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  1. us56456712

    Revenant

    I’ll toss my hat in the ring. I have an 1890s King brand fixed gear race bike. All the parts are super stuck with rust so right now I’m trying to take it apart. Most of it is in my daughters, basement 70 miles away, soaking in penetrant. I’ll bring it home next week and post photos. It’s been...
  2. us56456712

    1890s handlebars

    Man, talk about overthinking a solution. This is what they did in the 1890s. Anyone ever seen a threaded gooseneck stem and bars? I can’t see where the collar is brazed or pined to the bars. Seems like a lot of unnecessary work. It’s also slow to get them apart. Took me awhile to figure it out.
  3. us56456712

    Rust bust

    I’m part way through an 1890s seat pan resto. My go to method is to first use a 4 day soak in a concentrated solution of Rust Out, which is a rust stain remover. It contains no acids. Every day I give the part a scrubbing with a Brillo pad. Today it will go into a vinegar bath. I’ve had some...
  4. us56456712

    Status suspension problem

    Has anyone had problems trying to pay at the Status Suspension checkout? They won’t accept any of my credit cards that I use daily. I tried over two days thinking it was a glitch. I’ve emailed them twice, asking if I could pay another way but I got no response. Weird.
  5. us56456712

    Birds are migrating back

    Their hungry because there’s still plenty of snow on the ground and it’s still snowing most days. Up to 6 inches predicted in some location today. I think we will only get an inch or two here.
  6. us56456712

    Repair of gum rubber colored grips

    Well folks, the weather here has been extremely $#|++¥ lately so I’ve been monkeying around to keep my sanity. I have a set of Schwinn gum grips and one had an end that was hanging by a flap and the other end was gone. I jammed the one with the flap in modeling clay and put the one with the...
  7. us56456712

    Snow storm

    The highway is closed today for a 60 mile stretch along Lake Superior because of high winds and lake effect snow. The two week forecast says cold, snow and rain every day but one. It’s 15.5F out now, up from 15F two hours ago. I went outside and my eyeballs got achy from the freezing wind. Stuck...
  8. us56456712

    Arc welder brazing

    I got some brazing rods for my stick welder. The first thing I did was to repair a brass belt buckle. The brass stick welding doesn’t flow like regular brazing and only accumulates in a puddle under the arc. The surrounding metal isn’t hot enough for the brass to flow. I almost burned through...
  9. us56456712

    Dah UPs biggest party

    10,000 people, -21C, snowing, blowing and athlete's from Italy, Poland, Norway, Finland, USA, Austria Germany, Slovakia etc for an intercontentenental cup jump tournament. It was so cold your beer froze before you could drink it. Longest jump I remember was 135 meters, or somewhere around 460...
  10. us56456712

    Furnace brazing bike tube experiment

    I’m thinking of building another Breezer 1clone. Problem is no cheap mixte available to cut up for the laterals. Here is another crack pot idea of mine. Hey, I have a lot of frames with the correct diameter seat stays, but I need to make three of them into one. Here is my recipe. Cut them off...
  11. us56456712

    Trying to save a old Brooks B72 saddle

    They don’t make B72s anymore. People want them for klunkers as it’s what was used back then. Almost all that you can find are in bad shape or if they look good they are so dried out the nose rivets will shortly break away from the leather. I found this one for $30, it’s pretty bad but better...
  12. us56456712

    Local jump tonight, January 18, 2022.

  13. us56456712

    What do you really think about another Breezer 1 clone build

    I have quite a bit of the parts to build another Breezer one clone (B 72 seat, Union pedals, Araya rims, bars, shifters, derailleurs, grips, brakes and vintage motorcycle levers). The frame and fork will cost at least $500 for me to to build. Looking at careful purchase and using the parts I...
  14. us56456712

    TA cyclotourist triple, Brooks B72

  15. us56456712

    School snow day

    How dumb is that? 1/2 inch of snow and no school, liability issues I’m told. Lawyers, guns, money and politics. Warren Zevon had it right. I’m just now driving 40 miles to town and back. They don’t hardly ever plow and don’t use sand or salt on the road into Munising. If I can’t drive I can...
  16. us56456712

    Recycle

    I’m starting another slow bicycle project. Something to keep me busy and out of trouble without spending a fortune. I have no clue where I’m heading, except I want to use my bicycle frame fence and cut up the frames to make something crude and cheap. I took 3 or 4 of the frames out of the fence...
  17. us56456712

    Who invented BMX?

    So far I’m thinking its the Dutch in the 1950s. They called it FX. The British were riding dirt track ovals in bombed out areas and quarries by 1946 with junk bikes they cobbled together from the devastation of WWII, but these tracks, while dirt, had no bumps or jumps. The British fad spread to...
  18. us56456712

    Kerosene headlight.

    My latest find. Pretty reasonable $, less than half what they usually go for. The 3 lenses are all intact but the nickel plating on the internal reflector mirror is all gone and coated in heavy soot. The external nickel around the lens hood is gone. I can put in an led without altering anything...
  19. us56456712

    God forsaken in the best of times

  20. us56456712

    Happy November

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