racked

Been a while since I talked at you. In that time I managed to finish up the fancy-pants fully luggest stainless steel bike racks. They're really neat, but I'll be glad to see them go, they've been a much bigger pile of work than I anticipated.

There's 2 of them, the one pictured is 4' long and the other is about 6.5' long. Should hold about 10-12 bikes total.

Doesn't really seem like there's much there, but all the lugs had to be custom carved, shaped and added onto to get the look the architec was after. And since these are all stainless that meant all the lug additions had to be tig welded on instead of my usual method of brazing them on. And well, I'm not a very proficient tig welder, so it took me a while to get things looking good.

The lugs started off as 4 sets of Llewelyn mini-six lugs. The upper head lugs had additional side points added and a front center point added then were filed down to shape.

The lugs for the second cross tube were seatlugs with the binder bolts cut off, the slots filled in and then the whole things filed down.

I had to make up the hooks too. They're bent from 3/8" 316 stainless round bar. Pretty beey, but I thought it looked more appropriate. They simply hang from the bars, so they're fully adjustable or position.

That thing has really consumed a lot more time that I thought it would, so I'm, stuck playing a bit of catch up in the shop, but I'm doing that well. Kept going on the stainless bend and finished up a dropout replacement and some stainless braze-on's on a BBC frame in for a repaint. Still have to give everything the final polish, but it's close to being ready for new paint.

Finally got in my latest order of 953 tubing, so as soon as I wrap up the three forks and one other frame I have in process, I'll be back to working on stainless. Reynolds has been a bit hit and miss on delivery of stainless yet, but I've learned to just keep ordering tubing about 6 months ahead of time. That strategy seems to be working well.

In other news since the last time I wrote, I froze my a$$ off a few weekends ago riding to the Cash tribute show at the Cabooze. The good news is the show was more than worth the 2am ride home at -20 degrees. 5 bands covering nothin' but cash all night. spectacular, especially with Thorny and Stone for entertainment.

That's about all for now.

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