Somet Hingo Rother

[GeePig]

Well I am the cook here, and I just made way too much pizza. My wife hates to shop and cook, so she gets to clean the house, do the dishes, and take care of the dogs.

So I can honestly say that I’ve never had a reason to complain about my wife’s cooking.

As for the PVC tank, I think any polyester body filler will work OK, but I would have a tendency to use epoxy putty, if you can do the molding with the small amount. It is considerably more expensive but it’s also stronger and faster.

Otherwise I would suggest that you take PVC shavings and melt them in solvent, and apply them as a filler putty.

You can then shape the ends with a hot piece of iron after they harden, before you do the shaving and sanding.

Ah, epoxy putty, solvent... magic words!

What you can buy here is generally what people are familiar with using, and I often struggle to ask for stuff as I need to do it using words I don't always know. I remember when spanners were incredibly difficult to buy, which sounds mad now. At the moment I want a rectangular cover for the rectangular access hole in the top of our sewer - it is only 10-15 years old but finding one is like nearly impossible.

 

[GeePig]

Howdy Folks. Please pardon my buttinski. If you build a cap, a compass or thermometer could be mounted in it.
I very much like your tank concept. I have a couple questions & a wee bit of helpful suggestion about it. Photos look like you're using pvc. Is it? IF SO, please use regular ol' medium clear pvc cement. That is a general purpose solvent cement. It welds the plastic by partially melting it. Epoxy coating the glued plastic will strengthen it, plus be moldable to add asthetics. Will this tank ever hold petroleum? IF SO, please use a heavy coating of tank liner. If NOT, you have a great spot to hide a string of 18650 batteries to power lighting. Ifya don't have a heat gun, some blow driers produce sufficient heat to soften pvc for bending.
Now taking my nose back to a roadside diner.

Hiya, and I love the idea of a compass or something built into the cap

The tank will never hold petrol, at the moment it is merely ornamental, but it might appear again in the future as what I do is rebuild my bikes regularly, using whatever I have to hand - and since I live in a small village in eastern Poland what I have is often limited.

I am not planning on storing anything in the tank at the moment, but next time around, on another bike, that could change.

Enjoy your diner dinner!

 

[GeePig]

Today I got to use my latest adhesive for this kind of plastic, and I must admit I was surprised that it would take 24 hours to bond. Such is the life of buying things in a foreign language. Whatever, it seemed to work, even if was not as solvent as the glues I used to use when assembling plastic models when I was a kid. I can see I need to spend more time looking at the actual ingredients of the various glues on offer, which I will have to do in the shop as their website is awful.

Anyway, I selected a couple of pieces of the pipe I had cut off while working on the front, stuck them on, and then left it all for the 24 hours for the adhesive to adhere.

Can anyone spot my 45 year old Snap-on ratchet?

Once everything was adhered well, I took my junior hacksaw to it to cut off the excess . I could have cut them to size before sticking them, but trying to hold curved items in a vice while you try to cut them is always a pain. Yes, there are gaps, but then I have a store of the scrappy bits I have cut off to mix in with the filler.

Here is Commander Mrówka, leader of the cat population in our half of the village. He is not our cat, but we are probably the only place where he is allowed to sleep indoors.

The next task is to finish trimming off the plastic, followed by trying out the stuff I have bought for filling all the holes, indentations and scratches.

I still need to figure out how I am going to do the fuel cap.

 

[Cmdr Ronald]

Roger doing what you can with what you make from what you have. Blessedly, I was not raised in the throw-away society of today. Divided by Navy, Alaska, & Ontario, I lived many years in one of the three financially poorest areas of this nation, in a time when folks repaired & reused stuff until it could no longer be used. I applaud your understanding & practicing what folks now call recycling, & will eagerly watch your build.

 

[GeePig]

Yes, I understand where you are coming from. I had to figure it out for myself, many years ago, when I allowed several people to dump their old bikes on me. Now I try to keep what I buy to a minimum, and instead, and indeed, rework what I have until it can no longer be used.

 

[MattiThundrrr]

Can anyone spot my 45 year old Snap-on ratchet?

I was going to ask about it before you mentioned it. That's good quality stuff. ThundrrrDad was a mechanic for the city bus fleet, I learned to wrench with old Snap On tools.

Here is Commander Mrówka, leader of the cat population in our half of the village.

 

[Ulu]

I moved from the backwater isolated life to one of relative luxury 5 decades ago. I am lucky to be fixing old junk as a hobby. When I was going to college, I did that for a living.

You can get anything you want where I live. (You just need money.) Sometimes you have to have it delivered. I order things delivered all the time.

But certain things are very very expensive because of high demand. I won’t be buying any personal aircraft, 5 lb carbon-plastic bicycles, or Tesla electric cars.

Antique bicycles are selling for big money here. Fatbikes & fat parts are impossible to find new.

But the used market will provide, as soon as some of those people decide they bought the wrong bicycle.

 

[Ulu]

I didn’t spot that ratchet handle until you mentioned it, but it is unmistakable.

I have one that looks much like it, but it’s a Chinese copy ;(

I have a lot of hand tools, but I own exactly one Snap-on: a 13 mm wrench. I picked it up off the street one day, riding my motorcycle, along with a nice Craftsman flex head 3/8” ratchet, and a spark plug socket.

 

[GeePig]

I didn’t spot that ratchet handle until you mentioned it, but it is unmistakable.

I have one that looks much like it, but it’s a Chinese copy ;(

I have a lot of hand tools, but I own exactly one Snap-on: a 13 mm wrench. I picked it up off the street one day, riding my motorcycle, along with a nice Craftsman flex head 3/8” ratchet, and a spark plug socket.

I picked up several tools from the side of the road, including a rather nice snap-on 10 mm socket from one car dealer's and a rather nice small pair of side cutters from the post office's garage up the road - all probably left under the bonnet/hood of some vehicle when they went for a test drive.

 

[GeePig]

We have spent the last few days prepping and painting the front room in our cottage here, and it turns out that wifie is an ace with a roller - she says it was her first time, but she has watched many of those programmes where they redecorate someone's apartment that she was pleased to have the opportunity. I have to say that she is better than me, and I get to focus on the masses of fiddly work with a paint brush. When I say fiddly work, I really mean fiddly, as this is a wooden house that has settle rather unevenly, one of the windows has been blocked up and in one corner is actually made up of the support for the chimney.

Anyway, today I am 60, so finishing the room has to wait until tomorrow, while I get some free time this morning to type here before we head out to a nice lake side restaurant we discovered while I was out on my one of my small bikes while wifie walked. I have just begun my three weeks of summer acation time, so I should have plenty of time for working on my bike.

I have decided to proceed with adding filler to the tank, but first I needed to add some adhesive to bond the splits together so that the filler does not crack or even fall out. Some of the gaps were rather large and I decided to add some of the bits I had cut off to fill the gaps. I bought some adhesive designed for sticking this type of pipework together, but it takes a whole 24 hours to go off.

The belt I am using to strap the tank to my small vice is something from a horse's harness. We have a ton of different farm harnesses in one of the barns, and even a wooden wagon - basically everything except a horse. While I recognise most of the harnesses, I am not quite sure what this one was for. I keep it in my workshop for tasks like this, but sometime I need to apply something to it to stop it cracking up. Up the road we actually have a friend who, although retired, still has a few fields for his three cows, and alongside his three old tractors he still has a horse and cart. One day I will remember to check where this strap goes.

I bought myself some filler, but I did not notice that it did not include a tool to spread it. Ah well, I have one of those lying around, and at the moment it is in one of our front rooms that we are redecorating. I actually edit some of the English translations for the company that makes the filler, although 'universal putty' is not my work. In the next few days I will be seeing how good it is or I am in applying it.

I made a cable cutting tool out of a long nut, allowing me to make one that fit this type of brake. I really look forward to trying it out, as all the bikes I have played around with them have been old nails.

Finally, here is another project I have been playing around with, making a cover for the seat. I am not sure that it is going to work out, and I would like to make one by sewing together some vinyl sheets. We will just have to see whether this works out or whether I can actually find some vinyl materials.

Well, that is as far as I have got, and I am pleased with the progress I have made so far. It has been a good mix of what I know and what I do not.

 

[Ulu]

Novol looks like extra-light polyester body filler.

I can order it here at $11.30 USD/250g
PLUS shipping from Poland (!)
I didn't investigate what that cost might be.

It won't stick to slick surfaces, so sanding is essential.

Here it's "Bondo", no matter if it's really genuine Bondo or any other similar brand. There are several with differing grades.
Typically Polyester based with PMEK activator. Not as good as epoxy putty, but still plenty good if well applied.

 

[GeePig]

I have always wanted to try out some Bondo, just because so many people talk about it State-side.

It has been pretty good, sticking well to the plastic and some sanded metal I have for the fuel cap. I must have looked at the price, but I can no longer remember what it was...

 

[GeePig]

Part of the first week of my vacation involved stripping out the front bedroom, filling a number of the holes and other imperfections, and then painting. This is when we were partly through the first half of the process. It would be much easier if it were not for the ceiling beams and all the electric and central heating pipes that all have to be exposed as it is basically a log cabin. An old log cabin. The window and the pipes are actually vertical, it is just the camera that makes the wall seem vertical.

Anyway, I did get some time to go up the warsztat and do some work on my bike. I cannot say how many years it is since I have done any filler work, but it must be at least 25 years. If it wasn't for my interest in trying it out again, I would have just tidied up the tank a bit and that would have been that. If I had thought about it earlier, I would have wrapped some tape around the tank, because now I also have to fill all the minor dents it has received from resting on the open vice as I have turned it around and around.

Once you have the worst of the gaps and holes filled, then you have to fix all the small little ones. If I had more experience I might have got it done in one go, but, heh, it would have been less of an interesting learning experience.

I think this is the fourth of fifth round of adding filler.

The next question was whether I would have to buy some special paint that I can apply onto plastic, so I sprayed some undercoat on, and it didn't do anything to the plastic. That is a bit of a relief, as trying to find some kind of plastic-proof paint down our local DIY centre would be just a pain in the butt.

So progress is being made, and I do not mind spending some time relearning some partly forgotten skills. The best bit is that we bought a small, handheld electric sander to aid in painting the room - and the sandpaper loses its grip on the sander long before it is worn out, which means I have a small supply of sandpaper I can use here. If we had bought the sander earlier then I could have used that here as well.

 

[Ulu]

It’s been a few years since I did any Bondo or fiberglass work myself. I did a lot of repairs on my little fishing boat right after I retired, So actually six years.

I’m not sure if any will get done in the near future either. I am way more interested in welding than finishing at this point.

 

[GeePig]

I am getting better with it, but I still prefer welding too. I just need to get myself some kind of welding kit, but the trouble is that nowadays there is so much choice that choosing is hard.

All the rivers around here are narrow, the lakes relatively rare and it is about 35 years since I have taken a boat out. Ahh, I could do with a few hours in one, maybe I should borrow the neighbours, if only he had a trailer and I had a hitch. I used to live near the sea, so finding somewhere to take a boat out was easy, but these days I am firmly inland in an area where most lakes are shallow fish breeding ones.

 

[Ulu]

All our lakes here are artificial lakes made for water retention, irrigation and flood control. There used to be a really big lake out in the middle of the valley, but we put a stop to that!

Now there’s just enough water trickling out there to make a swamp, and old Tulare lake is now a muddy wildlife refuge.

 

[GeePig]

Yep, filling is a skill I am learning, but at least I am now forgetting that it is a bit of plastic pipe, which I suppose is a good thing. I reckon with a bit more sanding and minor filling I should be close to being done, except the areas around where the mounting tube passes through it...

...and the filler cap.

Because I have what was a small farm in Poland, there were about a hundred or so glass jars lying around everywhere in the barns, some of them bought especially for preserving stuff and others bought for the stuff in them. Most of them have now gone, except about 40 in the external cellar which still have rather aged pickled cucumbers in them. One day I will have to haul them out of there, but at the moment there is still plenty of room for the things that we bottle and store down there. Anyway, I needed something to act as something that looked like a fuel cap, and I found this in my metal scrap store.

'Białystok' is a city in Poland, where they made whatever vegetable produce that was in the jar.

I cleaned up the cap, and then it was time for a bit of filler so that it no longer looks like a bottle cap for some kind of bottled vegetable produce. There are many, many good things that they sell bottled in Poland, but an awful lot of cheap crap too where you can hardly taste whatever it was that they stuffed in there.

Anyway, we are popping off to the city for a couple of days now, so hopefully I will have the chance to ride the pair of bikes I keep there, if it doesn't rain.

 

[Ulu]

It’s starting to look like something you might wanna put on bicycle! It’s funny how when you start out on these things, You don’t know exactly how it’s going to turn out, but you just have to keep plugging away at it.

 

[kingfish254]

The tank is shaping up nicely. I kinda like the gas cap as it was, but that may be because I recognize the city name where a couple of custom bike building guys live. (MAD Bicycles and Adrian Lucejko Bikes).
You shouldn't have to worry about any paint melting or damaging the pvc pipe. It will hold up to most anything.

 

[GeePig]

It’s starting to look like something you might wanna put on bicycle! It’s funny how when you start out on these things, You don’t know exactly how it’s going to turn out, but you just have to keep plugging away at it.

Yeah, that is the kind of feeling I am getting with it too. Not knowing whether you have made a good or bad decision is kind of exciting in a way, and I am still not sure on that with the saddle.