Spicks and Specks

Welcome back after a hiatus my apologies to my loyal reader for this delay. The last few weeks have been a bit slow but interspersed with a myriad of little jobs keeping it going.

Now there has been some progress since the last time we spoke. I showed Brett the rim I joined and frankly he was under-whelmed. So it was time for plan V, so I spoke to my good friends at Velocity and got a nice aerohead wheel built on a nutted hub and radial spokes which I reckon looks pretty sweet. The challenge is always finding the right internal width to take the rubber.

I would have preferred black but beggars can't be choosers when it comes to finding a narrow diameter, narrow width wheel for a penny farthing. Brett informs me after I bought it and showed him that he found the joiner for the other rim he had that I could have used to build a wheel. As they say timing is everything!

So with that decided we could get to work on the rear forks. As I mentioned previously I had purchased some forks from Bicycle Revolution at West End. So it was time to remove the drop outs (fork ends) and cut it down. Interestingly the forks used brass to join the drop outs. Well not really interesting really to anyone with a life. But it did make it easy to get them out you just add heat!

Out they pop. They are still a little warm though. 

After that I cut off the end of the forks and we convinced it to widen to take the axle.(I will cut off the top etc but I left it on to have something to clamp onto)

After the convincing, Brett tacked them in place we checked to make sure it was straight. 

Brett will finish brazing them off during the week as we ran out of time. I also drilled and bent the hub flanges into shape and have tapered the holes so they won't break the spokes and they will sit nicely against the hub.

Now the more important part of any class is standing with your hands on your hips or crossed supervising watching Brett work. 

In the last class I also put the thread into the headset which was very hard until we found the cutting compound.

Other odd jobs included cutting out the part that you use to attach the bearing to the forks and bent and filed the handlebar grips/ends.

In other Betty related news Michell from last years class and I did the Brisbane to Ipswich Ride on the weekend. Although only 65kms or so it was a very tough ride. Close to 700m of climbing and a strong headwind along the undulations on the Centenary motorway close towards Ipswich. I only had to walk one little section of around 20m in Ipswich when I started cramping and the hill kicked up and it was all too much for this little black duck. Betty enjoyed her day out meeting new people and was a perfect lady with no broken spokes.

I give this weeks class 4 howling dogs out of 5.

Play School

There's a bear in there
And a chair as well
There are people with games
And stories to tell
Open wide
Come inside
It's Playschool

Hello boys and girls and welcome to this weeks episode of play school. In this weeks episode we'll have ever so much fun.

First lets look through the windows. Now my favourite window was the round window, I never really *felt* the square or arched window, as luck would have it that was the very window I was in search of tonight. The mission tonight was to sort out my rear wheel. The plan was to bend a rim off an old bike down to around a 20-24 spoke hole size and approximately 16-18 inch diameter (Commonly safety bicycle rims come in 28, 32, 36 spoke but they can be any number of holes) and find a hub that would match the right number of spokes.

I found a rim I liked the look of and had approximately the right number of holes to turn down to 24 holes.

 I cut out the joiner piece.

Then Brett showed how to get the joiner piece out. 

I then turned it down and cut to size unfortunately I miscounted and ended up with a 23 holes and around 17 inch. Oh well back to the drawing board. I went in search of another rim and a hub in here. The Aladdin's cave of old bike bits. 

After spending half the night trying to find another rim and being told I couldn't cut and bend a brand new Mavic Open Pro 4 light weight eyeleted road bike rim for my rear wheel (pity it would have been awesome) I went back and looked at the other pile again for about the 17th time that night. The biggest wheel in the picture below will be my front wheel 54 inch.

After looking at the options again I was about ready to throw a rock through the round window. I decided it was time for a nice soothing smoke to fix my conniptions.

Ah that's refreshing it was time to look for a hub again after a lot of searching I narrowed it down to around 10. I didn't have a rim to match the spoke count so my net was set rather wide. I decided to go to plan B which was use a rim that was turned last year and drill the right number of holes for the hub.The pro's of this choice was it could be drilled to any number of holes and would match my front wheel. The con's of this rim was it's a fraction larger than I was hoping (18inch) and there is a little warping of the rim as deep V rims aren't really designed to go down to 18 inch however to be frank it's not enough to stop me using it after a frustrating 3 hours of chasing circles.

So I still need to see if this rim will work as there has been a little warping of the joint and the joiner is proving a challenge to administer.

I knew I should have stuck with  the arch window.