It's my un-birthday

Like Alice in wonderland this week's class was held on my Un-birthday.

To celebrate we had a tea party. Including this rather fetching and without doubt classy cake.

And as the cake was lonely on it's own we had other goodies. Like the rest of this project I tried to keep to historically appropriate fare including ye-olde :
- Coca-Cola first introduced in 1886 as a medicine, (close to the same time as the invention of the safety bike, conspiracy theorists attack!).
- Corn or Tortilla or Tostada chips dating back over 2000 years,
- Chocolate from around 1100BC,
- Marshmallow that originated in Egyptian times,
- Cheese dating anywhere from 3000-8000BC.
- Sponge cake originated during the Renaissance, possibly in Spain

As a mark of deep respect I even had the likeness of Sensei Spongebob curated in cup form.

There was great merriment and we even joined arms and sang a traditional birthday song.

If anyone was wondering about the lyrics in my head they go -
Go Go Go Go
Go Go Go tirty-four
It's your birthday
We are gonna build penny farthings like it's yo birthday
We are gonna do grinding like it's your birthday
And you know we don't give a frog
It's not your birthday!

We then told old-timey jokes from Joe Millars Jest Book

SIR WATKIN WILLIAMS WYNNE talking to a friend about the antiquity of his family, which he carried up to Noah, was told that he was a mere mushroom of yesterday. “How so, pray ?” said the baronet. “Why,” continued the other, “when I was in Wales, a pedigree of a particular family was shown to me, it filled five large skins of parchment, and near the middle of it was a note in the margin :  ‘About this time the world was created.’ ”

A LUNATIC in Bedlam was asked how he came there ?
He answered, “By a dispute.” —
“What dispute ?” The bedlamite replied,
“The world said I was mad ; I said the world was mad, and they outwitted me.”

Oh how we laughed.

Yes it was a real traditional un-birthday fa-shizzle. Once da fa-shizzle was worn out it was time to step up and curate a p-far. Tonight I spent a little more time on the rear forks. I haven't really talked about those but they were a tube cut length ways with supporting piece brazed at the top to attach to the frame.

Mine is on the right just after brazing with the fires of mordor

Then I got MFTF out to clean it up 

Resulting in a bit tidier top.

Daryl made a suggestion in class that if we put some metal up the inside that will help stiffen it up which for a slightly built bloke like me sounded like a super idea. So from a solid bit of metal.

Then like 50 Cent I ground out a couple of rough shapes.

Then a few smidgens of filing.

This is the rough idea of what it will look like.

And like the Egyptian Marshmallows there you have it as an Egyptian fork. 

A critical aspect is ensuring clearance for my 18.5 inch rear wheel (including solid rubber tyre). Like all elements of this curate it's obviously far more complicated than if I had of say used a set of forks off a kids bike like a normal person would do. But we're through the looking glass here people! I've taken the red pill to remain in wonderland and see how deep the rabbit hole goes. Yes my friends normality is a very distant relative I don't even get a card from at Christmas.

The next thing tonight was another pointlessly and completely unnecessarily complex thing. I heard that you can make the rear hub a bit narrower. First off you talk Daryl into pulling apart your hub

Then you get Daryl to knock out the axle of the hub

Then you are left with the hub apart and you pick how narrow you want it.

Then Daryl wanders off claiming to have 'his own' work to do. So I was forced to step in and cut the axle and regrind the step in. Press the hub together, reassemble and viola like in Alice in Wonderland you have an incredible shrinking rear hub.

Oooor.... I could have say bent the forks a little wider to fit the axle. But that might have taken 20-30 seconds and this is the kind of logic that haves you coming back here week after week.
 
Go Go Go.

Ps. My birthday is actually 2 August the date I published this post.