Desperate times call for desperate measures!
After many days of being too cold to work, and having to wait till 3 in the afternoon for the temps to even reach double digits (if it does at all) and then the sun goes down at 4:30, time I factor in set up and pack up, I have no incentive to work, so as I said, desperate time call for desperate measures!
I put on thermal underwear under my work overalls and set up a fire to try and offset the freezing breeze a bit and today I made some good progress at last!
Started with cutting the tubes for the main frame section:
As you can see, I have yet to find somewhere to buy seat tube tubing from, so I still have to cut and drill and sleeve and weld to get decent lengths:
The advantage of building the bike the way I am, I can just prop each different diameter of tube to the right height with various washers, it works well and ensures all the tubes are centred without multiple checking:
8mm washer stack for the top tube, 3mm for the seat tube (5/16 and 1/8):
Here is how I made sure the bottom bracket ended up straight and level, first marked a centreline and then placed 4x90 degree magnet clamps in place:
And here it is all tacked up:
After the welding was finished I took the tape measure to it and it was only out less than 0.5mm from level end to end (20 thou", not anywhere near enough to worry about!) and dead straight! Very happy!
Then moved on to (yes, I told you it was a good productive day, not finished yet!) the frame dropouts, no fancy tools in my kit to do these, just 4mm plate (1/6") and an angle grinder with a cut off disc:
Tacked them together and cleaned them up with the grinder, then on to the non-drive side and welded on the threaded boss that the axle will thread into:
Bad pic, but this shows the two dropouts fitted to the rear wheel with the correct length axle spacers in place:
Here is them set up with a temporary spacer tube ready for welding to the rear loops next time.
Next time should be good, join it all together in to one cool frame!
Luke.