Spent five hours last night adjusting parts for the mitering setup on my milling machine. The rotary table and the backing plate is now ready for the Anvil mitering fixtures (allowing me to cut tubes with a very high precision on at a desired angle and length instead of doing the same thing with files in the vise). There’s still a wee bit of tramming (adjusting) to do, but the setup should be ready for use in a few days.
Since I grew up in a tool and metalwork environment (heating manufacturer that turned into a hardwarestore on one side of the family and a lamp manufacturer on the other) I’m used to seeing metal badges of all sorts and on all sorts of products. But opening up the TOS milling machine to service the coolant pump gave me a sudden feeling of touching history. This pump probably hasn’t been out in daylight since it was picked up by a Czechoslovakian worker back in 1962 and placed in the sump of the TOS. In a society so utterly different from the one we’re living in now. The milling machine gave the country some much needed hard cash back then, and the export papers says that it’s for export only and that it was to be shown on a Scandinavian trade show the next year. The feeling of beeing close to history is quite like the one I got when we visited the Berlin Wall museum (not the one on Checkpoint Charlie, the other one) earlier this summer. A fantastic museum that captured through architecture and visual clips (video and images) the meaningless divide between east and west.
dunlop_pump
Originally uploaded by Truls.
Last year we spent a week in Copenhagen (I worked) and while there we did the usual browsing of fleamarkets. At one of the large ones at Amager I found a nice Campa rear wheel (now my primary reference-wheel when building) and an old brass Dunlop pump. It’s been sitting in our shed for some time, but a few days I got around to order a new Silca hose for it. Now we have one neat bicycling antique hanging on the wall in our appartement just waiting to top up our tires before heading out on a ride.
At last I was able to get a full day in the workshop last sunday. Three frames and two forks are now just a few hours from going to the painter. Had a really good time and got to test out some new brazing material that I got from Henry James before we went on summer vacation. Great stuff! Pictured is a disc-dropout that came out really, really well.
Ordered a rotary table for my fixtures today. Hopefully it’ll be here sometime next week. Can’t wait to get my mitering setup completed!
Elisabeth and I had the good fortune to spend four days alone while Sofie, our 1,5 year old daughter, got to spend some quality time with her grandparents. This was the first visit to Berlin for both of us, and I was’nt that excited about it when we planned it a while ago. But what a city! I loved it! We loved it! It’s a great chaos of old and new with a nice Laissez-faire’ish attitude that one can find in cities that change a lot. Beer-gardens, designer shops, record stores, second hand markets +++ Just a great place to be. And I did also sneak in some time to visit Mo and the other guys at Berlin’s Keirin Cafe. A really nice place that specialize in track bikes and things connected to the whole fixie/track/messenger culture. I got to chat with Mo for a long time, and I had a really good time. Well worth a visit if you’re in the neighbourhood. A bunch of pictures from the store and cafe can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/2cbmad
hovden_haukeli
Originally uploaded by Truls.
Had the best ride of the year this last saturday. 30 kilometers into the mountains and back. With a killer climb at the start at 12-15% for 3 km. Fantastic!
