Alex Wetmore is always busy with something…

I haven’t posted in a while, but that doesn’t mean I’m not still busy with something. Right now I’m probably too busy with many things.

Mark and I have been working on a low-rider rack for his bike for the past many months. One of the last remaining pieces was to make these special fasteners:

If you click the link you’ll see a slideshow of how I made this.

I’ve also been working on a generator headlight. It is using a couple of CREE XR-E LEDs and will have a built in standlight which uses a supercap. I figured out the standlight circuit with a lot of help from Steve Kurt and others on this CPF thread. I’ve built most of the circuits on that thread on a prototype board and came up with one that I like.

I made the housing on the lathe. It is a bit large (the outer diameter is around 55mm) and a little heavy, but it looks nice. Click on the link to see more (and I’ll keep adding to this gallery as I do more work, but I probably won’t mention this project again on the blog until it is finished).

Larry was visiting a couple of months back and asked if all of my lathe bits should really be loose in a drawer and knocking into each other. It’s a good question, and the right answer is no. I spent a little while trying to find good tool foam online, then happned to find a nice package of it at Sears. An hour’s work later and my lathe tool holders were organized. I also found a 12×12” section of foam at Rockler Woodworking which has a hundred or so holes that lathe bits fit into very nicely.

We hired a landscape designer and company to overhaul our yard. The work started this week and so far the progress is awesome. I can’t wait to see it all put back together. For now I just have a teaser of the plans.

I did some finish work on the Cycle Truck and sent it off to be powder coated a couple of weeks ago. It was coated by Seattle Powder Coat in Ballard. They did a nice job at a reasonable price and with a very quick turnaround. The paint is red to pay homage to the donor frame and fork that were used to build the new one (both were also red). The rack is a silver/grey. I modifed this pizza delivery bag (thanks to James Black for telling me where to get one cheaply) to fit onto the rack. The bag is 20×20x12 inches and fits perfectly.

In this photo I’m carrying a roughly 50lb load of bird seed, cat food, and random bits from the hardware store. I think this bike works well for bulky loads (better than a porteur) and okay for heavy loads (the closer they are place to the headtube the better). I don’t think it does great for loads which are both large and heavy. It isn’t good if there is a lot of weight too far forward of the front wheel. If I build another one of these I may put the front wheel about a foot forward. It would complicate the frame and it would no longer fit on standard car/bus racks, but it wouldn’t increase the bike’s overall length and I think it would improve the handling with some loads.

Finishing Details

The rack support rails have been closed off and snaps were added for holding the pizza bag:

The a downtube shift boss was added which connects to the original U-brake. That makes a very nice parking brake. V-brakes mounted on the seatstays provide the main rear braking.

The back of the cargo tube was sealed with a little bit of steel plate. This area ended up being fairly complex. Next time I might try ovalizing the cargo tube where it joins the seattube to avoid this extra work.

Here are a couple of other shots of the final bike:

Fork Fixture V-block

This weekend I also did my first major project with the new milling machine. I made a V-block for clamping a fork steerer tube. This will be the basis of my fork building jig and my fork alignment system. If you are interested in how I made it then click on the picture to see a gallery with more info. The new mill is working out very nicely.

I promissed some bike subjects again, and you can’t get too much geekier than this one.

I’m (slowly) working on converting my Bike Friday Tikit to use a SRAM i-Motion 9 internal hub. This bike will have drop bars and I want to convert a Shimano 9sp barend shifter to work with the hub. To do so I needed a way to measure cable pull very accurately.

I built two devices to do this, but I only took photos of the second and far more successful one:

And here is another shot of the back of it:

This was really easy to make. I used a digital scale that came off of the Digital Readout for my mill. These scales are just like digital calipers and can measure how far the slider in the center moves up and down along the ruler. I drilled and tapped a hole in a block of aluminum that fit a cable housing stop that I had lying around. The block is bolted onto one end of the scale. The center (sliding portion) of the scale has a cable clamp. The other side of the clamp connects a spring to the far end of the scale.

Twist the shifter (or move the lever of a barend shifter) and the scale moves and reports how far it went. These digital scales read out in millimeters or inches and let you reset them anywhere, so it is trivial to measure the motion per click.

I did that and generated this spreadsheet (yeah, it is lame to embed this as an image):

A Travel Agent is simply a cable pull amplifier using two concentric pulleys. It looks like this (image borrowed from Amazon):

The stock pulley amplifies cable pull with a 2:1 ratio. To make the i9 work with the Shimano shifter I need to make a new pulley with a 1:3.6 ratio. You can’t fit a much larger pulley on the Travel Agent, so that means a 32mm outer pulley to 8.9mm inner pulley. That isn’t a hard item to make on the lathe.

I hope to report back on how the whole system functions soon. I still need to build the wheel and install it into the bike.

Our summer vacation this year was sort of 3 vacations right after each other. You’ve heard about the two smaller ones, our 3 day weekend on Lopez Island celebrating our 9th wedding anniversary and the 3 day Bumbershoot Festival. The highlight of my summer vacation time off started right after Bumbershoot when we rented a house in Mazama, WA for a week.

Mazama is the first town that you get to when crossing the North Cascades Highway from west to east. It is about 15 miles from Washington Pass and is surrounded by National Forest, National Park, and Wilderness. The town itself is tiny and basically consists of a general store (but the best general store that I’ve ever been to), a post office, a climbing guide service, and a couple of hotel/inns. We stayed about a mile out of the core town in a nice rental house that overlooked this big alfalfa field:

It was a great vantage point from which to watch birds, deer, and sunsets.

Rising up to the north of our house (just barely north) was “Goat Wall”. This is a cliff which climbs really steeply and then turns into Goat Mountain, with Goat Peak at the top of it.

One of the great things about Mazama is that it is the western end of the Methow Valley Sport Trail Association trails. This is a set of cross country skiing, walking,and cycling trails that criss cross the Methow Valley,and they went right by the door of our rental house. We used them every day to get to the Mazama Store or to the river and often just for walks or relaxing bike rides. The roads were nice too, but the trails were great.

A highlight on our second day was when we were walking along the trails and saw 3 black bears (two cubs and their mother). We kept a safe distance and watched them for a minute before retreating back to the road. I only had a small P&S camera in my pocket, so the photos aren’t great, but here are the bears:

The trails were really well built and had some cool features such as this suspension bridge over the Methow:

The big attraction of the trip for me was all of the nearby hiking and mountain biking. I brought up my new (to me) Rocky Mountain Hammer mountain bike, my IvyCycles with knobby tires, and our tandem. On most days I went for a mountain bike ride in the morning and a hike in the afternoon. It was great to be near so many great trails without needing to drive much.

There were two hikes that were real highlights for me. Sadly we forgot the camera on the first one, but it was a hike that started at Hart’s Pass and went out to Grasshopper Pass. The whole time you are hiking on a ridge line with fantastic views down into the valleys on either side. There were fires in some of these about 5 years ago and it was interesting to see the patterns of what the fires got and what they didn’t. The wildflowers were out (even this late in the year) and it really felt like we were on top of everything.

The other great hike was up to Blue Lake just past Washington Pass. I did this hike twice, once with Christine and again with our friends Larry and Kathy. It’s a quick hike (5 miles round trip, about 2.5 miles each way) with good views of the pass near the top and a stunning lake. I hiked it with Christine on a Saturday and the trail and lake were both quite busy. When I hiked it with Larry and Kathy we went on a Thursday morning and had the lake to ourselves for well over an hour.

The hike up to Goat Peak was also a good one, but challenging. I did this solo and early in the morning. The trail isn’t long (around 2 miles), but it climbs almost 2000′ in those two miles. It felt like I was walking up stairs for much of it. There is a fire lookout at the top, so I knew there would be good views. I wasn’t disappointed, but I think that the views from up by Hart’s Pass and Grasshopper Pass were even more stunning.

The mountain biking was also really good. I did a bunch of trips, some solo and some with friends. The first group of friends to visit us were Ben and Vanessa and their kids. Ben brought his mountain bike and we went riding up the West Fork Methow River trail. This was interesting because we could look down into this valley while driving up to Hart’s Pass, and it is one of the valleys that was in the fire 5 years ago. The underbrush was eating up it’s new found sunlight and was really thick. The trail is 8 miles out and back, and we went about 5 miles before turning around because the brush was too thick. The trail was the right mix of technical and fun, especially when coming back and riding it downhill. Sadly I seem to have mis-placed the memory card with the photos from that one.

Larry also brought his mountain bike when he visited and we went up to Sun Mountain Lodge. That is 15 miles away in Winthrop and is well known for it’s mountain biking. The trails up there were a little too easy (not very technical, ridden out as my friend Rory put it) but it was still a great day of riding bikes with Larry. I also forgot a camera (do you sense a theme?). We did a roughly 20 mile loop suggested by the bike shop in Winthrop which covered most of the trails. There was a lot of climbing in the middle and the ride ended on some nice downhill singletrack that was a lot of fun.

When we didn’t have friends visiting I still got some riding in. On my first morning in Mazama I headed up to Cedar Falls on my IvyCycles with slick tires. I just rode up to the falls and back, so it was mostly road riding on SR20 with a little trail riding at the end. The trail was a lot of fun though, and I wish I had gone back with the mountain bike and rode the whole thing. The falls were spectacular, but you can only see them from the top:

A couple of days later I tried to find singletrack in the Rendezvous Ski Trails. The roads that lead up there are easily accessible via the MVSTA trail system, so it seemed like the best option for a full dirt circuit from the rental house. There was a lot of climbing, some good views, cattle trying to block my way, but no singletrack. I asked later at the bike shop in Winthrop and they said that the Rendezvous area was better for XC skiing than cycling. It was still a nice loop for the morning, all on pretty good dirt roads. I would like to have more time to explore some of the side roads up there.

The final solo MTB ride that I did was up to Cutthroat Lake and back. This is the closest legal to bikes trail near Washington Pass. The lake wasn’t too spectacular, but the trail was good and there were a lot of good views.

All in all it was a good week of hiking, riding, and relaxing. I hope we can return again next year.

Full set of photos

I had a little bonus free time on Friday so I built the rack for the Cycle Truck. It is 18 by 20 inchesand made of 1/2 inchdiameter cromoly tubing with a 0.035″ wall thickness.

The rack itself is very basic and didn’t require much tricky work. It is a 2 dimensional rectangle and doesn’t have any stays or back stop (a back stop is not necessary since the head tube acts as one).

The connection between the rack and frame was the hardest part of the project. The frame has two support bars brazed to the cargo tube. These are made from 5/8″ square tubing and are mitered to fit around the cargo tube. I was careful to make sure that these were square to the cargo tube and head tube in the horizontal and vertical planes.

The support bars have 6mm holes at each end that the rack mounting bolts run through. The bolt, support bar, and rack look like this when connected together. The bolt goes into a threaded pillow block that I made on the lathe. The pillow blocks are brazed onto the rack. I thought about just brazing the rack directly to the frame, but wanted it to be removable so that I could easily replace it (if it gets damaged) or exchange it for a cargo box if I end up making one of those.

The hardest part was getting everything to line up well. There is no tolerance for error in the fitting of the pillow blocks to the support bars, the distance between bolt holes and the threaded part of the pillow block needs to be exact. What worked best (after some bumps along the way) was to braze the rear support bar to the frame, then thread bolts through the pillow blocks. The rear pillow blocks were tacked to the rack, then I placed the front support bar on the cargo tube and did the same thing there. Since all of the bolts were in place during the brazing everything was perfectly aligned.

I’ve done some load testing around the neighborhood with a 40lb load and the rack and bike handled well. I’ll be doing more rigourous testing and with higher loads later to see if I’ll need structure tying the rack to the frame. I expect that I’ll be adding two more stays that go from the rear support bar to the top of the head tube. This will both add some rigidity and will give me a nice place to mount water bottles. My goal is for the bike to ride nicely with loads in the 50-75lb range.

On Sunday I used it to carry this bulky but fairly light load. This is the kind of stuff that is really a bit too big for a normal porteur rack but small enough that I don’t like having to pull my trailer out for it. The Cycle Truck fits that niche between trailer and porteur nicely and I think I’ll be using it quite a bit.

I’m reorganizing the Cycle Truck photos into a new galleryto try and make it easier to understand the whole process without having a lot of extra photos. My only regret in this project is that I often got too involved and forgot to pick up the camera and take a helpful photo or two.

I rode about 60 miles on the Cycle Truck during the last week. During the week I was just riding it as a naked bike, but yesterday I fashioned together a basic container using a recycle bin and some muffler clamps. It’ll do until I have a chance to build a real front rack (right now I’m waiting on metal, tools, and my bag!).

I really enjoyed those 60 miles. It’s really exciting to ride something that I built and have it work. This brazing stuff is addicting. The Cycle Truck handles well but my temporary cargo box is pretty mediocre and has a lot of flex in it. There is more to do too (building the rack, a lot of finishing work, re-routing the shift cables along the top tube, installing fenders). I still hauled a decent amount of stuff in it this weekend and the bike is already proving it’s worth. I’ll probably keep quiet on the Cycle Truck until the new rack is done.

The deck is complete. We used these neat hidden fasteners called EB-TY so it just looks like one great expanse of wood. It is sectional so we can partially disassemble it should we need to do any roof repairs. We still need to put a railing up, but it is really nice to see the deck finished. I think the tigerwood looks pretty cool too.

After today’s riding and deck building I celebrated with this nice dinner:

I promised some new projects too. Today I rode out to Aaron’s Bicycle Repair and picked up a SRAM i-Motion 9 hub. This is going on a Bike Friday Tikit. I know, I already converted a Bike Friday Tikit to have an internal hub gear (and now even Bike Friday is doing it). I have something up my sleeve for this conversion that’ll make it more interesting. The hub came from Aaron’s Bicycle Repair (what other shop in the US stocks all of this internal hub gear stuff) and came home on the Cycle Truck.

The other project is a mountain bike. I sold my mountain bike at the swap a few years ago and haven’t missed it. My cyclocross-ish IvyCycles and RB-T do nicely off road almost all the time. However we’re spending a week surrounded by mountain bike trails late this summer and I thought it would be nice to have a real mountain bike available. If I don’t ride it much compared to the IvyCycles then it’ll be on the chopping block. If I find that 60mm tires really do make a difference compared to 40mm ones then it might stick around. I bought the bike as a single speed but will be putting a Rohloff rear wheel (which is going on yet another future project) on it for now.

Imagined:

Realized:

Full photo set.

Next steps — Build it up(they knobby rear tire isn’t staying) and ride it, then build a rack for it. Alistair helped me with alignment today and took a few photos too. The framebrazing is done except for a couple of water bottle bosses and whatever other brazeons I realize that I forgot.

We measured the angles today, around 71.5 seat tube angle and 73.5 for head tube angle. Fork offset is around 30-35mm (this is a fork from a Bike Friday Family Tandem) giving a trail of about 35-40mm and flop of about 10-11mm. Right in the ballpark.

I’ve blogged about many of the Seattle Cargo Bike Rides. They happen on holidays and usually involve 20-30 people loading up their bikes with BBQ equipment, food, and beverages and heading out to a park for an enjoyable afternoon. They happen rain or shine, winter or summer. Yesterday was the Second Annual Memorial Day Jamboree, organized by Ro.

When this ride started it was almost all XtraCycles. Last year as a joke I brought a second bike with me (in a trailer) to have an “extra cycle” since I didn’t have an XtraCycle. In the last year the ride has diversified. There are more normal bikes and more varied cargo bikes. Here are some of the things that were on the ride.

Porteur/basket bikes:

Ro’s photo is a nice transition into the trailered bikes:

Then you get into the big cargo bikes:

Rounding out the collection there are a variety of “more normal” bikes and some fun bikes such as this really pretty tallbike:

I’m looking forward to the next one on July 4th. The people make the ride and the Cargo Bike rides always have a great group of folks show up.

Today is Bike to Work Day in Seattle. However I didn’t bike to work. I did my normal commute: bike about 3 miles to a bus stop, bus about 10 miles to a transit center, then bike another 1/2 mile or so to my office. I will be biking home over I90, about 22 miles. Yesterday I did the same commute in the morning, but rode 10 miles in the evening, then hopped on my employers Bike Shuttle to get across the 520 bridge (that bridge is what makes my bike commute a minimum of 22 miles instead of the 12 mile route that cars can drive).

The emphasis on Bike to Work Day is to get individuals excited about bicycle commuting. Mixed bike/transit commutes are probably the best way to do that because they allow you to phase in bike use. Start with a short bike and a longer busride and slowly replace more of your bus ride with more bike. Many commuters will probably find some hybrid (as I have) that has the right balance of bike and bus. A friend at work has been using this successfully during the last two weeks and has gone from biking 3 miles a couple of weeks ago to riding 25 miles into work this morning. It’ll be his longest bike ride in many years.

The bus also allows me to keep my commute varied and interesting. There are about 10 different bike/bus routes that I use on a regular basis depending on my mood, the weather, and how quickly I need to get home. I rarely do the same route twice in one week.

The bus doesn’t have to be the only option. Biking to a friends house and then carpooling can be an effective way to carpool with a friend who doesn’t live next door. Using the train or ferry as part of your commute is a multi-modal option. If you live on top of a steep hill it might make sense to drive to the bottom with your bike and then ride in from there.

Racks

Andre and Lee visited a few weeks ago to build a couple of porteur racks. They were finished a few weeks later. Andre’s rack is for a 700C Kogswell P/R fork which he installed onto a Surly Long Haul Trucker. Lee built a rack for his Surly Pugsley.

Andre’s rack on the Kogswell fork:

Lee looking Surly on his Pugsley with the porteur rack (there is also one of me riding the bike):

Head shot of the Pugsley rack showing it’s asymmetric design (remember, the dropouts are not centered):

The Pugs handles pretty well with the big load, those 4″ tires have a lot of pneumatic trail. On the same day Andre proved that the Pugsley tires don’t fit onto standard 559mm rims (even Sun Doublewide) — they require a rim with a deep drop section.

Lathe project for the aquarium

We have a moderately large (60 gallon) planted aquarium in our living room. For a long time I’ve wanted a way to watch the water temp as we fill the aquarium. Our normal method involved one person adjusting the valves on the sink and the other feeling the water coming out of a hose 25′ away.

I used the lathe to make this simple aluminum tube with hose barbs at each end. A liquid crystal thermometer is stuck onto it. It gives instant reading of the fill water temp and didn’t take long to make. This photo isn’t great, but the thermometer reads 76 degrees (the green block in the middle).

And back to Racks…

Finally a picture of how I jigged a Rene Herse style fork crown mount while brazing. This went onto the rack for my Pass and Stow bag that I recently blogged about. A Kant Klamp is clamping the U shaped piece to a bit of flat stock, and that is leaning in the vise.