And we’re done (and I realized I never published this post).
I said earlier I wasn’t going to blog today, but we had a good day even if it did run long. Today was all about braze ons, bridges and reaming / tapping things. I didn’t get much of the latter done. I did get my fork crown race cut and thats all I was really worried about in the reaming / tapping / cutting department.
Test fitting the brake bridge
The bike is almost done from a construction stand point and will be finished by me at home. The only other thing I’m missing is how much head tube to cut off. I can set the bike up on a table at home to figure that out as there just wasn’t time to get it done in the shop today and I was out of gas at the end of the day. I’ll need to figure out where to get a vise and some sort of holding device until I can get a proper set of wood blocks. One of my classmates is looking into making them so I’m hoping to piggy back onto that.
Setting up a brake cable stop
Chain stay stop
All day I did braze ons. My bikes got the usual assortment of cable stops, as well as a few fun things. I added a chain hanger because I find them among the more useful things in the universe. One tiny dot 110mm up from the axle works wonders for mucking about on the side of the road. I also have a derailure braze on. While not unheard of you don’t see them much anymore. I’m using SRAM Red components for this bike and the derailure I have happens to be braze on. The part looked cool so I went with it. Aligning the hanger is officially more trouble than its worth and I don’t think I’ll do it again though.
All the bits and pieces attached
The other big challenge of the day was to get the STI stops lined up properly. This was stupidly harder than it needed to be. I had put a bit of rotation into mine to make them easier to adjust on the fly (the adjuster flares out from the down tube slightly) and matching the rotation and the positioning turned out to be a pain in the butt. After I had it all lined up and started the braze I bumped it with my silver and it locked itself down in the wrong place. Thankfully Doug and Herbie were around to help me out and everything got worked out and it all looks pretty good. A classmate had similar positioning issues. The next time I make an bike with STI stops I’m totally making a jig, it was foolish of us to try to do this by hand, way too much alignment and guess work when I think an hour with angle iron and a drill could have saved us two or three. Now I know, and making the jig will be a fun little side project.
The beginning of what turned out to be the most difficult part of the day.
All and all it was a good time. We worked way past sunset in the shop and I feel pretty bad about that. I’m super thankful Doug let us all finish up. Tonight was the last night and we had a good dinner, started to say our good byes and began to think about returning home.
Done!
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