Oct 31, 2017
Feeling Lucky? built up as a temporary fixie so I can do some break-in rides before painting it and sending it out east. (Well, brazing on canti posts, brake & chainstay bridges, and putting in ports for the internal wiring before painting, but that’s a matter of 45 minutes of prep, glue, and cleanup)
—orc Tue Oct 31 13:48:03 2017
Oct 29, 2017
A maple just prior to shedding all of its leaves
—orc Sun Oct 29 21:58:35 2017
Oct 28, 2017
↓
I was given a broken Elephant NFE fork (a first-generation one with thin & skinny fork blades; the reaction arm for the disc brake ended right at the lowrider mounts, so an enthusiastic brake application snapped the blade right there) and decided that it would make an ideal candidate for reuse as a rack jig. So I lopped the fork blades off (at a 72.5° angle) just below the rack mountpoints and brazed the thing onto a steel plate.
Now to get some matching brown paint to spray it with, then a piece of felt to glue under the steel plate, and then I’ll have a useful and ornamental shop tool.
—orc Sat Oct 28 14:49:52 2017
Oct 27, 2017
Comparing a homemade steel stem to a purchased aluminum stem. The steel stem weighs about the same by distance as the aluminum stem does, but the aluminum stem has the handlebar clamp perpendicular to the stem clamp whilst the steel one does not. Dust Mite makes a worse stem than either of them, of course, because it doesn’t do much in the whole clamping department.
—orc Fri Oct 27 22:10:17 2017
Taking the long way back to Westmoreland from the Community Cycling Center.
—orc Fri Oct 27 15:13:01 2017
Oct 25, 2017
I’m building a frame that’s going to be fitted with Paul Racer brakes, but the ones I was given to put on the machine were ones with a backplate for mounting to the brake bridge and/or fork crown. Well, the offending frame is going to have a brake bridge and fork crown, but the holes drilled in those are dedicated to holding the fender in place (rear wheel) and rack in place (front wheel), so I needed to do some tweaking to make things fit.
So, for the front wheel I took a pair of U-brake bosses, and for the rear wheel I took a pair of 13mm offset canti bosses, then chopped the actual bosses off so I was left with the bases & a bit of threaded hole. So I can take the existing brake mounts (which are a pair of unthreaded bosses that are loaded by a bolt and the Paul Racer spring boss), unscrew them from the backplate, and bolt them into these bases. It’s about $7 of bosses, which if it works is a good solution that keeps the brakes in a state where they can be removed and reassembled in the original form if the rider decides they want to use Dia-Compe, MAFAC, or even V- or cantilever brakes instead.
—orc Wed Oct 25 22:18:55 2017
Oct 21, 2017
And I need to adjust the front rack before I can put the front fender on, so it’s going to stay a fairweather bike for a while longer.
—orc Sat Oct 21 23:50:28 2017
Oct 20, 2017
Checking the rail positioning on a 10x8 rack
—orc Fri Oct 20 23:37:32 2017
Oct 17, 2017
It needs to be drilled for the lighting (NDS chainstay for taillight, fork for the wire run up to the wire junction for headlight + taillight) and I’m waiting on a B&M Seculite from starbike, but other than that it’s almost time to put this bicycle back together and dismantle the front end of the mountainhack for repainting.
—orc Tue Oct 17 16:22:56 2017
Oct 15, 2017
An Oak Grove-bound train composed of a SD600 and a Type 1 car heads south through downtown Milwaukie yesterday afternoon.
—orc Sun Oct 15 13:39:35 2017
Oct 13, 2017
Still life with dust mite & acorn squash
—orc Fri Oct 13 23:25:36 2017
Slowly working my way through my unpainted frame bits. Today was the 3-speed/IGH project frame/bike; it’s sitting in the “paint booth” curing for a couple of days, then I’ll put decals & a clearcoat on and reassemble everything, and after that I’ll be able to pull apart the mountainhack’s front end and try to match the pink/green fade that I painted that frame with.
—orc Fri Oct 13 20:03:47 2017
Oct 11, 2017
A nice side-effect of the scattered rain in the Portland area this afternoon.
—orc Wed Oct 11 18:00:27 2017
I’d prefer a set of metal 650b-radiused fenders, but they cost money and I had these Planet Bike w/ reflective orange star fenders lying around after I stripped the carcass of the kit bike for parts, so (after a few days riding the mountainhack in the rain) I stuffed them onto the emergency randonneuse this morning so I could ride it instead.
—orc Wed Oct 11 13:36:23 2017
Oct 09, 2017
A Type 1 & a SD600/660 on the bridge just north of Tacoma Street.
—orc Mon Oct 9 23:18:26 2017
Oct 08, 2017
The play structure that sits approximately where Portland Traction’s Boring station was is painted to look like part of a railroad station, complete with a Portland Traction-alike mileage sign that gives the as-the-railroad-flies distance to the East Portland yard and the passenger terminal at Cazadero
—orc Sun Oct 8 20:26:38 2017
Oct 06, 2017
The fork is raked about ½ mite, which gives it about ¼th mite trail (~68mm offset, ~34mm trail).
—orc Fri Oct 6 23:06:43 2017
Oct 05, 2017
… and they love the delicious taste of acetylene gas. I need to put together an anti-squirrel cage to put the brazing rig into, but until then the replacement hoses and the torch are being unbolted from the regulators and brought inside after I finish each round of gluing metal pieces together.
—orc Thu Oct 5 18:37:41 2017
A northbound train passes under the Springwater Trail bridge south of Tacoma St.
—orc Thu Oct 5 18:32:46 2017
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