An Act of Dog

This week has been momentous in that I now have the first assembly complete. I've finished off the head to the point where I can fit the forks legs to the head, the knees to the fork legs and the lower legs to the knees. Everything jiggles nicely with no stress to hold it all in place, so hopefully when it is brazed up it will stay where it should without too much distortion and misalignment from the heat.

The'axle' is just a machined spacer to hold everything square and concentric

However let's not run before we can walk. There has been a lot of hand work this week underneath the head to clean it all up. As before here is a series of photos when I remembered to take some.

The mounting point for the front brake pivot has also been machined, this required some careful trig. to calculate the angle and depth to ensure that the hole didn't break through either below the head or into the central bore.

I've tapped it at 1/4" bsf, I wanted to use 1/4" bsc but I didn't have a plug tap in that size.

I've rootled around in my magic cupboard to find my stash of silver solder and failed miserably. I suspect that my wife has been funding her extravagant lifestyle by discreetly selling it on the local black market. Or I probably just used it already. I did find lots of skinny silicon bronze brazing rods though, so maybe I'll just use that to glue it all together instead. I'm undecided if I'm going to finish the lever pivots before I braze it all up or if I braze up what I have completed already. What do you think?

My workshop and lathe need a major spring clean after all this work on the head. Recall the original billet I started with that weighed 18lb 3.5oz (8.26kg). The machined head now weighs a svelte 2lb 1oz (0.93kg), so I have 16lb 2.5oz (7.33kg) of swarf and filings lying around (mostly in one pile). My wife is getting grumpy when I bring it into the house on my feet so clearly a clean up is needed in order to maintain certain marital benefits.

Next week I'll finish off the casting patterns and then decide what to work on next.

In other news, a few of us rode the Little River Rail Trail at the weekend, We rode from Motukarara to Little River, had a picnic lunch and then rode home again.

Motukarara
'04 & '06 Royal Enfields. The wagon has a wooden chassis and  is older by 25 years.

Little River station building

It was a beautiful day that turned into a roasting Nor'Wester. On the way back, we were riding straight into the teeth of the gale (of course). The kids did really well and both rode the full 45km, the longest ride for both of them. Less fortunate was another youngster that hit a rock next to Lake Forsyth, wobbled and then plummeted 5 metres down a rocky bank and into the green, algae filled water. She disappeared from sight underwater, all tangled up in her bike, but quickly resurfaced. Fortunately we witnessed her disappear so were on scene very quickly and I was able to scramble down the rocks and jump in to assist her out of the toxic soup, She was miraculously unhurt other than bruising, just very scared and shaken. Her bike was badly damaged but she had clung on to it in the deep water and I was able to fish it out. I've since heard that she is all OK which is wonderful news. I confess to having a wee drink that night, I'm not a great swimmer.

In more other news, I've taken another tumble off my bike, the second in 10 days. Commuting home through a park in Christchurch, I was JRA and about to overtake a pair of elderly ladies walking their dog. I'd pulled well of the tarmac path and onto the grass so I would pass without scaring them. As I'm level with them, their dog very suddenly turns sharp left and runs straight under my front wheel. Fortunately, I landed on the same side as last week so I just freshened up my existing gravel rash and re-wrenched my back in the same spot. The ladies were very apologetic and concerned but after I'd been able to get up and straighten the bars etc. I pointed out that it wasn't really any one's fault and there was no real harm done. It was just one of those things, an act of Dog.