Over the past couple months, two projects moved through the shop: dropouts for a traditional touring frame and a thrust-bearing retrofit on a rotary positioner for my fork fixture.
The dropout work involved fitting Ritchey-branded units into chainstays. I had already cleaned up the lines of the dropouts and filled in the Ritchey branding. After brazing, I verified alignment with machinist blocks to hold them in position. After brazing and finishing these, I decided I wanted to use horizontal dropouts. I’ll let you see how those come out in my next post.
The positioner mod focused on improving rotational smoothness. A stepped bore was machined into the face of the rotating element to seat thrust bearings. The lathe work was clean, with a good surface finish and concentricity. Once installed, the bearing stack eliminated axial play and improved feel under load making sure engagement and disengagement was light and smooth. I now have 4 forks to braze up so that’s going to be my next update!
On a personal note, I’ve retired from my regular work and will be focusing more on Draper Cycles, posting here, riding my bikes more and working on some cars that I’m restoring!
Draper Cycles 