factory is located in Riverwest on N Fratney Street 1 block west of Humboldt Ave between Keefe + Vienna.

We are in Unit 2B and it looks like it should be a pretty busy place.  Greg’s friend Tom will be displaying his art – really cool, LARGE pieces, accessible and somewhat ironic art. Dave should have some of his metal sculptures as well. We will have finger type food, cheese, veggies etc. and wine.

There may be more but that is what we know about for sure.

This year there is a good website showing photos, artists and other pertinent info. Have a look at:

http://nutfactory.shutterfly.com/

Hope to see you there!

John & Greg

Link to Google Map:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&ie=UTF8&om=0&msa=0&msid=116708516255797257381.000445a8496be7d563733&ll=43.087413,-87.906847&spn=0.013226,0.028925&z=15&iwloc=000445a85435ba89ba1b6

P.S.  We realize many of you are not from the Milwaukee area, but you may know someone that is or you may be traveling. Let someone know about Schlick Cycles – you are our best salespeople! Thanks.

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It was a real pleasure to meet Elisa who was visiting family in Milwaukee. She is from Birmingham and runs the Bike Skirt website and works at a local bike bike co-op in Birmingham called BiciCoop.

Elisa stopped by the Schlick Cycles shop with her sister where we chatted many things bike discussing her city, our city and some of the projects at Schlick Cycles including the Shark, Smitty, The Zize Project, Internal Hubs and our desire to open a commuting and every day cycling hub in Milwaukee.

Elisa also got to witness one of my favorite times at the Schlick shop, the opening of a box from our esteemed builder, Tom Teesdale! This particular box contained the first 3 production frames from the new Superfast model. Very exciting!

Great meeting you Elisa hope to see you again next time you visit out fair city!

Take a peek at Elisa’s web site Bike Skirt which is about Girls, Bikes, Their City and Lots of Skirts!

Check out The Bici Cooperative
From their site: “The Bici Cooperative has a goal to create easy and equal access to cycling by providing affordable bicycle maintenance, services, and education, as well as a forum for sharing bicycle knowledge, activism and community.”

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When it came time for Dave to pony up for a new ride he didn’t have to look further than our own builder Tom Teesdale to make his new steel beauty! See, Dave had already ridden the life out of a Scandium rig Tom built years ago. Literally, the frame finally broke but then it was a super-light race frame that was only supposed to last for a couple of years. Dave had ridden the snot out of it for a bunch of years and really liked how the frame handled. So, with a change to True Temper steel instead of the fickle Scandium, a new frame idea was hatched with some cool updates like the revised wishbone seat stay and, of course, provisions for disc brakes.

Keep ‘er here for updates as the bike comes together.

Next on the agenda a custom fork that matches the super-cool wishbone seatstay!

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The first prototype of the Smitty was assembled in about an hour and a half with parts we had close at hand in the shop and, while we had a general plan, the end result exceeded our expectations and left us with a very cool ride and time to get to the Brewer’s Hill Superweek Race!

We started with a hand-built frame from Tom Teesdale, coupled that with a Salsa Fargo fork and added a sweet custom paint job in metallic copper.

We added a Cane Creek S2 Ahead Set, Easton EA70 stem and Titec H-Bar handlebars for the control center.

The Ritchey saddle sits atop a great 27.2 Sasla Shaft™ seatpost.

A black Sugino crank with a 42-tooth chainring handles the front end of the chain loop while the rear hub, an 8-speed Shimano Nexus hub with a Coaster Brake (Yup, a coaster brake!), handles the rear. A Shimano Micro-shift twist shifter connects us to the hub. The front hub is a Shimano Generator unit to power the headlight.

The rims are Salsa Delgado™ 22.5mm hoops built with Wheelsmith spokes and wearing HUGE Schwalbe Big Apple 2.35 tires.

All the parts really work well together and the bike is a blast to ride. If you are looking for an All-City, commuter ride the Smitty is a great choice.

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We had the adjustable bars lying around and after a couple of failed attempts finding something of the shelf these bars helped us dial in the fit for Syd. In fact, they will be staying on the bike until we can get a permanent set finished. No brakes yet! Careful, Syd!

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