With nothing in the queue but some serious tire kicking I've had time to get my new race bike just the way I wanted it.  I've plugged happily away at it. content not to rush or settle for less than 'just right'.

There's a couple hours left to do on it which I plan to do this morning after cleaning the shop.

One of those things is a hose guide near the front of the bike.  I think I should have moved the insertion point for the rear brake forward a bit but it's no a big deal and way too much work to re-do.  I'll solve the routing issue on a similar bike in the shed and add what I need.

It should go to powder next week,  my guy is shooting me a test  to look at when I drop it off.  If that's a no go then it will just be white.

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I put it all together yesterday and she's ready to go,  this is the bike almost done in the shop;

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and here it is after getting some stickers, bottle cages , a flat kit and a pump.  I'm excited!

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Here also in the something different catagory is  the crepe cart almost done,  I'll post more shots of it with the lid and when it's been installed at it's new location.

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Heres some shots of my MTB,  I made some progress this weekend after getting my ass completely beat by the seattube.  I got what I wanted but it literally took from 5am to 9:45pm to get it.

Moving forward on it now, I'm just putting everything together without welding (other than the seattube to bottom bracket)  so I can figure out how I want to route the rear brake hose.  It will be internal but I cant decide if I want to run it in and out of the top tube and then in and out of the seatstay or just run it thru the  second toptube and into the seatstay.  If I choose the second toptube there may be a need for a guide tube or hose perch high on the downtube so its not quite such a big loop from the bars to the entry point.    I guess I'll just stare at it this week as I work on other stuff in the shop.  There is some other little features I'd like to include but they are not fully jelled yet.

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One is a road bike for my brother Mike, this has been in the works for some time and it's been nice to get a chance to wrap it up.  It's a mixture of life and spirit tubes,  should be a sweet ride.

The gravel crusher is a bike that I  ran thru as fast as I could,  I wanted to get it up and running for winter training. I have some rides planned that will totally benefit from the disc brakes and full fenders. It is going to run 1 x 9 shimano with a 50t chain ring in front of an 11x34 cassette and have clearance for up to a 45c tire.  I have a set of 35c navigators allready mounted to start with though.

I was hoping this would be a big weekend for getting things done on my mountain bike but it turns out i was short on some parts i needed.  Instead, I spent the morning sorting thru wheelsets, matching up skewers, tightening cassettes, patching tubes, mounting tires and getting the bike shop organized.

In the afternoon I started in on the nichols mill I picked up this last spring.   I finally made the decision to take the bastard non-original motor off of it and mount a smaller 110v motor. I plan to control speed thru step pulleys.

Once the motor and belt was off I spun the spindle by hand and it felt sticky.

One thing led to another and before I knew it I had dimantled the spindle assembly to check the bearings, found them shot and unsurprisingly the whole assembly full of grease.

This is pretty typical,  people see a grease zerk and put a gun on it,  most machinery is meant to use heavy oil.   What happens is this;  grease is oil and solids mixed, meant to release the oil slowly.  often times the solids are things like clay or other minerals.  once all the oil runs out  all that is left is the solids which is in effect, dirt.  This is hard on the bearings and really slows stuff down.   In this machines case it was packed tight with no where to go.

I just cleaned it all out and wiped everything down but decided to replace the bearings while I have it apart,  the bearings were both etched with the date 4-20-43.  This could either be the date the machine was built or the date they were last replaced.   Hopefully there will be an autoparts store open tomorrow that carries the bearing.  As usual, I'll keep you posted.

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Monday I hit it hard doing the finish work and the rest of the brazeons before moving on to mikes bike.

Today all of it including the crepe cart went to the powdercoaters and I got going on my new niner.

Starting with the head tube,I put it on the lathe to add some feature and to part it to length.

These little rings are just shallow cut into the headtube with a filed down end of the parting tool.  This is something that I saw Drew of Engin cycles doing in a photo somewhere and thought it looked awsome.

I'm trying to decide if I want to put one at the top as well but I need to add the top tube first to see if there is room.

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heres the headtube set to height on the jig;

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next up is the downtube miter,  I started by cutting the minor size all the way thru and then without moving it I changed the hole saw to the bigger size and made a partial cut.

once that was done I connected the two cuts with the hacksaw and started filing to fit.

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This miter was a total challenge,  I got it really close and then w

ent to run some errands to think about things for a bit,  when I came back it finished off really nicely.  Trying to hit a paticular spot on a tapered tube was tougher than I thought,   I had it fitting well both above and below where I needed it to go but the short length of the tube limits me to one spot.  more on that later.

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I'll post shots of the two finished frames later,  I just wanted to share the start of the mtb for now.

later,

jake

I drilled some round stock to serve as hubs by making a clearance hole for the axle and then counter boring for a bronze bushing at each end.  After that I laid out for 16 spokes  and then moved on to drilling the rims.  I only drilled a partial hole for the spokes just to make assembly easier.

I laid up and welded both wheels with the same procedure and guess what? I ended up with a little hop and a wiggle on both of them! imagine that :-)

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 This one might though,  it has  spoked wheels so I figure its relevant. 

I was asked to build a Crepe cart for a restaurant in downtown Portland.  It's to look like an old turn of the century pushcart or at least as much as possible.   Since it sits directly outside the  restaurant it doesn't need to be fully self supporting just needing a pair of ice baths/cold storage and a spot for the burner plates.  It won't be traveling more than a few feet a year so I'm weighing the  decision of making the smaller 'front' wheels turnable versus just fixed.  The wheels will be getting built today so more on that later.

For now the project consists of a stainless top and the tube steel frame.  The frame was built to house a few necesarry items;  two 5gal propane bottles, a jug of handwash water with a spigot, a cash drawer , a couple 5 gallon buckets and a fire extingusisher.  The whole thing will be covered with wood slats.

A typical pushcart would just be a tray high  above the axles but due to the storage needs of this one there will be a bit more structure between the wheels and below the top.

I did a little chainstay manipulation after work yesterday and mitered them as well,  I put the big shim on the tire indexer post of my homemade fixture, this bike will be running up to a 45c tire.
After I bent the chainstays I noticed that the inside part had started to round out so I dimpled them in the press,  this seemed to do the trick.

I have to run for now, more later as it happens.

jake

Great weekend for riding,  on saturday I spent the morning in the shop rolling and bending tubing for a bicycle trapeeze that goes to an acrobatic troupe in SE this week. I tacked it all together, swept the shop and went for a ride.  I guessed wrong with the weather direction and ended up in the fog for a couple hours but still had a good ride.

When I got back I cleaned up, ate and hit the shop again to weld it up.  I guess it will be hung from the ceiling by several ropes and there will be a skit performed by numerous skinny-strong people moving in, over, on and around it.  I'll keep you posted if I get pictures back.

Today my pal Hugh came over about 9:30 and we hit the road for bald peak.   The route of choice was albertson road which is a 3 mile gravel grind of a hill that hits bald peak about 3/4's of the way up.  A quick drop into Laurelwood put us on the road for home.  Two sweet rides in a row is pretty rare this time of year,  I'll take it!

  I think I've figured out the reason to my infrequent posts.  It has to do with importing pictures.

My current program is this; snap a shot with my Iphone, email it to myself, save it, rotate it (if needed) and then post it when ready.

  I've tried Dropbox but I couldn't figure out how to re size them.

My question to you my 4.5 faithfull readers is what would be the simplest way to speed this up?

Feel free to flood my inbox untill I cry mercy.... or merci (if it's good info :)

Heres this weeks pics;  Mikes bike is still on the rack awaiting finish work,  it was sunday so I get to work on my own stuff.

I got my gravel crusher going this afternoon,  mitering the main triangle and drilling h20 holes. 

I use a centering bit in the mill, it makes the cleanest hole that i've found for this operation,  someday i'll make a dedicated jigity-jig for this but this is working for now.

H20 bosses;  6.5" from the bb for the ST and 8.5 for the DT to the bottom holes .  They are 2.5" apart or 5 chain links if you are doing it by hand with a pilot drill.

 So heres all that plus a random shot of my tubing block drawer and a couple tubes waiting for my new mtb (!!!!!! i'm excited for that!!!!!).  Also a shot of the trapeeze.

More later i'm sure.  thanks for reading.

Jake

Theres still some finish work to do on the frame but it's 90% now anyway.

I had a good few hours on it tuesday afternoon and got the seatstays and brazeons done.

The other good thing about it being almost done is that I get to start on a new XC race bike for myself next!

I got mikes front triangle welded on sunday morning and then decided to take a break and work on the fork for my new gravel crusher.  I had plans to use some monster unicrown blades that I had so I started in.

  By that evening I scrapped the whole idea.  the radius on the unicrown bends wern't even close to being the same, no matter what I did it looked out of whack.  I was unhappy that it took so long for me to notice and that I didn't check before I started.

Not one to take a wasted day lightly I got going again in the morning for a couple of hours.  I had a angled fork crown that would allow me to use the straight blades that I like with enough clearance for a larger tire.

I went ahead and cut it apart and mitered the sides to accept the 1-1/8" steerer.  I then got to thinking about things a little and wanted a second opinion so I shot my pal Eric in Eugene a text and within a few minutes was back on track.

I built the fork as normal from there out, finishing up with a wilits style disc tab.

I have some finish work to do and some fender bosses but I'm feeling much better about the whole thing now.  

I'll post more later on Mikes bike, the chainstays are ready to dimple for the crank and then weld on.