Jack Hearne cycle project

Here's the current cycle project taking shape in the workshop. I bought it as a bare frame with headset and cranks about three years ago. A spur of the moment ebay purchase. When it arrived I wasn't too sure what to do with it as the frame is way too small for me. It nearly got sold a couple of times but then I decided to build it up.

Mid sixties Jack Hearne frame.

The frame is mid sixties with some nice fancy lug work and I've gone for a retro mix and match look with the components trying to use up as much as possible in the parts bin and not spending too much.

Stem used is an old SR that was lying around and the bars were bought new, they are Mungo moustache bars, seemingly the cheapest alloy moustaches around but they are nice quality and the shape is right. The levers are Weinmann, were hanging around and had to have new hoods on them to make them look nice.

Brooks bar tape always looks classy but is achingly expensive so I've just used a short grip length. It looks good and this way you can stretch a £45 set of tape across three cycles. As a tip though don't try and tap in the Brooks wooden plugs with a soft mallet, they will lose the fight quite badly!

Brooks bar tape the cheapskate way!

The machine would orignally have had 27 inch wheels, I wanted 700c for ease but then the brake reach would be too long. A set of Sturmey Archer Steelite hub brakes with three speed gets over that problem and gives the cycle a nice fixie look without being a style over substance arse in the air head down fixie. The wheelset was the most expensive purchase at fifty quid from ebay, but it came with tyres so was pretty good value. Other folk's version of ready to fit is pretty different from mine though. The seller claimed the wheels had only done 25 miles. Could be true but it would be 'cos they are so flaming dangerous as whoever built them could only be bothered to get them vaguely true and drew the line at actually tightening any of the spokes up at all....

Seat stem came with the bike and saddle is a tasty new old stock Wrights W3N that was waiting for a suitable project.

New Old Stock Wrights W3N saddle.

Still a few jobs to do on it, I'm going to leave the paint original as I prefer it that way. Strangely I found a picture of it as a complete machine on a flickr album in the state it was just before I bought it. Not too sure why it was stripped of parts. Whoever did it did the cycle a favour in the end though as it went from rather a dull five speeder to something slightly different and, if I might say so, way classier. More pictures to come when it is completed.

The Jack Hearne before I got it.