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Great read as uusual @clubman thanks.
I have fitted a fair few of these cottered cranks now and i always end up having to experiment and play around with them to find the best fit.
Ive come to really appreciate them now and find them very effective and once set up properly very reliable and consistent, its also nice that one tool fits all, ie a hammer.!
falconvitesse
There is a long standing controversy about which way round cotter pins should go. I've come across various theories involving the likelihood of the pins breaking or being forced out of position by the force of pedalling.
I am now pretty well convinced that the only thing that matters is that they have to be opposite ways round (obvs). I say this because I have become aware that the English method is 'crank forward, nut upwards' whereas the continental method is the opposite. This not a brexit issue because both ways work.
The chainset is TA Cyclotouriste rings on a Milremo crank. I favour the TA rings because I've used them most of my cycling life and because they can be combined with any five pin crank. This bike happened to come with steel cranks so it was easier (and cheaper) to keep them. The Milremo crank is not the highest quality, but it works OK - if the bike does get a lot of use in this form I'll look for something better.
In the fifties it was common to combine steel cranks with aluminium rings, even though steel cranks are significantly heavier. This may have been for economy, cotterless ali cranks were expensive, but I think it's more likely that it was mistrust of the reliability of ali. One often used to hear of the pros resisting change because they preferred to stick with what they knew - disc brakes were a recent example.