too busy to blog...almost

so the move-in is mostly complete, after much laborious disassembly and reassembly of Swedish furniture. i had to put the bike mostly on hold for a week or so to get everything set up.

today i talked to one of my teachers (actually for a furniture class) about teaching me to braze next week. we went over all the stuff we'll need, and it sounded like his knowledge generally jives with what i know from my research. my teacher is Andrew Christenberry, a cool guy, a great furniture maker/sculptor, and son of William Christenberry (the DC-based photographer/artist).
then i got to work setting up a practice joint to silver braze. cut a ~4" length of 31.7 mm diameter .035" 4130 tubing (gotta conserve it, i lost my head tube, so i plan to substitute 4130), cut a longer length of 1" diameter, roughed out the miter by scribing inside the lug and bench grinding almost to the line, got it pretty close with emery wrapped around the 31.7 tube. next i went to work reaming out the lug a little, using a mini air-powered die grinder and grinding stones from McMaster--3/4" and 1" diameters. the 1" socket was pretty quick, but i think the lug is a little torqued in the 31.7 socket because i had to grind like hell just to get it to fit OK, while the smaller socket took just a few minutes.
i degreased and deburred all these parts using denatured alcohol. another of the sculpture dept. faculty said DnA is good for degreasing and better for the environment than acetone, so i plan to pick some up for pre-brazing clean-up. the archives aren't especially informative on this application of DnA, and there was a frameforum thread on brazing clean-up i can't find right now. i'll try it and see how it works.

the AutoCAD plot is almost done. i'll plot a final tomorrow night, mount it to the backboard, then get to work on finishing the main triangle jig.

i made the maple rake spacing block i alluded to in an earlier post. this took some doing, with many failed attempts that were a little too out of square. next up for the fork jig are the angle iron pieces that will hold the dummy axle and sit on top of the spacer block.

lastly, a short rant on IKEA furniture: it's decent, it's cheap, but their bolts are steel and that's dumb. brass would hold together far better far longer at (i imagine) a small price increase. this weekend i took apart a loft bed that required a lot of cursing and hammering. the IKEA guy who put it together must have been in a hurry, because the bolt heads were stripped something awful.