I'm ashamed to say that it's been nearly 12 months since I last updated this blog. There are a whole heap of reasons - some good, some not so good. But what it boils down to is that I've just not been in the right headspace for building stuff, and as a consequence, stuff has not got built.

A recent email conversation with budding framebuilder Ben has made me realise that I had really better get of my arse and fire up the torch again. I've been commuting a fair bit recently and on fair weather days would like to ride my fixed gear bike. When I built it I made a traditional track fork for it with round fork blades, a flat crown and no brake hole. Rather than drill a brake hole in what is quite a nice looking track fork, I thought I'm make up a road fork for the bike.

The plan is for a pretty conservative 45mm rake, using a nice semi-sloping crown I had knocking around. Below is the bones of my very high-tech fork bender, which is basically a lump of redgum fencepost, which I cut to a constant radius and routed a groove into.



In time, it will have a neat clamp to secure the dropout end, but for the moment, this rather bodgy arrangement of a grooved block and a g-clamp will have to suffice.



Or so I thought until I started bending the second blade. Trojan brand g-clamps from Bunnings might as well be made from cheese. Definitely not impressed.



It took some careful fettling to get both blades even, and to the right rake, but against the odds, I managed it. Version 2.0 of the bender will definitely have a depth stop so I can at least do the basic bend to the same point. Leverage is provided by a length of RHS slipped over the blade Primitive, but it works.



Somewhat to my surprise, given the length of time I've been away from the tools, the trial fit-up was almost perfect. I think I should trim perhaps 1mm off the dropout end of the blades, as the fit is a fraction tight lengthwise, and not quite tight enough in terms of fitting into the dropout socket. Since it was dark by this point and Heather was inside drinking shiraz with a friend, I though I'd call it quits at this point and do the final trimming cleaning and brazing tomorrow.

The weather here is bloody cold, and it's been drizzling non-stop for about a week. Fortunately, I've got a heap of wood cut and stacked in the woodshed, and the shed heater I made last year gets the drafty shed up to a temperature that's at least tolerable, even if it's not actually pleasant. Polly and Shamus, my faithful wolfhound-cross dogs, were very content.

Where there's smoke...

Not much has been happening in the way of framebuilding recently, as the lack of updates on the blog might suggest. It's been damn cold and rainy in Blackwood recently, and nights spent pottering in the shed are uncomfortable to say the least. I needed a heater, and I made one.



It's an old industrial water tank - 1/4" plate all the way through. Welded internally between the top and bottom doors is a round grate, and there is another round plate welded to the bottom to cap it off.



The air control system uses a sliding plate over three corresponding holes in the airbox so I can regulate the air going into the stove. It seems to work quite well.



The door latch and handle were bodged up out of scrap. The latch bit itself is brass brazed into the end of a seatstay offcut. Just like making up a plate dropout! There's a length of stainless steel spring silver brazed over the chainstay to form the handle.



I fired it up on the driveway this afternoon. The inside of the tank is coated in some kind of epoxy sealant, so I wanted to give it a good hot burn in the open air to get rid of it. So far it seems to work perfectly. I'll weld some legs on it and then connect it up to the existing flue in the shed. Hopefully I'll be toasty warm this weekend. Expect to see a bit more action.

Dropping the balls

The work/life/fun balance has been all out of whack recently, and time playing with bikes in the shed has been the last thing on my to-do list. It's been months since I last posted a blog entry and in that time we've gone from having had to evacuate 3 times in the face of fire threats to now, where the temperature is regularly in the minuses.

Perhaps not surprisingly, my priorities have turned to trying to heat the shed. It's bitterly cold out there, particularly as the only time I get to myself is after about 7pm at night when the boy is asleep. I'm mostly finished building a very funky wood stove, fashioned from an old water tank. Most of the grubby work is done, with the very real possibility of firing it up this weekend. I'll post again in the next few days with some more pictures and an update as to where I'm at with my new road frame.

Fire

I wasn't kidding when I said it was hot.




Yesterday was the hottest day on since records were first kept in Victoria. It was the highest fire danger in history. Much of the state is on fire, and over 85 people are dead, with hundreds of homes destroyed. We're fine, but friends have been burnt out and my parents are literally in the line of fire.

So, no. I haven't been building bicycles. I haven't been in the shed. I've been far more pre-occupied with how I might survive a fire than use one to melt some silver. We'll resume out scheduled broadcast when the state stops burning and people stop being killed.

If you can't stand the heat...

I've been quiet on the blogging front, but somewhat busy in the shed.

My road frame is brazed up, bar the wishbone seatstays. I need to have a long think about the order in which I do things from here on in lest I end up melting existing brazes.

I've been working on a fork bender, shaped from a monolithic lump of redgum. No pix for now, but soon to follow.

Today is Australia Day - our national holiday. Think 4th of July for Aussies. Heather, Rufus and I abandoned our country retreat for the day and headed into Footscray. In addition to being Australia day it was also the Chinese Lunar New Year - the Tet festival. So we spent Oz day in a Buddhist vegetarian restaurant, watching Vietnamese dragon dancers scare away evil spirits with fireworks. This is a great country sometimes.

No so great is that this coming week is predicted to be the hottest week in a hundred years. Four consecutive days over 40 degrees (104F+) Given we live in the middle of 1/4 million acres of eucalypt forest - and no, I'm not making that up - and given that we are in the height of the bushfire season, I'm getting a little nervous.

Christmas is rapidly approaching, and Santa should have something in his stocking for Leighton. This is a fixed-gear commuter. Front brake only, but running dual brake levers as Leighton likes to ride on the hoods.



Fizik Aliante saddle, Velocity wheelset, Nitto bars and Soma crank.



The frame is Zona and Nivacrom tubes on Long Shen oversized lugs.



Powdercoated in Precious Steeel Pearl yet again.



Oval chainstays and forward-facing rear dropouts.

The year is winding up, which unfortunately has meant that work has been flat out. Add to this the fact that Heather has been sick for what seems like weeks. Consequently, my time has not been my own, and there's been very little happening in the Shed.

I had a few hours blocked out this afternoon for working on Frame #5, but that got derailled when we picked up a car-load of ancient gardening tools from the Trentham tip for $10. What should have been time spent on the frame turned into a couple of hours spent wire-brushing and welding shovels, spades and garden forks. But I'm not complaining - a good scavenge is its own reward.

I did manage to spend some time on the frame though, and can report that the main triangle is mitered, the lugs are fettled and the water bottle cage mounts and front derailleur hanger are all brazed on. Cable guides are brazed on, vent holes drilled and the main triangle is more or less ready for the fixture. One last clean of the tubes and it'll be ready for brazing.



This frame is Nuovo Richie lugs, Columbus Zona tubes and a wishbone rear end. I'm loving working with the NR lugs - they are beautiful, very well made and are, in my opinion, just the right amount of ornate, without being over the top.



I'm planning to use a Strawberry/LAN71 wishbone unit on the seatstays. The connector tube will obviously fix to the back of the seat tube. Advice from those older and much wiser than me is that brazing it to the back of a .6mm tube with no other re-inforcement is not a good idea. The Nuovo Richie seat lug is too short at the back to allow me to braze it to the back of the seat lug. What to do? To cut a long story short, I ended up fabricating an extension to the lug, matching it to the lug's existing shoreline. I brazed it up using brass and then carefully sanded it back till it was an almost seamless addition to the lug. Then came carving the extension to match the lines of the lug. It's finished now, but for a little fettling of the edges. It'll provide a much bigger surface to braze to, and hopefully will be sympathetic to the rest of the lugs.