1935 Wards Hawthorne Silver King

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The Renaissance Man

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I bought this four weeks ago at the Barber Vintage Weekend swap meet.

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I've been meaning to get a build thread going for it but just needed a break from 'build posting' after the summer build off. I did take some pictures along the way and will try to post some over the next several days. I plan to take some finished pictures tomorrow.
 
The bike was completely disassembled after soaking some of the fasteners with PB Blaster for a couple of days. Most everything came apart without much of a fight.

The most shocking discovery came when I removed the fork. The fork is aluminum but the steerer tube is steel. Raw steel to be specific! With all of the surface rust on the rest of the bike it blew my mind to find zero rust on this 84 year old piece!!!

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You can still see the weld seam down the center!
 
The bike was completely disassembled after soaking some of the fasteners with PB Blaster for a couple of days. Most everything came apart without much of a fight.

The most shocking discovery came when I removed the fork. The fork is aluminum but the steerer tube is steel. Raw steel to be specific! With all of the surface rust on the rest of the bike it blew my mind to find zero rust on this 84 year old piece!!!

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You can still see the weld seam down the center!
Awesome! The fork looks amazing, and that is exactly what i thought of when saw the first pictures, glad you didn't even have to resurrect it!
 
When I said that I took everything apart, I meant everything!
OK, that's a slight exageration but I did break down almost everything except taking bearings out of the cages or taking the inside of the headlight apart. You get the idea.:D

Here's the wheels.
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Even thought the previous owner had done a decent job polishing the frame, I spent a few hours going over all of the aluminum with a polishing wheel.

Here's a good example of the difference.
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This is the frame (after polishing) with the fork (before polishing) next to it.
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It's still no where near a @Chad T polish job, but it does shine!
 
The bike didn't have the skirt guard holders (not sure what the correct name is) so after looking at a few pictures I created some similar to the originals.

With a couple of springs and rings, then a little bending and reshaping, this happened.
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Here is how they are used.
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The cord is laced through the fender holes and tied off underneath to hide the knots.
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However, the chain side of the rear fender had an odd number of holes which caused the cording to end at the ring on one end.
I didn't want an ugly knot showing so I made an eye splice on the end instead of a knot for a smoother finish. Look at the bottom right cord in the foreground.
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