Zen and the Art of Bicycle Building: fork jigged

all the ingredients are ready for the fork. i had been waiting on the blades to arrive from Florida, where John Clay generously raked them--John gets a big thank you.
John's also been bit by the French bike bug. after seeing the photos of his frames with the lovely tight curve starting right at the dropout, i knew he was the guy for the job. they're way better than the pair i screwed up; the bend is straight along the oval axis and the curve is smooth.
the blades are too long, but i took some photos of everything jigged up anyways. it was good to look at the setup and think about any problems ahead of any assembly.

top view, or as close as i could get. the jig is hanging off the edge of the welding table, with the top left edge weighed down by a big hunk of iron.
blades are Deda Tre .9 x 425 mm, steerer is True Temper 240 mm, crown is R. Sachs Newvex, dropouts are cast stainless with two eyelets, braze-ons are big honkin' hourglass things from Ceeway held in place by welding rod.

from the steerer's POV. it was harder than i thought to get the steerer clamped down right. when i clamped one end, the other end popped up the opposite direction. once i shorten the blades i'll have more room for clamps. there's a block of MDF along the steerer to pad it a little. maybe i'll make a couple concave wood clamping pads.

side view. the position of the braze-ons isn't exactly the way they'll ultimately look--i didn't have the numbers handy. the bottom will be 165 mm from one eyelet, the top will be 145 mm from the crown top.

at center bottom is the maple laminate rake block. it's 65.5 mm tall x 80 mm wide. the steerer centerline sits .5" above the backboard, and the axle centerline sits .5" above the rake block, so the rake block height is the same as the desired rake. i should have made it about 10 mm narrower to allow more room for nuts to position the dropouts.
above the rake block is the axle chassis made of 3/16" angle, drilled for 1/4-20 bolts on the bottom and for the 5/16" dummy axle on the sides. these were hard to make accurately, and because of them, the axle is ever so slightly out of parallel with the backboard. i could only notice it with a 12" dummy axle though, and then it was a mm off from one to the other. this is the fourth time i've made those angle bits, and this is the best iteration, so i decided it was close enough.
the idea is that everything but the rake block is reusable on a different fork, as long as it has a 1" steerer, at least 100 mm spacing, and roughly the same length.