The Retail Space

We’ve begun with the final buildout of the shop space. Fenders and the Miyata 912 now take center stage in the corner of the store.

Shop Hours

We are also happy to announce the beginning of Spring Hours starting the first week of April. Tentatively, we are planning on a few days during the week we are here 10-7, most likely Tuesday – Friday. Hopefully some weekend hours will be ironed out soon as well too.

Upcoming

Finally, some new products are on the assembly line in the promenade deck. Finalizing the designs is just about done, and production will begins shortly. We hope to have announcements and pictures up before the end of March.

Additionally, we are planning an event for the first weekend in April as well. More details to follow, but we are aware that Sunday is Easter, so Saturday looks best. Stay tuned, the blog is going to pick up just like the warm weather.

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Ahhh…

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I know, I know.

The decorations have all come down, and at 18 days into the new year, much of the enthusiasm has been chilled by the unceasing (though very pretty) snowfall that seems to be defining the first winter of the new decade here in Pittsburgh, PA. Inside ClankWorks, however, the excitement is still alive and well, especially when it comes to our plans for the coming year.

News from the end 0f 2009:

Sold the first Plank fender! David & Vivian stopped by on December 5 to get a Plank installed on David’s Raleigh (see gallery above). Thank you for the early support, David! Looking forward to hearing how it is working. The first sale of the new year, and the first of our online store (wow! it works!) was shipped a few days ago- will update further should information and photographs become available.

News for the beginning of 2010:

Ben and I are in motion on a number of new products, several of which are slated for release in the coming year. Keep an eye on updates in that department- a couple of them, including full length touring fenders, should be out by the time the weather starts to warm up again.

Two web additions: We’ll soon be expanding the site to include a running stock list of what’s on hand in the storefront. This stuff will not be for sale online, mind you- it will be more to keep a running tab so that one might check that we have what you’re after before wandering over. That said, you should always wander over anyway, if only to say ‘hi’… The appearance of this page will be coupled with the development of a stock of cycling essentials (helmets, tubes, tire levers, tail lights, etc.) and, of course, more regular hours in the shop.

The other page requires a bit of community participation. After reading and loving Grant Petersen’s Tips for Happy Riding on the Rivendell site we’ve added our own happy cyclist page, and we want your notes on ways to be a happy rider. We’ll add this to the page, with a mildly editorial eye, and see where it goes from there.

New items for sale? Yes, we have some. We received our shipment of hats from Columbus, OH duo Octopus Caps. These fantastic velo caps are sewn from recycled fabrics. Some VO saddles have arrived as well! We are carrying three styles: the Model Three, a standard touring saddle, the Model Five, a sprung touring saddle, and a thin-line racing saddle, the Model Six. Ben and I have been riding on the Model Sixes for, well, six months now- they’ve broken in very nicely and have become quite comfortable indeed. We will sell each of these models for $85.

That’s all for now. We’re excited for our first full year- remember to tune your web browser to clankworks.com often!

Credit goes to LiveLeak.com for the video which I found at digg.com

We’ll hope to see you sometime between 10AM and 8PM tomorrow. Keep an eye out for regular hours- they’ll be posted as we start to get our schedule nailed down.

For your consideration, a sneak peek:

FRIDAY NIGHT: Be sure to swing by Roboto on Wood St in Wilkinsburg to catch bands Birds & Wires, Onodrim (featuring our good friend Justin Lacey), and Blood Red. Doors at 7pm!

(Credit: Denmark Tourism Bureau)

It takes only 15 stationary bikes to maintain a full brightness of the 700 LEDs which cover the 17 meter tall tree.  Impressive and though provoking, especially as the article at CNET then dives into the eco and global warming side aspect.

Not covered in the article is the interesting highlight this puts on technology and improvements in various related arenas. Bicycles and generators have been around for the past century, but very infrequently saw use as electrical generation machines. Only after improving generation and light yielding devices, can we fall back on a primitive form of mechanical energy.

We have toyed with the idea of occasionally powering either of our two belt driven items (Leo and the yet un-named drill press) via bicycle. In this thought process, the issue of power must be looked at, and whether to convert the bicycle to electricity, then power the existing motors, or instead adapt the belt system. When written like so, it seems almost obvious that the most efficient system would be to skip the electric middle man. So why don’t we more often?

Maybe the answer to energy consumption does not lie in hydrogen cars and LED lights. Everyday simplicities brought to mechanical tasks use thousands of kilowatts each day. So maybe we should all hop on our bikes next time we want to open one of those automated sliding doors.

Shops will be open up and down the street with cookies, recipes and of course wonderful art and designed objects.

We would love Clank to have it’s door open for this event, but are unsure if we will have much to show by then. Stay tuned for updates, and we may just have a public appearance yet!

More details about the tour can be found here.

Additionally, the final kinks in the web store are getting ironed out as we speak. A launch this week would be great, but we want to make sure we don’t get a case of the hiccups half way through. As a heads up and PSA, several items that will be carried in store will not show up online. These are mainly limited to things like tubes/tires and other more maintenance centric items.

Get ready, going to be a fully functioning company soon!

Rear Plank Fender

A wide range of laminated wood and bamboo fenders. Organic materials compliment a wide variety of bicycle frames. Choose from a variety of pre-made fenders, or custom order to match that new project bike.

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