This Space for Rent

Jul 30, 2014

Cargo

Cargo

Bringing a fixie home so I can braze some rack mounts, bottle bosses, and cable guides onto it; I need to see if I can find a purple patch paint that closely matches it so that the post-modification fixie won’t be all blotchy rusty bare metal and paint.

Jul 26, 2014

A small problem with putting advertising on flags

Not the sort of advertising this food cart was intending

OLD BEER


Railroad picture of the day

There goes a northbound F40ph sled

A F40PH sled disappears into the sunset

Jul 25, 2014

Friday Dust Mite Blogging™

Dust Mite has a glass of wine

Dust Mite unwinds after a long week.

Jul 21, 2014

Well, that was easy

Rack mounts, #5

And now the born-again Trek has a carbon fiber fork with rack mounts. And I only destroyed one file (I had a junky old wood-rasp file that I used to cut down the loose ends that were sticking up from the carbon fiber fabric, and the carbon fiber fabric gave as good as it got and now there are 3 channels on the curved surface of the rasp that had the teeth worn away) while I was doing it.

Next stop, Mount Hood (or Estacada, or Sandy, or Sauvie Island, depending on how far afield I want to go on the proving tests for this fork.)

Jul 20, 2014

Eating one’s own dogfood

Fork mounts, #4

The second (and last) wrap of CF around the rack mounts on the born-again Trek’s carbon fiber fork is now curing overnight so I can take sandpaper & steel wool to it tomorrow afternoon to finish it (and then clear, and maybe UV, cost it) and get the bicycle back into brevetting duty.

I need to get a couple of plastic washers to fit between the fork legs and the mountpoints, so the legs won’t cut into the monocoque, but plastic washers are easy to find!

Jul 18, 2014

Friday Dust Mite Blogging™

Dust Mite & Buckley

Dust Mite and Buckley do some paperwork.

Jul 17, 2014

The milwaukie interurban looks more and more like an electric railway every day

assembling the catenary

The catenary is slowly working south (and north) from Center St.

Jul 15, 2014

Time to void another warranty

Rack mounts, #1

Aluminum rack mounts for the front rack on the born-again Trek waiting for me to level the rack and epoxy them to the (carbon-fiber, in case you’re wondering) fork blades. And I bought some carbon fiber fabric (for carbon fiber fenders and a CF dustcap for this bicycle’s headset), so when that gets here I’ll cut a thin ribbon (after getting a facemask so I don’t inhale all those lovely carbon fiber fragments) from it and wrap them tightly just to be paranoid.

2 comments

Jul 13, 2014

New fork day

avec une fourchette en plastique

My friend Kevin is moving to Yakima so his sweetie can go to medical school, and he’s getting rid of a bunch of his extra bike stuff. I swapped a dynamo hub (I think that there are 14 dynohubs in the house, and we’ve “only” got 9 bicycles) for a bunch of useful(?) stuff including a carbon fiber fork (which was cheap because it had, at some time in the past, had the steertube cut down to 175mm.) And today I pulled the born-again Trek apart and installed the new fork.

23.7 pounds as pictured, though that’s going to go up a little bit when I fabricate a pair of rack mounts and epoxy them onto the fork blades.

Jul 11, 2014

Friday Dust Mite Blogging™

Pie day

Dust Mite wants to sample both of the pies.

Jul 10, 2014

Project of the day

Stem bell (side view)

I’m using the IGH project bike for most of my shopping errands these days, so I’ve been dodging slower-moving traffic sans bell. The traditional bikey alert sound (“On your \<x>!”) works best when you’re young and shouty, so I finally fixed having to do it by brazing a m5 bolt onto the (steel, serendipitously) stem, then taking an Electra bell, cutting off its mounting hardware, then drilling and tapping it to mate with the bolt.

Much brass. So dingy. Wow.

Jul 08, 2014

Nom nom nom!

Giant Marmite

Anything doing is worth doing to excess.

Jul 05, 2014

stratovolcano picture of the day

Mount Hood from Bluff Road

Mount Hood from the Jonsrud viewpoint in Sandy, Oregon.

Jul 04, 2014

Friday Dust Mite Blogging™

Dust Mite & friend

Dust Mite hangs out with his friend Harold the Enderman.

Jul 03, 2014

Two more racks

Two rack platforms with semicircular backstops

The 11×11 one is being made for a custom frame (not mine; I’m still a ways away from making frames) and the 11.5×11.5 one I made up because I had the rack perimeter lying around and why not?

—30—


orc@pell.portland.or.us

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