Al Fur

[GeePig]

I stripped out the seat that I made back in the spring so that I could re-use the former door catch bracket that I used as the front mount. The seat material I used back then is nice and very strong, but it is dreadful at absorbing any dirt that even come close to touching it. Even placing it on my workbench managed to make it even grimier.

Next I cut a rectangular slot out of the rear part of the seat base to allow me to fit the bolts to secure the seat in position on the rear support tubes. I did consider drilling a hole straight through, but doing that by eye might have led to it being wonky. I also thought about strapping the length of threaded rod to the underside of the seat, but I had nothing to fix it in place.

Then it came time to fit the strip designed originally to fit on interior wall corners before you plaster it. Like anything, fitting them was tricky because I had to bend them in two different directions. At first I used screws to fit the first bit, but then I realised that my stapler worked more effectively - going through the aluminium like it was warm butter, and they ending up being reasonably secure in the plywood.

I was going to carefully tap those bumps in the strip out, until I realised that they would give the polystyrene extra security when I fit it. The strip still needs some gentle forming with my hammer to smooth out its shape around the front. I really could do with finding some better quality padding material, something with a bit more resilience, say something from a seat.

Finally, I ran some tape around the outside, and applied a layer of rubber filler, just to make things a tad more secure.

... and then I remembered that I forgot to remove the kink in the aluminium strip.

It was getting late.

 

[Ulu]

"the strip designed originally to fit on interior wall corners before you plaster it."

An aluminum corner screed? I think here these are all galvanized steel.

The aluminum ones must be coated or they will corrode due to caustic action of the plaster.

But your building codes may vary. Everything else certainly does.

 

[GeePig]

I got distracted by my new bike. well, new to me, anyways.

We have a farmer friend from up the street, he is 70 years old and officially retired, but all I see him do is farm. He has several fields still, the largest farming farm on our street, three cows that like most cows kept on farms here are always on chains, and are sometimes on the meadow in front of our place plus he has one or two horses that he trains to pull the traditional Polish wooden cart.

Anyway, he knows that I like bicycles, and several times he has mentioned that he has one, but he would not show me it. He mentioned it again yesterday, I showed some interest, but then he said his grandkids ride it, so I dropped the subject. I have never seen his grandkids there, his daughter only visits a couple of times a year, and then usually only to check the security of their wooden house down near us. A couple of hours later he arrives back, pushing this bike, after extracting it from the weeds by his barn, and let me have it.

The steering and crank bearings were loose, there was a lot of fencing wire keeping things on, the lights were broken off and bits of string to tie on whatever you needed when you were going to the fields. That is definitely a Romet crank and chainwheel.

Anyway, I stripped it down. The chainwheel is very badly worn, but the chainwheel side inner bearing seat seemed in quite good condition. They stopped making these cranks several years ago, so the secondhand value for a good one is continually rising. Now I have another chainwheel that I exchanged on our neighbours bike - the crankwheel is in very good condition, but the inner bearing seat is damaged. I wish I could find a supplier for these crank bearings

My other Romet crank you can see in the background, the teeth are barely worn and there is little rust. When I tried to swop the inner bearing onto it, it cracked. Ah well!

Anyway, I looked up the makers name on the internet it turned out to be a shop that is now gone. I have another Romet frame, also from the late 1990s, with another shop's name on it instead of Romet,

Anyway, the market for old Polish bikes is finally and definitely on the up - there are a lot out there, mostly hidden out of the way in old barns, but they are very hard to find in the cities.

 

[Ulu]

That is a very interesting frame and I see the possibilities of a very radical chop for someone who has a welder. Or a lot of imagination and some barn hinges.

I am wondering, if those bicycles were actually built to a German metric standard that the Soviets “captured”?

I’m pretty sure they came up with the Ural motorcycle by taking apart a BMW, and copying most everything they could.

Anyhow I might show those old bearings to a German bike place and see what they say.

 

[GeePig]

I need to drill the initial holes in the rear arms for the seat, so that I can eventually fix the front mount on there. I do not mind putting a set of holes in the support arms as I plan to use them again in the future on another bike.

Ah, the joys of using old furniture and, in this case, an old mower!

This is the initial position, but it might be too high for the handlebars, so I need to do some work on that next. Once I have finished stripping down the other bike it will be time to store away all the parts, an ideal time to get my seat tubes out as they are stored on a very high shelf.

Still, the rear seat mounts look reasonably presentable - in their currently unpainted state.

Anyway, I need to strip the new bike to get it out of the way and I have a ton or regular work at the moment, so I might be away for a few days.

 

[GeePig]

That is a very interesting frame and I see the possibilities of a very radical chop for someone who has a welder. Or a lot of imagination and some barn hinges.

I am wondering, if those bicycles were actually built to a German metric standard that the Soviets “captured”?

I’m pretty sure they came up with the Ural motorcycle by taking apart a BMW, and copying most everything they could.

Anyhow I might show those old bearings to a German bike place and see what they say.

Oh yes, having a welder would be so nice - I could see my neighbours trailer this morning and it reminded me of the one I built many years ago with my arc welder + brazing attachment I keep looking at welders, but I am really not sure what kind would be the best choice.

I suspect that since the first Romet factory was a bicycle factory before the war that they probably continued using the system that they had before, metric, which was originally a French standard - you know, chop off the royalist heads, chuck out their imperialist measurements and so on.

After the second world war everyone divided up all the technology they could grab, so the USA and the USSR got rocket scientists, Britain got a BMW they could manufacture and so on. I know that Russia nicked all the machinery they could find that might be useful, including in Poland. Strange times...

Anyway, I am sure that someone somewhere has a stock of those bearing parts, the trick is finding someone who can track them down or find out whether they were also fitted to something else.

 

[Ulu]

How far back do you think that the Romet Bicycle goes?

 

[GeePig]

How far back do you think that the Romet Bicycle goes?

I cannot remember, something like 1946, 47 or 48. So many things 'started' then it is hard to remember which happened when, what with communism getting started in the country at around that time. I do know that the original bicycle factory that they 'used' was prewar because there was a bicycle company there since about 1924.

The post-communism years are more interesting, when cars became more available and their industry began crashing badly. They began selling off some of their models to another company that started then and is doing exceptionally well now, and selling their bikes under other brands - this one came marked up as if 'made' by one bike shop and I have another from the 'Danusia' brand, and wifie bought two bikes from a supermarket at the same time with no brand marks at all. Of the five Romet Jubilats I have owned, only one was marked as a Romet.

The top one is a standard Romet - note the way the tubes are welded together, as compared to the two lower ones that came off Romet-made but not Romet-branded bikes. The top and bottom are both off Jubilats, the one in the middle is my new bike, but I cannot remember what name it was.

 

[Ulu]

I have never been to Rome, Italy, but I have been to Rome, New York.

I just read today that every continent on the earth has a city named Rome. (Evidently there is a Rome in Antarctica?)

I can’t imagine that the word Romet came from somewhere else. Any clue?

 

[GeePig]

I have never been to Rome, Italy, but I have been to Rome, New York.

I just read today that every continent on the earth has a city named Rome. (Evidently there is a Rome in Antarctica?)

I can’t imagine that the word Romet came from somewhere else. Any clue?

Oh, ye of too little time reading of old Polish and communist names

ROwer + METal

'Rower' is the Polish spelling of 'Rover', a car company that started off selling a lot of bikes, presumably a significant number to Poland in the early days of bicycles, back in the late 19th century.

Post-war the local companies were made into one, and became 'Zjednoczone Zakłady Rowerowe' or 'ZZR' ('United Bicycle Works'), and only in about 1969 it became 'Zakłady Rowerowe "Romet"'. Names, it seems, were little games.

 

[GeePig]

After messing around with the small pieces of expanded polystyrene I had around, I went next door to the main part of the barn to get a bigger piece. After a bit of cutting with the semi-blunt old blade from my mini-hacksaw, I achieved this potentially elegant seat.

I would like to cover it in a thin sheet of foam, but I am not sure that I have any in stock.

Ta-raaah!

OK, it needs a teensy-weensy bit of tidying up, but I am not quite sure what is the best way to achieve that.

I have various electrically powered tools and I also have a fine collection of files.

I am going to glue the polystyrene down so that it does not wander around while I am trying to fit everything else in place, especially when it comes time to fill in those slots in the polystyrene.

 

[GeePig]

I am planning on reusing my old front headlamp as a rear lamp again on this build. I used it last time, but I never wired it up and it was a bit on the orangey side in terms of color.

Well, since I bought a new can of paint for the frame, I may as well use a little bit on the rear light as well.

Yes, the file was definitely the tool of choice for my seat, as in less than a minute the front already looks smoother. I just need to fill in those holes and then I can get the whole thing filed down to a good shape.

This is only the second long seat that I have ever possessed, both of which I have had to make. If I still lived in Britain I am sure that I could have turned up a Raleigh Chopper seat, if I lived in the USA I could probably have my choice of seats - but while I know that some seats like that must have been imported/made here, over here in rural Eastern Poland they are virtually non-existent.

So when I ride this, it will stand out.

 

[GeePig]

I need to clean up the electric mower handles, oh, I mean the rear seat supports. I tried a bit of sanding it by hand, but I really need a bit of power to get the worst off, once I have a bit of time.

I still need to drill an alternative mounting hole in them, especially as I am getting closer to knowing how tall the saddle will be and how low the handlebars are going to be. Now we have got to this bit, I can start visualising how the bike needs to be ridden given the limitations of the parts I have available. I am beginning to look forward to riding it up and down the road outside.

The combination of tall back tire and small front one means that even with this handlebar the front is going to be quite low. I can see me in the future trying this frame out with a large tire at the front and a small one at the rear, probably with a much shorter connector between the two parts of the frame.

Whatever, riding this is going to be an adventure!

 

[GeePig]

Here it is, now that it has been all sanded down and the holes in the top all filled in. My only question is whether I should just shave a whole half inch off the top to make the seat lower?

The crumpled can is WD40, btw, which I have squashed to get the remainder out once all the gas had gone.

Now I realise that I should have cut off a slightly larger strip of material to use as the seat cover, as it is really going to be tight getting that material over each end.

The material with the rubber band around it is something I brought from my city garage, to be used between the polystyrene and the seat cover.

Today was a great day, as the weather was unseasonably warm, except I had an unexpected work job to do on the computer...

 

[Ulu]

Well I would say it’s starting to take shape for real now.

When fitting vinyl upholstery I find it works better if everything is very warm including whatever you’re fitting it over.

On the other hand, you do not want to sweat on the new work. It’s just one of life’s conundrums.

I thought that green bottle was a Polish beer, but when I looked closer it appears to be more like a bottle of glue.

Low quality beer is dirt cheap here, but the good German stuff is rather expensive: 4x to 5x the cost.

Otherwise you might as well just drink glue as all consumer grades.

 

[GeePig]

I found that the glue I was using to fix the foam layer on was not going off, so I have brought the seat back indoors with all the insulation bound in place with string. I think you are right, and I should take the seat and cover back to the city with us, and do it indoors where it is warm so that everything warms up before I start. The weather has just just started to get cold now.

The green bottle is essentially full of white spirit, or something like that, as it is good for cleaning brushes. I cannot remember what I was using it for now. For beer we buy Perła Chmielowa, 'perła' meaning 'pearl' and is the name of the local brewery, while 'chmiel' means 'hops'. For some reason, under communism you could not buy the local beer locally, but it has since made a great comeback since. We get ours in the dark brown bottles, as you can return them when empty, while the same beer in green bottles you cannot. We also have a six-bottle carrier with a carrying handle for that...

Anyway, I cleaned off the old mower handles, and if I have a moment tomorrow I will at least get on some undercoat. Like most mower stuff, the paint mostly scraped off fairly easily with a knife and a bit of sanding.

I shaved a bit off the top using my hacksaw, and then stuck on some odd bits of polystyrene to fill in the missing bits.

I also removed the 2 piece crank from my 'Tigger' Romet Jubilat, as I do not want to wear out the crank bearings as they went out of production about 4 years ago. Which is a pity, as there are many thousands of these bikes out there in use by older people in the countryside, and I have already used my only reserve crank restoring my neighbours bike. I seem to collect the unbranded Romets, like 'tigger', and so many of them have worn out BBs. I do have a non-Romet crank I could use, I just need a suitable BB, in fact I need a couple of BBs and another suitable crank as I want to rebuild my other non-Romet marked Romet.

 

[GeePig]

I brought the saddle indoors, as the glue was not going off. It might be because the glue is old, or just because the weather is very cold. Putting it next to our heater, once I fire it up, should resolve that, one way or the other.

 

[GeePig]

Yesterday was a warm day, possibly the last of the year, so I decided it was a good day to finish off sticking the foam layer on the seat.

I think I should have stuck down each end first, and then worried about the sides later, as it was difficult to get a smooth fit at each end. Still, it was a lot of fun doing it.

It was also a good day for painting so I did the two seat uprights.

Each of them have a threaded insert at the top end, and I am still not sure what I am going to do with them, other than fit rounded headed bolts, if I have any.

By the time I use them again, I might have found something for them. Maybe something like hanging a chain between them?

You can also see my newest Romet Jubilat here, and it is close up to the wall as I have removed the BB and crank. Even though it is my most up to date version of the bike (2004-2005), with relatively low mileage, there was some damage on the bearings. Now I just need to buy a modern BB to install instead, plus another one and crank as a spare in case I come across another one that needs a rebuild. Well, not in case, I still use two other bikes with the original cranks in them, back in the city.

 

[Ulu]

To me, something 20 years old is still pretty modern. Maybe this is what happens when everything you own is getting old.

I have not really touched a bicycle now in months and have been constantly working on other projects around the house and garage and shop.

But for some reason I keep thinking about that next bicycle project, which will come about next year if I am still able.

It’s something to plan for, in the time in life when everything’s pretty well planned out and followed through already.

But I still have much to look forward to besides bicycles. I have eight granddaughters and 5 of them are in their 20s now. In an earlier time I would have already become a great grandfather, so there’s that to look forward to.

 

[GeePig]

Well, when we were young, old things were generally in black and white, or brown and white, or had a kind of a buzz to the sound. That is all gone now, and unless we are talking about videos or tapes, then old is merely what is out of fashion.

I reckon that old things now are when they generally lose that kind of 'new' sparkle, and this bike had definitely lost whatever sparkle it had. Even my relatively new bike I started this build with had lost some of its sparkle.

Anyway, I have kind of destroyed my first sanding disk on this project, but I do lack much in the way of woodworking tools, and I have a replacement disk for other tasks. So this means that I have been using it to do a bit of extra sanding on my bike frame connector block.

I seriously did think about cutting it into a cartoon bone shape for a while, but that would be a project for another day.

I put a coat of primer paint on the parts, as that allows you to immediately see those areas that still need a bit of work. I also dug out one of my wood boring tools out to make the whole thing look less 'blocky'.

Overall, I think the holes were a better choice than the dog bone look.