Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

Yeah that's much more economical obviously. Had a look on ebay just now and there's a few v cheap torches there as well. Let us know which one you buy and how you get on with it?

I actually already have a monument torch.

It's started needed stripping apart every so often though in order to keep it working. Not too sure what's wrong with it. So I was thinking about buying a new torch and wondered if I might go for something different.

The monument one is alright. The flame is pretty big, a smaller flame would be nice for finer jobs.

Top work! Love the home-brew jigging technique

Very inspirationnal!
Love the fact that more and more forumengers take the torch to customize their frames.

Fanx.

These things are front rack bosses according to ceeway. I think they're a bit big. Could file them here & there I suppose. Any other options? Are they even supposed to be used like this?

2 Attachments

I think that @bankiren used those on his steamroller.

They're more commonly used on the seatstays

Yeah I got a pair of 'rear' ones too, that are for seatstays. They're a bit wider but otherwise similar. Was thinking it'd be better to drill the fork legs and braze bosses into them but unsure if that'd hold up.

Isn't it how it's done most of the time?

I wouldn't put those on the front, you've done such a good job on the rear ones.

That said these Soma forks have both!

1 Attachment

Hm. I've ordered some more bosses & different types of reinforcement star shaped things from ceeway, will drill forks mid-blade instead. Going to look much neater as you say. I only hope @togas has a rack to sell me now!

@Hulsroy what did you do with these when you put them on those forks for me?

I had to mod yours at the fork crown because uni crown.

That looks perfectly normal. Use loads of flux and take your time heating it up evenly

I have a fork with one of those at the bottom as well as mid-blade bosses (like the one @TheShipwright posted). I guess the advantage is that they can take a bolt from either side so might be worth having them if you ever want to mount mudguards on the inside of the fork so it's a bit neater. You could also put them at the bottom near the dropouts and use a porteur rack rather than something that mounts mid-blade.

But more generally drilling a fork in the middle of the blade sounds a bit scary to me - I know next to nothing about frame/fork modification though

Edit: now that I think about it I'm not sure how you'd mount mudguards on the inside of the fork using one of those really - would look odd because it's offset to the front or back of the fork blade, obviously. Not sure what I was thinking.

1 Attachment

Yeah but no but yeah but no but etc

I think it'll be fine, have watched a couple of vids plus these forks aren't built with super thin tubing. Will see which reinforcement plate looks best when they arrive.

1 Attachment

In other news I've grown tired of looking at nitto m18 racks and wondering why they're so fecking expensive. One of my mates has a fancy TIG rig and I'm thinking a tube bender and some stainless 8 mm tubing is the way to go when starting to make my own rack. Will probably use mid blade & fork crown bosses like the surly racks. Should be fun!

stainless 8 mm tubing

Where do you source that in SE?

Not sure yet, haven't had time to research it.

There is clearance for 32mm tyres and 45 mm sks longboard with the axle in the middle of the dropouts. But only just, I had to trim the guard at the chainstay bridge and also filed out the bottom of the seatstay bridge a few mms.

3 Attachments

Did you do a repair on the BB shell at downtube/seattube?

No but there was a crack in the paint there so I had to check. Looks like it's just an uneven edge on the weld, can't feel anything or provoke it when I try to bend with a long pipe through the bb shell.

1 Attachment

it would have been a pain to discover it after your works.

Yeah but I've access to TIG so wasn't super worried. Here's a quick mockup of the thing, not too bad. Built the wheels a couple of months ago. Can't get the front guard radius right at the tip though, hopefully a front rack will push it down slightly.

1 Attachment

Looks good. Looks much nicer than other all cities