Saturday 19 May 2012

Fork 'n tweed

Slow but steady progress on the forks, I bent them up in the bend jig on Friday night, fitted up the fork ends on Saturday and cut them to length for the fork crown today.


The bending was interesting, I couldn't get the first tube to bend over the last 5 degrees of the jig even though I was putting the full and not insubstantial Chumly into it, so I tried again with a bit of heat. This wasn't enough either so I ended up giving it a love tap from a rubber mallet which did the trick no problems. The second one then followed pretty quickly, followed even quicker by an attack of the cold sweats when I realised the bends didn't quite match up between the two tubes... however my past life as a fitter welder came to my aid and a few more judicious taps with the rubber mallet had things lining up perfectly - whew. I then drew an outline around my newly created fork bends and scanned it into the computer, which allowed me to import the scan into the CAD program and model up what I actually had. A few masterful keystrokes left me with a lovely representation of the fork bends and the forks I could now create;




If only my steerer tube was long enough, that would nearly be ready for brazing....

So apart from my varied familial duties that kept my garage time to a minimum this weekend, I also partook of a bit of tweeding today on my 1930ish Hercules pathracer;





My delicate back was giving me gyp so on the way back I flipped the bars to help with the ridiculously uncomfortable seating position, the comfort transformation was remarkable. This is good news for me as I am swapping the Herc for an old Gazelle very soon, I should be able to ride far further with that. As it was we covered a solid 20 odd kilometers, yelling out our war cry of  'Smash the Lycra!' as we raced the roadie boys (with some success I might add) along Cashmere road.. I cannot tell you how much fun this is.






If you want to come along, join the group here, it is the best thing ever.

2 comments:

  1. IMO, the radius of your bender is too large.
    Take a look at this:
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/bensondoc/sets/72157623008521051/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Interesting that you say that, I also think the rad is a bit big.. There was a fair amount of springback from the tubes on the jig so it did not end up as tight a rad as I expected. I have 4 similar bike forks to compare it to and it is the same basic rad as one of those... I will investigate further. Too late for this fork anyway, but I have a new set to build when the bits arrive.

      Delete