Cantle Plate Cheating

For the first time on this project I have cheated, I have taken a short cut, I have not made something from scratch. I'm pretty certain that life will go on so I'm not going to loose any sleep over it. I could have made the cantle plate from scratch but as I had a suitable donor saddle handy, it seemed silly to be pedantic about it. Similarly I have found some springs that I can use for the saddle. The springs on this bike are much longer than usually found on Brooks saddles. I found them in a drawer in Scottish Dave's shed and he generously donated them to the cause.

The donor saddle is an old Brooks something or other and the spring mounting bolts are too wide at 4" centres, I need to modify the plate to chop out a section from the middle and rejoin it so that it still maintains the same radius, this requires a little thinking before getting the hacksaw out. This is in stark contrast to Mr. Middleton who is very fond of his welder. Mr. Middleton has been bragging that he has finished his bike before I have. Pffff.

First remove all the old paint and rust with a dunk in some acid.

Then make a little jig to hold the cantle plate while it is tweaked.

The drawing illustrates the section that needs to be removed 

and still maintain the correct radius and get the bolts at the correct centres.

The section duly removed.

Then mount on a suitable scrap piece of angle...

... and give it to the excellent young fellow Tweed Pete to weld up for me. 

The original rivet holes were too close after removing the section 

so I asked Pete to weld them closed at the same time.

Finally clean up top and bottom and drill the two new rivet holes.

I've also removed the old bolts as the threads were a bit cack and also a very odd size. I'll braze some replacement bolts in using my beloved 26 tpi cycle thread. In fact I'll try and get everything brazed up before I go back to work next week.


In other news, we have been away for Christmas, we went to Wanaka and spent a very happy week doing all the usual family holiday stuff. We took a couple of mountain bikes and explored the local tracks which were fabulous. I can highly recommend Deans Bank Track and the long loop along the north bank of the Clutha crossing at Luggate and coming back along the south bank. My mountain bike is almost an antique (naturally), it is a 1993 Cadex CFM2 and still going strong. It amuses me to ride 'gnarly trails' on a bike that I should have upgraded several decades ago. "You just rode that on that. Awesome dude"

And for the record, my lovely wife did buy me a Christmas present, she bought me a new T-shirt that I'm not allowed to wear in the shed. I bought her some earrings, thus maintaining marital harmony.