Fork alignment needs inspected. Something just feels wrong. It’s like the dropouts aim the wheel a few mm off at the rim. Need to get this on my surface table and measure.

Need to screw with cockpit sizing. The ugly stem is temporary. Wish I had a usable adjustable stem. Anyway need to ride some distance before I decide how it’s working.

I dig the bar end shifters and the silent drivetrain. Lovely setup.

Only the rear brake is running. I hate the straddle wire. So hard to make fine adjustments. Need to design a better one. The Aztec pads don’t seem to get much purchase on the shiny Gran
Bois rims. The front brake needs a cable hanger, so it’s out of order until I fabricate that.

Next frame gets a quill stem.

Can’t tell if it’s fork flex or tire squeeze when I bear down on the front. My guess is tire squeeze, but some time I will make a primitive strain gage and confirm.

This frame may get a Dykem paint job and a permanent spot on the wall.

without

I can miter away the material from the chainstay to fit against the filet.  But I dislike this kind of freehand mitering nonsense.  What’s worse is brazing the stays onto the old ST/BB filet bronze requires a more heat to remelt the bronze.  It’s a large lump of metal compared to the thin chainstays.  Moreover, it’s presumably lost some of the zinc during the first braze. This is the element that lowers the melting point in the first place.  Means higher heat, yet worse flow. Just wholly gross compared the main triangle fillets.

I’m thinking that on the next frame that I’ll tack up both the chainstays and the seatube in the same operation.  I’ll not lay too much filet around the rear side of the seat tube, just from 8pm to 4pm looking down from the seat (head tube at 12:00) .  Then I’ll proceed with finishing the main triangle.  I don’t want to lock-down the chainstays with a full braze until the main triangle  is done because I prefer to align them using head tube datum rather than bottom bracket datum.  But at least this time they’ll be stuck against the BB with a nice clean miter.  Plus this will involve none (or at least much less) remelt of the ST/BB fillet.

Another open question is how to execute the brazing of the two chainstays.  A lot of variables to control simultaneously:  ST/CS angle,  dropout distance from centerline of the frame, dropout distance from bb center.   I managed to get my dropouts nicely aligned finally, but it felt like I was herding cats, and I wasn’t thrilled that I put the frame on the alignment table probably a half dozen times during the course of the braze. (not very feasible to braze on the table — only two positions out of eight are suitable).  

I intentionally let the chainstays float, rather than keeping a dummy axle holding them together. I thought, perhaps foolishly, that this would mean there was less stress brazed into the system as a result.  But maybe the downsides (more fussing around, heat cycles, ?warm?-setting) means it’s a lousy tradeoff.  

I don’t think brazing entirely on the Sputnik jig makes sense either.  Seems like almost for sure I’ll end up brazing stresses into the stays which, when i yank it out of the fixture, will spring the stays out of alignment. And they’ll be a lot harder to fix after they’re locked on with a full braze.

I definitely need a better process for final brazing/alignment of the chainstays.  

 /p>

 I’m not happy with my system for brazing-on the chainstays.  I don’t like to miter them around the pre-existing ST/BB fillet. It’s gross.  I may incorporate the CS/BB braze with the initial ST/BB braze on my next frame.

At any rate, I used my surface table to good effect and got the dropouts properly spaced and aligned. 

This is the maiden ride of my Summer Corvette randonneur. I built the frame last July with at Dave Bohm’s place. I got a pile of bike build equipment from Rivendell a few weeks ago. I set it up with bar-end shifters and a (nice) micro-shift drivetrain. I don’t feel like living under the tyranny of putting new (and dull) Ultegra on everything. (For future frames, I have some very interesting components from the Vintage Cycling category on eBay)

The front Paul cantilever brake isn’t running yet because I need to fabricate a cable hanger for it. The rear brake is installed but it makes the the dried-out mafacs on my Geminiani feel like F1 brakes. Definitely need to do some tuning on them. The headset/stem is a Frankenstein of gross parts. That will be upgraded.

Next step — tune the brakes and bars and then ride it for a few hundred km to make sure I am happy with the frame before I paint it.

http://film.britishcouncil.org/how-a-bicycle-is-made

Would have been cool to have them for a Rivendell-ish frame, but I can live without. I’m not some sort of lug nerd-collector.

Location:Springleaf Crescent,,Singapore

The brakes were weak.  But not because they’re bad brakes (Mafac cantilevers), they were just terribly adjusted.

Almost lacquered with ancient grease and crud.  Many doses of Ling’s jewelry cleaner fixed them nicely though.

I need to:

1) square up the existing brake pads

2) order salmon-color koolstop replacements (apparently the bees’ knees in Mafac pad replacements)

3) reinstall the brake (and work around the ratty old cabling which all must eventually go)

But the idea is to keep the bike mostly-running most of the time.  So the brakes back on asap.

Hammers are awful tools for the job. They deform the threaded end of pin  when you’re removing them, and hammer slips damage cranks, frame, and pins.    This press is a beautiful tool for its purpose.

 The rebuilt suicide shifter worked like a dream.  I did some pleasant laps around the neighborhood. I abandoned my fight with the rear friction shifter when I realized, “oh, there really isn’t a fourth ring to find — this is a 3 speed free hub!”

Making sure my gear settings are correct for turning an 1/18 pitch thread.

 Love using my old Starrett Imperial Micrometers. Decimal Inches!

So all the testing is done.  I turned down the shaft for the 20mm collet.  Now I just need to execute a short section of threading for the hole saw.

Bought this Raphael Geminiani 650b randonneur from eBay.fr recently.   Why? because it’s got great components — a nivex rear derailleur (4 speed) and a simplex lever-controlled front derailleur.   In the photo above I’ve removed the fenders and racks.  The lighting system is powered by a hub-driven dynamo.

Yesterday I put it together enough to ride it and see what triage was needed.  It actually rode well.  It feels like it has very slack angles, very long wheelbase, and quite a lot of trail (wheel flop).

The front derailleur lever isn’t working well.  From what I can see now, the lever’s input is through a very marginal little connection. I’m going to have to improve that.  And the bottom bracket was (not surprisingly) totally encrusted with old, dirty, dried grease.  That will need cleaned and re-packed.  But in the meantime, I need to get some new cotter pins for the cottered cranks. For that matter, I need to get a cotter press.  Hammering on the things deforms them.

This week I’m busy installing cantilever brake pivots and fender bridges on a 650b Randonneur bike I built in July.  I was wondering how I could avoid the same mistake apparently everyone else, no matter how experienced, seems to make. People make noise about leather washers, but I thought, “why not something specific to the problem, like a star washer or a lock-ring washer?”

This evening I was sitting at my desk staring into space when I noticed a stack of books in the corner.  Then I saw “Carroll Smith’s ‘Nuts, Bolts, Fasteners, and Plumbing Handbook.”  Flip to the section on star washers and the like and find that he dismisses them as almost entirely useless.  Oh, so I guess that’s not really going to help.

So I looked online, “Carroll Smith Star Washers” and I found a discussion thread where someone posted a link to Nord-Lock, a new washer system that is designed to keep the nut set.  It’s worth watching because it has a really neat demo about how all sorts of other nut-locking systems fail.

I’m going to try these as a modern solution to the vibrating fender hardware problem. I’ll get stainless, oversized washers. Stainless so that it doesn’t rust (as much!) and oversized so that I don’t destroy the aluminum Honjo fenders.

Ling getting used to her new bike on the Kinetic trainer at Elite Custom.

This bike was finished in January.  I thought.  Then I discovered a….. technical issue.  Fixed it in February, but then I dithered with delays, and only when I returned from USA in June was the frame repainted.  Then another month waiting for some small shim bits to arrive.  But then just last week, my guys at Elite Custom Pte. Ltd. Singapore built up the frame with a fresh load of Ultegra and now we’re ready.

Ling needs bottom-up training.  First gear shifting, then getting used to the road, and eventually I’ll try to wean her off those hideous platform pedals

The frame is fillet-brazed Columbus Nivacrom in classic geometry and classic tubing: 1″, 1-1/8′, 1-1/8″.  Frame painted by Sulaiman at The Rebound Centre, according to Ling’s exact specifications (so don’t blame him if you don’t like Polka Dots!)

Classic Nivacrom Steel with a handmade Aero Twist…

I just watched this video on turning tapers with an engine lathe and was struck by how clear and well-presented the lesson was.  This was state of the art then, and today, if you want to turn a taper with an engine lathe, it’s still very high quality. Even the video “effects” (arrows and lines) are useful.

Apparently I should be thanking ‘Jam Handy Films’ for this.

Oh my.  Just after posting this article, I found the following clunker that is a perfect example of everything I hate about most modern day instruction.  The first first thirty seconds were literally spent explaining “hang up your bookbag,  put on a coat, put on your safety glasses.”  I turned it off at that point.

I seem to be achieving decent accuracy.  Right now I’m estimating accuracy right around 0.1mm (approximately four thousandths of an inch).  Not the most amazing precision, but decent.  Once it’s finished I’ll compare the product to specs.

Today I machined the middle block out of arbitrary metal and produced the male slide.  Tomorrow I have a tricky operation — machining the female grooves in my semi-cylinders.   That will be finicky to get perpendicular.    I’ll be relying heavily on the dial-indicator fixture I made last week.