I had to take a week off to do some travel down to LA and San Diego. While I loved the weather, I was missing out on getting some work done in the shop.
Quick updates:
The frames are nearly complete with just the seatstays to assemble and attach. This is always the trickiest part as even the smallest contraction from heat cycles or the slightest mis-measurement can cause all kinds of bad stuff to happen to the alignment.
I assembled each frameset with some parts I had laying around. I just wanted to make sure everything was lining up correctly. Just a touch of clearance when the rear wheel is all the way forward and everything measures out well within tolerances to the design.
Polishing the fillets (this is not a euphemism) is time consuming, dirty and tiring work and I usually leave the shop with sore hands and brass or silver dust all over my shoes. I start with a big hairy course file and work my way down to a little Swiss cut file and then go on to 80 grit and finally 120 grit shop roll on a balsa wood dowel. This is from somewhere in between. I actually use these photos to see where I need to do more work. Sometimes I can see in photos what doesn’t show up in real life. Maybe it’s an objective perspective that a photo provides – a step removed so to speak.
Once the chainstays are tacked into place, a rear wheel that I know is straight and dished correctly is inserted and the whole thing is put on the surface plate to make sure the rear wheel is in the same plane as the headtube and seattube and perpendicular to the bottom bracket shell. The amount that this rear wheel is out of plane is half of the distance shown here so…pretty dang close.
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Aside from the building part, I have placed orders for the build kits and I’m working on colors and decals.
Thanks for stopping by!
Draper Cycles 