Rackufacture: Home-Made Tube Bender

I've been not real satisfied with the quality of my larger diameter 3/8" tubing bends. So 2 or 4 weeks ago, I can't really remember, I scraped together some parts and a loose plan. The rough idea was to try and use v-belt-type pulleys as bending dies and build a bender that would accommodate multiple pulleys so that I could do a variety of bend radii. At that point I was pretty sure I had no idea what I was doing and that the whole thing would be a colossal waste of time and money. But I've never been one to let practicality stand in my way, so I forged ahead.



I've been goofing with it, little by little, in my spare time. Here's the basic frame, that's intended to be clamped into a bench vise . . .



Here's the bending handle . . .



So long story short, I was able to put some time into the project this weekend and I finished it tonight and faced the moment of truth. For the record, I didn't really expect it to work. Reason being, I bought die-cast zinc pulleys. I was pretty sure that the bending pressure would bust the flanges off. But stronger pulleys are harder to find and way more expensive, so it made sense to start with the cheap ones, figure out if they would hold up, and go from there. Thing is, if they work, I can tool up for a variety of bend radii for not a lot of bucks.

Here's a series of pictures that I hope is fairly self-explanatory. If not, just holler.















I'll be damned. The equipment held up and the bend came out looking pretty good. It's a little assymetrical, not so much that you could tell with the naked eye. Most importantly, the flat spots at the start of the bend are gone. Pretty sure I can live with this. Wow. I actually built something that works. Far out.



Scary thing is, now that I have a tiny bit of confidence, I'll be putting together all kinds of crazy shit.

5 W's

Who: Alan Jacob, Mike Sirott, me, 16 other eager students, one
instructor
What: Traffic flagger certification class
When: Now
Where: SCC
Why: State law requires that bike race organizers have a certified
flagger on hand to train and organize volunteer flaggers.

Yup, every bit as fun as it looks.

And don't think that just because I'm blogging, I'm not paying
extremely close attention.

Creepy, Yet Exciting

When you're learning to build racks, you make a lotta mistakes. More specifically, you spew molten brass all the hell over the place. You fix your mistakes by filing them into dust. All good and well, but as usual, there are innocent victims. In this case, it's the files. Mine have been beat to shit, thanks to my inneptitude. Don't expect me to get all sentimental and guilty. If they can't stand the heat, they should get outta the kitchen. Anyway, obviously, it was time to spring for a coupla new files, which I did on my way home tonight.



Holy hell, they cut through steel like a stream of hot urine cuts through snow. (Or so I've heard.) I guess I'd gotten so used to my pukey old files that I'd forgotten how crazy much fun filing could be.

But there's something bigger going on here. I feel a certain connection to these new files. I can't explain it, but it's almost like we share the same name.

Carless Days

My re-focus on riding over the last several days has been the best kind of medicine for my soul and body. John and Joe took me out this morning and finished off anything that was left of my legs on the trails at Riverside and the South Hill bluff. I need some recovery, so tomorrow I'm off the bike, resting and eating. Not stupid eating, but whatever I want of good healthy stuff.

For a while, I've had this pretty serious obsessive thought about doing a 7-day car-free stint. Why 7 days? Because that means you could get through the routine of one whole week without relying on a car. My rules are no driving or riding in a car. Bikes and public transit are cool. I realize that for a lot of my harder-core bike friends, 7 carless days is childs play, but for me it's fairly epic and a worthy challenge.

So four days into my bike cleanse, I suddenly realize that I'm well on my way to seven carless days. Furthermore, my schedule looks good. There's challenges, but no real showstoppers. I tell Patty about it, and she's totally cool with biking where we need to go over the weekend. Unfortunately, something family-wise came up yesterday and I had to abort. No big deal, just wasn't supposed to happen right now. But I seriously can't wait to give it another go.

Even though I didn't do the week, I got into enough of a groove to re-remember some of the great things about getting out of your car and onto your bike:

- If you eat halfway reasonably, you can drop weight like crazy. You burn about 600 cal/hr riding, so 1-1/2 hrs of riding gives you almost 50% extra on a 2000 cal/day diet.

- I process mental shit like crazy when I ride. I dream up wild new ideas and put the day's problems to bed.

- The fears of what can happen in the dark and bad weather totally evaporate once you are actually on your bike. Once you start riding, you just go.

- If you can just get there, you will figure out a way to get home.

- Something interesting and memorable happens on *every ride*.

I could go on and on, but I won't. Instead, I'll be thinking about my next assault on the 7-day barrier, and hoping that you're getting out there on your bike, having the same kind of fun as me.

The Cleanse

The holistic food people have theirs. Juices of raw stuff are always involved.

Every religion has theirs. Think penance and fasting and self-denial.

By comparison, the bike cleanse is relaltively simple: You just shitcan your other priorities and go ride your bike. Which is exactly what I've been doing for the last four days.

Things got way out of hand, unbalanced . . . bike-related stuff was keeping me from riding. How stupid is that? Allow me. Really stupid. Sadly, it's not the first time and likely won't be the last.

For the time being, though, my alarm goes off at five. I do almost all my riding in the dark. My legs are tapped and I wobble when I walk. I tried to go out to the shop tonight, but my head won't do math. I'm kind of surprised I can do grammar. I've never been happier. Bikes rule. I have to go pass out now.

Too Cheap

On the tool quality continuum, we all dream of the high end. We are sure that only the finest hardware belongs in our toolboxes. Unfortunately, for most of us, financial realities most often dictate that we end up somewhere in the middle. Snap-On's the King, but Craftsman's a pretty sexy Queen. And sometimes, dire circumstances coupled with urgent need sends us to a certain company that rhymes with Arbor Phreight. Which is okay. We know that what we are getting ain't great, but it oughta be good enough for what we need. Until we can afford the real deal. But every now and then, we get blindsided with something that is such garbage that it doesn't belong on the face of the earth.

At times like these, we must take a stand.

Rackufacture: Rear Rack Jig

Glen was wondering if I might be interested in building a rear rack for one of his new Elephants. I'm pretty sure the Pope is still Catholic.

The timing was good because I've been thinking about fixturing and jigs and this gave me an excuse to get my feet wet. Glen gave me his construction drawing for the frame and I worked off of that to develop a drawing for a rack jig. It was supposed to be something simple and then it mushroomed into something way more complicated (my special talent), that could be adjustable so that you could build racks of the same style for different bikes, 'cause every one he builds is a little different. Not that he will ever ask me to build another one after he sees the kind of krap work I do, but it's not about that. It's about really wanting to do it and having half a reason to justify it. Hmmm, sounds like a lot of my bike purchases.

I don't have any machine tools, which limits how accurate the thing was gonna be and so I knew it probly wasn't gonna be a huge success this first time around but I also knew it was time to jump in, because you can only learn so much from reading and looking and then you have to learn from doing. I'll end up making lotsa mistakes, learning from them, hacking it up and itterating and making it better. So I guess that's my apology in advance for a C- on this first report card. Nuff said.

Ideas on paper . . .



Transferring the ideas from paper to steel . . .



A thousand hours later, all done . . .



This rack design uses that same two attachment points as most off-the-shelf racks: bosses on the dropouts and bosses on the seatstays. Here's the dropout end of the jig. It's adjustable for varying widths . . .



Here's the seatstay end, along with the feature that allows vertical adjustment relative to the dropout end (this will make more sense a few pics from now) . . .



Here's the feature that allows horizontal adjustment relative to the dropout end . . .



This is where the decks sits and is adjusted to the right elevation . . .



This is kind of a side note, but I have a problem with my method for making these large-radius bends. See the flat spot at the start of the bend? That ain't gonna do. I have some plans and parts for a home brew bender sitting on my bench . . .



Laying out the front struts . . .



Cut to length and ready to cope . . .



Another side note. I'm having a helluva time controlling heat with my new torch. Some days I wanna switch back to the bulky old POS. But the new one was a Christmas present to myself, so I can't, or I'll hurt my feelings. I have switched from a #1 to a #0 tip. That's helped, but I think I might have to go to a #00. Either that or develop some actual skills, 'cause I'm still getting things too hot. I can tell you're dying to know, so here's the diff between the #1 and #0 . . .



Front struts brazed on the topside . . .



Here's where this might start to actually make some sense. The deck and top struts are brazed in place. (Yup, same clamps, good eye.) The vertical strut assembly is brazed up and bolted to the jig. But the odds that I could braze this up and it would bolt to the frame are slim to none, so the vertical strut-to-deck joints will have to be brazed off the jig and on the frame . . .



As luck would have it, I met up with Glen at last night's bike hang and he told me that the frame hadn't been painted yet, but was going in tomorrow, which is now today and almost tomorrow. He said I could have it overnight. Found a 5-gallon can of midnight oil in the shop . . .









This pictures don't show it because I don't want them to, but things did not work out well. Nothing fit right. And since I was on deadline, I pushed too hard, which made everthing worse. I had to hack and re-work some stuff. And then I finally got it dialed in (so I thought), brazed up and finished off. Somewhere in the wee hours I closed up the shop and took the whole thing in the house with me overnight so it wouldn't get any rust blooms. I was exhaused but happy, and passed out sitting up, looking at it.



This morning, I drug my ass outta bed and before I could even get one sip of coffee in me, I took a look at the rack and noticed that it was badly misaligned. You can't really tell in this picture, but it's off in the left-right direction. Shit.



Glen say's he thinks it'll be alright. I'm not so sure. There's no easy fix. At this 5 minutes I'm not sure what went wrong, but I'll do the forensics and fix whatever the hell happened. You'll probably never know, because that would be the most boring blog post in the history of the universe. But if I do another one and get it right, you can be damn sure I'm gonna make you look at it.