Fixed-gear bicycle build

Not knowing anything about fixed gear bicycles (and little about building them), I purchased a vintage steel frame from a massive swap meet in Maryland. I was taken by the loud paint, the chrome fork and chainstay, and the idea that I could build a type of bike that I'd only ever ridden once before. $100 got me the frame, and $10 got me some track handlebars.

Of course, the frame ended up being nonstandard in many ways. Since Fondriest is an Italian brand, the bottom bracket threads were both Italian right-hand threaded, and it took calling 10 bicycle shops to find one which could chase the threads using the proper tool. 

The seat post tube was also a strange size (26.6 mm), requiring some time spent in the depths of eBay for a matching chrome unit.

The headset on the fork was also the wrong size, which required replacement.

I went with some cheap (but tried and true) Sun M13 rims laced to Formula track hubs, keeping the polished silver / retro theme going to the wheels. 

The crankset is from Retrospec, and I was able to find some cool polished toe cage pedals from Facebook Marketplace. Jonah, a high school buddy and founder of Triangle Free Bike Repair, found me a nice front brake caliper and seat from his scrapyard of donations!

Unfortunately, the rear dropouts weren't long enough to accommodate chain lengths in whole numbers, so I was forced to add a half-link - not a problem, just a bit anoying :)

Total build cost came out to just over $650 - not bad for how many parts I had to buy new!