The sequel

Now in movies they say the sequel rarely is as good as the original. With the obvious exception of Weekend at Bernies 2.

Will the excitement of the first week be maintained or even enhanced? Will they realise Bernie is actually dead... will the Hardy Boys find the lost treasure... Read on my friends...

Walking into the class I was still a little nervous about sitting in the corner like this...

however I sucked up all my "maleness" and "she'll be rightness" I could and pressed on into the workshop.

BREAKING NEWS

We now have a genuine woman in the class. This revelation had all the men sucking in their stomachs and pushing out their chests. The effort of this removed all the oxygen from the room creating a vacuum and we all passed out.

Upon regaining consciousness and realising that she had set up all the work spaces and completed the task for this week and was ready to go home we realised she was far more competent than we were.

For those awestruck by my onesy in my first post I'm pleased to report was a distinct undertone of onesy jealousy this week from members of the class. Secretly I'm not surprised as I did 'bring it' in a big way!

Now this week we broke off into a few groups. A few people kept rolling the rims, a few working on turning the rims into wheels (as above), one person at a time on the spoke machine, the rest of us started working on the axle.
From this

Then this

to this

Our job was to create a flat spot starting 6mm in from where the axle tapers in and 8mm across for the cotter pin. We used a hack saw to make some shallow cuts (around 2mm) then a metal file to even it up. Then the really difficult bit was repeating it precisely on the other side without a frame of reference. It's a fairly precise job and I'm pleased to say I managed to stuff it up. The excuses are many including
- only 3 cotter pins with the 6 of us doing the same job all needing two of them so we could check our progress.
- a cotter pin hog holding onto two of them while he got his so precise NASA is going to use them on the next space flight. (there is always one in every group like this)
- I was using too coarse a metal file that took too much off.
Turns out that you can get bigger cotter pins so the world is safe from floppy cranks.

Look at this happy chappy before he realised metal doesn't grow back no matter how much you water it.

I'm loving this ye olde effect it really gives it the olde timey goods.


Ps. I realise I made an error in last week posts one of the key reasons penny farthings were made obsolete was the in 1888, when John Dunlop re-invented the pneumatic tire for his son's tricycle.

Pps. If you are still reading this far I'm seriously impressed. I would love to shake you by the hand and take you out for a burger. Considering the number of people reading this I'll come pick you up at 7pm we'll only need one car.