Fillet-brazing my first custom bike frame

by Jan Hettenkofer

published 09/09/2026

It's not the most cost-efficient way to get a new bike, certainly not the easiest and it might be an expression of my IKEA syndrome, but I can't help it - if I like something, I want to know what makes it tick and I want to make my own. Scratching this itch led me to brazing up my first bike frame, and I finally have the satisfaction of being able to ride my own creation (and see others ride it).

Paper Mitre Template Generator for Autodesk Fusion

by Jan Hettenkofer

published 09/09/2026

As much as I love independent software and applaud the straight-to-the point simplicity of BikeCAD, I felt constrained by its two-dimensional, heavily formulaic workflow and frustrated by its Java-native idiosyncracies. I yearned for the flexibility and relative ease-of-use of my habitual CAD programme, Autodesk Fusion. But alas, that mighty behemoth was missing a single, crucial component for my mill-deprived workshop: the ability to generate printable mitre templates without resorting to arduous workarounds.

Dummy Axle Holder for Bike Framebuilding Jigs

by Jan Hettenkofer

published 06/01/2026

I designed a dummy axle holder for my frame building jig and I'm open-sourcing the files.

Bikepacking Iceland in October - Reykjavik to Snæfellsnes

by Jan Hettenkofer

published 22/11/2023

530 km of gravel and silence from Reykjavik to Snæfellsnes, looking for the Iceland behind the souvenir shops.

Solving mazes with image processing

by Jan Hettenkofer

published 19/03/2023
last updated 20/03/2023

Given an image of a maze, produce another picture with the solution drawn in. That's the challenge my colleagues Jens and Martin recently put to our development team. My first thought was "there must be a way to solve this without 'parsing' the maze out of the image, right?". Turns out there is a way.

C41 Film Development Cheat Sheet (CineStill CS41)

by Jan Hettenkofer

published 02/07/2022

I don't trust myself not to make a mistake in adjusting C41 development times for developer exhaustion or push while also keeping track of temperature, agitation and all the other times. So I made a neat chart to look those times up and you can have it!

Lasagna

by Jan Hettenkofer

published 25/01/2021

A photographically illustrated recipe.

Impromptu barbecue

by Jan Hettenkofer

published 04/05/2020

This is an impromptu portrait of a barbecue session. No preparation, no lighting, only a hungry bunch of people telling me to hurry up.

Kitchen Alchemy: Butter

by Jan Hettenkofer

published 25/04/2020

Finding the positive in negatives (on film)

by Jan Hettenkofer

published 05/06/2019

[ Old post, left here for posterity ] An excursion into film photography Back in the days before Instagram in particular and digital photography in general people used little bits of plastic coated with some toxic but oh-so-magical concoction to record images. Over the years, that concoction became less toxic and eventually obsolete, but the magic never quite went away.