Serendipity
When I bought that torch a couple of weeks ago, it came with a small (but heavy) pile of tools & jigs, including a seat tube reamer. I didn’t know if the reamer would be good for anything, but I tucked it away in the basement.
Today, the freebie GT Talera arrived and I mocked it up. The one thing I couldn’t properly mock up was the seatpost, because the GT Talera uses a 26.8mm post instead of the 27.2mm post that everybody else uses. So I mocked it up with the heavy steel seatpost that it came with, but wasn’t happy at the thought that I might have to buy another seat post.
But, as I tidied up the basement after building the mockup, my eyes fell upon the box that the reamer came in. Oh ho! There’s nothing stopping me from putting a 27.2mm seatpost in except for spending several hours reaming out the existing seatpost and removing ~.15mm from the stout walls of the seat post.
It’s hard work (I don’t have a good handle, so I’ve clamped a Vice-Grip to the handle. It doesn’t have as much leverage as a proper handle) but I’ve already made a first pass (bringing the ID up to ~27mm) down to the minimum insertion point. I’ll run the reamer down about 3 inches further than that, then back it out, expand the cutters to 27.2, and run it down again, at which point I’ll be able to pull one of my spare seatposts out of my bike mess and use it.
And, aside from it not costing me anything, it’s a good way to get a feel for part of the framebuilding process :-)