Can we fix it?

Greetings from your illustrious blogger Bike Snob Brizvegas aka Tamedog Stone Device. I'm most certainly not plagiarising  Bike Snob NYC aka Wildcat Rock Machine not at all.

This week I was in fixit mode. I brought Betty in for a viewing and major wheel rebuild. There were a lot of oohs and aahs as they all admired the fine work that my classmates from last year did on my bike. I can't give them all the credit I did put the horn and seat bag on. Here she is in her birthing suite reliving the 6 months gestation period for her final emergence from her cocoon into a beautiful butterfly.

Now we were here on a mission to sort out the spoke issue. As I have mentioned previously I had this tendency to break the odd spoke or 5. So first step was to de construct the wheel. For those of weak dispositions or emotionally challenged please look away now. 

Now this was a painful experience especially when Brett found the cordless screwdriver after I spent over an hour or so pulling the wheel apart. That tool would have saved me say around an hour or so.. So Brett the Builder had a look at the rim and noticed when I drilled the holes I didn't offset some of them by the 1BTKB7DH (1 better than Kevin Bacon 7 degrees hole) which would have caused the spokes a lot of undue strain and pressure causing them to break so can he fix it?

I sure hope so! Brett redrilled the holes proving that I should have outsourced the drilling in the first place. Now the wheel is in for reconstruction and fingers crossed that will reduce my need for replacement spokes! Oh yeah other stuff happened in the class as well.

People stood around a table looking at stuff..

People stood around looking at me pretending to work.

People, who need people are the luckiest people in the world.
- Tamedog Stone Device

 Ps. There are no similarities between the legendary Bike Snob NYC and this blog. None what so ever he's funny, intelligent, observant and has a helper monkey where as I have a helper Gibbon. Completely different.

Action stations

Well gentle reader it's time again to put down your quill, stop beating your slaves and kick back and read this blog. Since the last post we've had a couple of classes and it's been all go.

Class before Easter
- Obtained replacement washer for the one I gumbily lost for the spoke header machine
- Headed a whole bunch of spokes.

In my spare time
I decided that I wanted a brass brake on this bike. I went to George Weston and Sons and got some 1 inch thick brass to turn into a brake shoe.

As it turns out when a bloke tells you that brass is soft and can be machined easily generally has BIIIIG machines to do this. This new shoe has gone onto Betty (there is more work to do on it making it prettier but it's getting closer) the old one will go onto Racing Rose as it's lighter.

I found a set of front forks that will be used for the rear wheel at Bicycle Revolution (the Aladdin's cave for old parts in Brisbane there are yet to be discovered tribes of bearded cyclists wandering around there I'm sure) that I stripped down and cleaned up ready for shortening and attaching to the backbone. I'm still working on what hub I'll use I need a 24 spoke hub.....

I then cut out the hub ready for Brett to machine into a perfect circle.

I also turned some grips but I'll talk about that later.

This weeks class
- I bent a whole bunch of spokes
- I made some cuts into the axle to make it easier for the mill machine to make a perfect cotter pin connection.

This for me is the biggest advance in this years class not having to do that fricken cotter pin thing I mentioned previously here and also here. I'm still having problems with Betty's cotter pin connection I've shimmed it (inserted small bits of metal to sit between the cotter pin and axle) to stop the movement (mostly). Even with the worlds most expensive and difficult to get British style cotter pin (slightly wider and shallower angle) it still moves.

- I outsourced setting up cutting, marking and drilling the handlebar ends that hold the wooden grip. (thanks Jonathan)
- I cut out the rough shape for the steering yoke
- I ate some mint chocolate biscuits

Here are some gratuitous working shots.  

Cutting the fork blades.

Good King Brett holding court with his loyal subjects.

Believe it or not things are coming together rather quickly. I'm trying to get as much of this bike done before our first child is due on 2 July.