Manual

a small box for ralph, and a look inside my toolkit

2011-11-26T15:28:00.001-08:00

At my work, we've enjoyed a certain contractor gun-for-hire software developer to help shore up all manner of rats' nests in a complex environment. Ralph was above and beyond the call, and unfortunately my company is not going to re-up his contract, so next week is his last one for us. Anyway, I wanted to make a simple box for him to put doo-dads in. It's my first time with padouk wood. Love it's spicy smell and the striking red color that oxidizes into a brown over time:Its lid hinge is just a lateral wooden dowel affixed to the inside going right into the sides of the box, nothing fancy:

A fellow named Jeff asked about my Japanese tool box pictured in the previous post. I said I'd show a few details of that here.

The design is heavily influenced by Daiku Dojo. The impetus to get a tool box housing my tools precipitated from a lot of the buzz over the past year in the lead up and wake of Schwarz' The Anarchist's Toolchest. I bought his book and read it over a couple times and all I can say is that I respectfully agree with two essential points: a) you need an enclosure for your tools, and b) you can get a lot done with a small amount of them (just what fits in the chest).

I think a lot of people, myself included, got hung up on his use of the big "A" word and what "subversive" means. I suppose one can be subversive by not going to Ikea to buy a piece of furniture. but that's a fairly minor way of being an anarchist. That said: setting my tools out in the open air on my *gasp* IKEA shelves, was a cluttered mess that attracted dust, the bane of all iron tools, and a personal shame for too long! I salute Christopher Schwarz for his work regardless.

Looking over the pictures, it is also obvious that this chest is heavily influenced by the tool kits my dad and I carried to airplane competitions. The box develops over time, to contain the tools as you need them, arranged in a way that is very base-brained. One should be able to find a particular hemostat or tweezers, or glue, without even looking. In "the field", you cannot at all be wasting time foraging through your tool box for a particular item. One should be able to reach for a razor blade, or CyA glue, or piece of reinforcing balsa without thinking, eyes focused on the broken spar, or damage. Gotta catch that thermal brewing on the flight line. You know you have about 5 minutes until the next one develops. That's 300 seconds to load a balsa fissure with super glue, install a new motor into the fuselage, wind the timer, and walk out to your winding stooge, and launch pylon for a new attempt where your flight judge is waiting with binoculars...oh I drift back to those years.

Anyway, here is my kit. I used a bunch of reclaimed redwood fencing from my favorite architectural salvage site, Urban Ore. Ran the wood through a planer and ended up with 5/8" thick planks that I edge jointed into a box whose LxWxH is roughly 45"x14"X14". Held together mostly with nails and drywall screws. I repurposed Sarah's old desk with particle board top (Schwarz has a good term for particle board: "Termite Barf"). This desk elevates the chest to about bench height, and then I put this all on casters. The casters are great. You have a portable tool tray where things can be set without cluttering the bench top. They can be easily repositioned around your work with minimal effort, they are always at an arm's reach and yet out of the way. The rolling service desk idea came from a surgeon who commented on Schwarz' blog and I cannot agree more with the utility of such an approach in an operating room, having been the recipient of much surgery over the past decade or so:

I borrowed heavily from Anarchist's Toolchest in setting up the interior. Two sliding trays of increasing depth allow me to separate my tools into groups that are sensible to me. Measuring stuff is low profile and always at the top, followed by my beloved few knives and chisels, and marking guages. Then the planes and saws at the bottom.

I'm content with the housing for the few hand tools I have. There are not a lot, but the ones I've got get me pretty far in my work. I can lift the box and carry it around fairly easily, although the cargo weight is biased towards cast iron planes which has in turn piqued my interest in wooden body planes.

I close with an excerpt from Toshio Odate's excellent book, and his brief comment on the toolbox: “Note that the toolbox is nailed together. The Japanese are especially careful about the joints in their work, and are, in fact, noted for the skill and beauty with which they create these joints. But While the dovetailing and other joinery in a cabinet may reveal the shokunin’s care, the drawers in the cabinet, like the joints in the toolbox, are nailed.

An American craftsman pointed out this seeming contradiction to me, and I had no answer for him, so natural did the use of nails in drawers and toolboxes seem to me. Yet, on reflection, I believe that the sight of a shokunin carrying on his shoulder a beautifully painted and carefully joined toolbox without nails would provoke me to an overwhelming sense of awkwardness.”

---

* Japanese Woodworking Tools Their tradition, Spirit and Use, Toshio Odate

entryway bench in reclaimed douglas fir

2011-11-13T16:15:00.001-08:00

we wanted a bench for our entry room to keep the wall company. a plane bench and a plain wall. Sarah was happy with it and in the end that's all that really matters.The wood originated from Urban Ore...some rough 2" roughcut fir that looked like it was used in a foundation...it had a lot of concrete stuck to the sides and needed vigorous wirebrushing before the stark power of my Lee Valley Scrub plane. Originally I had tried doing some of the hard work with my thickness planer, but the neighbor complained about the noise and I was in no mood to get into a bad situation, so it was all hand tools here75% of the time in this sort of a project is scratching your head and other body parts trying to come up with an idea on how to "design" something so simple. Lots and lots of looking at what other people do, knowing certain dimensions are almost invariant (18" is a good rule for height, give or take a thou). I suppose I could just have copied a design out right, but there are always certain factors in the way from me doing that. I like to draw and do it all the time at the office. just doodles while listening to people making noise with their mouths over speaker phones in sterile conference rooms. sometimes an idea or a shape will take hold and I will draw hundreds of variations on it...how should the legs look? How should they curve? How many curves are there?Then there's the sort of design that happens from working the material...in this case it's doug fir. the wood had a gorgeous ring density and I knew it would be pleasing once done, but while working it over with the scrub plane, it clearly would be a negotiation rather than a dictation, on how this piece was going to come together. The grain went all sorts of directions from the knots. I'm a sucker for knots. Here is how I keep track of the legs, the grain emphasizing a roundedness which will be important since these legs will be finger tennoned into the topEach step along the way increases the stakes in the project. I knew it would be important but I could not tell from my sketches on paper how I would resolve this joint in the finished piece. It took a lot of exploration with the plane, the spoke shave, a knifeTurning over to work on the surface, I originally thought of this as a dished piece, cupping your posterior as you put on your shoes for whatever was next. but this is a hall bench and you don't want a cupping, cupping means you stay put, you want something to instead just be a temporary rest where you lace up, and then shove off...so a convex shape seemed to make more sense here...don't get too comfortable. various hand planes make this happen.Glue-up, each tenon split on my band saw for a wedge of some hard wood, pounded into position and making these joints for keepsI used tongue oil. It accentuates the grain and warms everything up, but also makes those wild fluctuations in the coloration of the wood more apparent. It's a matter of what you're into. I like my pizza burnt and am a little suspicious of those who dont

wood gloat!!!

2011-10-01T17:14:00.000-07:00

Woodworking forums invariably have threads started by enthused members who just came across a good wood "score". There seems to be an unwritten rule that these threads must always be titled "Wood Gloat!!!" and while I'm not starting one on woodnet.net myself(at least not *yet* but the more I look at this the more I want to!), I thought Dad would like to know the shipment has made its way down to my Oakland garage.

From a windstorm during the Autumn of 2003 in my parent's neck of the woods, scores of trees went down. Their driveway (1 mile to the county road) had trees fallen across with great frequency. They worked with their neighbors, helmets on, and chainsaws screaming to clear the way. In the wake, a small contract logging operation milled some of the larger ones on site. Many of the hemlock planks were used to repair fencing for Mom's horse pastures. But much of the alder and doug fir was reserved in the barn. During a recent visit, Dad asked me to make a few choices for shipment back to my shop.

It almost goes without saying that there is something special about working wood from the land you grew up on. I spent 18 years among these trees. They are inked into the lore of a farm that my two intrepid parents built from the ground up in the middle of the woods. They did this when they were kids; 22 or so. I'm honored to have a part of that history sitting here in front of me in my garage...pondering what sorts of things I can make for them from it. a cabinet? a box? ideas roll and ebb. Thanks to Mom and Dad for this gift!

The longest boards are 10', no knots. most of the alder is 2x10" the fir is 1x8.

A 250 Pound package wrapped in cardboard, then tyvek, and then metal strap reinforced wood banding for good measure:

Staples didn't go too deep into the wood itself

clear vertical grain doug fir

This will be a first time for me working with the alder. it looks like it will behave really well with hand tools, so I'm looking forward

experimental silk media paginator

2011-08-14T22:02:00.000-07:00

By way of India, Michael, and his collaborator Santosh a group of paintings on black saree to adorn our house before our tentative voyage to CLEVELAND last year. I wanted to create a paging mechanism for the work, kind of like a book.

Sarah and I brainstormed the idea a while back for the living room. The main challenge was how to create a light weight framing mechanism that can handle the forces involved. the beams are split lengthwise for the length of the painting. this slot then receives about 1/4" of fabric, and the two halves are pinched together with some brass screws.

Turned out to be pretty difficult to achieve when all you got is lap-n-plaster to mount the device to. We jammed a trimmed wine cork underneath the lower extremity of the mounting shoulder to help support the assembly when the "pages" are turned.

I tested the mechanism out in my garage, but without the weight of the cloth, still not sure how things would work out.

Project began with some reclaimed doug fir that I ripped with the band saw, shaped with the spokeshave and a sander

The blade mounting harness was also shaped from fir, using a hollowing plane from Lee Valley to get an interesting final texture to the surfaces

A drill press was essential in positioning the paging axes

I joined the shoulder support to the wall mounting bridge using a few 1/4" dowels. This whole shooting match will be attached to a dovetailed cleat affixed to the wall. Some very shallow dados help orient things

bookshelf prototype in reclaimed fir

2011-07-26T10:09:00.001-07:00

First, hello to any of you visiting via the Unpluggedshop's blog aggregator! Mr. Luke Townsley who manages that site recently included this blog into his pipeline (along with a handful of other intriguing ones).

I hit Unplugged Shop's front page at least 3 times a day since so much cool stuff is happening there. While I read nearly all of the new blog entries, I always take close note of what Bob Rozaieski, Rob Porcaro, and Adam Cherubini are up to.

Start with the end here. I'm trying to set up our guest room as a library of sorts and am experimenting with various book shelving approaches:

Project started from recycled, old growth fir from my my favorite crustacean pit. Much work ensued removing rusty nails and getting the wood fairly true with my bench planes. The 2x12s forming the shelf planks were terribly cupped and twisted -- a real test of one's muscular stamina. The joinery itself was very simple once I decided on the approach. It's gappy even by my standards, but this is a prototype.

I wanted to minimize the 'thick-ankled' appearance of the material by tapering at the edges. A spokeshave and a scrub plane performed a majority of the shaping while a random orbit sander was invaluable during clean up some of the tool marks.

Glue up is always harried, but successful today. A rubber head hammer helped knock it into approximate squareness.

Now with a little tongue oil, ready for installation.

It's bolted to the wall via some tabs screwed/glued to the top shelf using toggle bolts:

propeller dojo

2011-06-19T17:33:00.000-07:00

Todd E. showed up this morning to get a bit of a primer on how one might go about carving balsa propellers for these wonderful indoor/outdoor models he's been building from various kits recently.

We began by milling some stock, and marking, carving and sanding to lines. We started with two blanks and took turns switching off to keep the blades reasonably symmetrical.

Somewhere along the way, Takumi, Ling and their two beautiful daughters stopped by for levity.

Todd wanted to attempt a freewheeling prop with a cleat much like what you see in the plastic props. Being the sucker that I am, figured "why not?" and so we cut a "cleat" into some aluminum tubing to act as a shaft for the wire...in this picture, an observant modeler might be able to see what I did wrong:

ANSWER: I cut the notch in the wrong directioN!!!! much cussing had occurred as we had glued the thing in with CyA. Todd, being the optimist had some add'l tubing that fit around the existing piece, so we cut a notch into that one in the correct direction, and then glued it into place. We'll see how it works, but now that Todd knows how to carve a propeller, I expect he will have all sorts of opportunities for trying new configurations.

The model looks like a really nice flier and just with a few practice winds, it flew "right off the board" in our garage (and into my sketching easel -- hope the leading edge spar repair goes well for ya, Todd!)

behemoth

2011-04-28T19:50:00.000-07:00

arrived today via pleasant and adaptable gentleman FedEx agent, 378 Lbs of bandsaw joy. a large installation manual, six gallons of RedBull and a weekend where I'm not at the office all need to coincide before this thing is making delicate cuts into the wood I have in mind.

After first test run yesterday afternoon following a bunch of fussing around with feeler gauges and machine squares

a coffee table in reclaimed lumber

2011-03-04T08:29:00.000-08:00

Finally got our coffee table done in the living room here. Our new cat Tux represents:

The top is a three part lamination of vertical grained doug fir that I recovered from Urban Ore:

I wanted to do breadboard ends and made some out of an old sign post of very ring dense material...i think it's redwood since it's very light weight...not the best structurally but fun to work. These ends would be attached using draw-bored pegs made of wood dowels with the outermost holes widened a bit across the grain to account for moisture expansion in the top. No glue here.

With the top structure done, it was time to work with the legs. I opted for through-tenons that would be wedged once glued up. These legs were stocky, so they would want to be shaped up

A bandsaw would have been handy:

Here's the leg glue-up. You can see the wedges I pounded into slots cutting into the tennons. You can also see a slight bumpy texture in the top. That was done using my scrub plane. Sarah and I wanted something rough hewn with some texture to it.

Now with with 2 coats of tongue oil

knew concepts fret saw

2011-02-02T08:34:00.000-08:00

Uploading details on my knew-concepts fret saw for some questions I have out to them

After reading Popular Woodworking Magazine review of the saw, I was confused about their model having detents in the adjusting swivel for both 0, and 45 degrees. I see one external detent holding the zero position on mine below but there does not appear to be any visible detents in any other position. I do sense a tactile click within the swivel mechanism when i turn the front barrel clockwise (facing saw handle aimed away from me). I dont sense the same click when I turn the other direction (which happens to be the direction I would want to use most of the time when removing waste from dovetails). It might be that the mechanism relies on friction alone to hold the blade in this position, I don't know:

Addendum

Thanks Lee for your response below. So, it turns out that friction alone is enough to keep the blade tensioned in the slanted position.

Anyway the saw is a joy to use and very light weight; surprising how light compared to the cheap Bahco steel coping saw I'd been using. The cam tensioner is also a joy to use. I found the cuts I made in 3/8" poplar very clean.

I was going to do a side-by-side comparison of how the two things cut out waste between some practice dovetails, but In my ham-fisted zeal, I managed to snap the fret saw blade. I think I know why: First I was using a very thin razor saw for my dovetails which leaves a skinny kerf to begin with. Then, I wiggled the fret saw blade into the kerf, rotated the saw and THEN tried to start. I really should have started the sawing motion AS i was rotating the saw when operating in such a fine kerf..beginner mistake, i think.

Pics to follow.

First smoothing plane

2011-01-30T11:08:00.000-08:00

First foray into smoothing planes with their steeper blade angles and ability to take fine shavings is this Kakuri wooden body from Lee Valley (USD$36.50)

Click on the photo for the item in their catalog

It is sort of Japanese in that it has a white-oak heartwood body, and you operate by pulling the plane *towards* you as is done with japanese saws. Typically the blade is held in place in the body with a wooden wedge that you tap into place with a hammer. This one uses a chip breaker and a threaded knob to press the blade into place. However, you still perform fine adjustments to the blade depth with small taps to the body. It sounds tricky but it actually works really nicely once you get the hang of it.

First, though, the blade arrived in very poor tune. Not sharp enough to shave with and very out of square

30 minutes of steady work across 50 grit sandpaper on a glass reference surface with my honing jig, and then a quick polishing from my 700 to my 8000 wet-stones, and...

bench surface holding

2011-01-30T10:33:00.000-08:00

Finally conjured the strength to drill an array of 3/4" holes through the top of my bench. These holes can then be used by various kinds of appliances to help keep pieces in place. It's very 16th century.

With a spoke shave and a block plane made a few bench dogs that friction fit into the holes. You just tap them with a mallet from underneath to expose them.

One row of 8" spaced holes along the front for the surface vice, and then a row of wider spaced holes along the back for the hold-down

A close up of the hold down by lee valley. The neck fitting into the surface has some toothed ribs to find purchase in the holes.

Hold-down

It really does a nice job and will obviate a lot of rube goldberg clamping machinations that I've gone through to hold material down while dovetailing. Probably also would have spared me a recent trip to the ER for 5 stitches in my thumb a couple weeks ago.

Surface vice

The one disappointment of the day was the surface vice Lee Valley sent me...in concept it's really cool, but I think i got a defective part. The aft support has threads only on 1/2 of the chanel, such that you can turn it counterclockwise to disengage the threads and quickly reposition the vice fore/aft. Once where you want it, you turn the support clockwise to re-engage the threads, and then tighten it up to hold your work. Well, mine doesn't quite engage the threads enough so it jumps out of adjustment without hardly applying any load to the threads...drat

old salvaged wood, fine grained but muddy, unappreciated

2011-01-22T19:54:00.000-08:00

sometimes i like to just look at my stickered wood and dream...this stuff came from my favorite architectural salvage site, Urban Ore located in Emeryville 3 blocks from where I work. Most of my material comes from this place because you can find old old doug fir from demolitions. fine grained, smooth, beautiful wood encrusted in years of rusty nails and neglect. still good and quite amenable to repurposing for the stuff I like to do.

On the left, a few pieces of 4x material that I want to join together for a coffee table. On the right, shelving possibilities. our house is in dire need of some good wall hung shelving...soon

I'm edge joining a few pieces for a coffee table for our living room here. stay tuned to see how it turns out :-)

rehabilitation box

2011-01-10T20:35:00.000-08:00

a late holiday pressie for my wife sarah ends in a hastily wrapped project with a cryptic note:

the project began with some african mahogany that i needed to rethickness from 3/4" to some planks roughly 5/16" for a small box project that she can put do-dads in:

joining resawn material like this is called a bookmatch:

I don't usually like the hinge hardware you find on small scale boxes, so I'm looking at different ways to make a hinge from wood. this one bonds the axle to the interior of the lid, then with two holes drilled in the sides, you get a mechanism that can work okay. I first made a small dado in the lid to better accept the axle and prevent it from squggling around during clamp up:

lid detail. I have to relieve the corner in order to rotate inside the box with this hinge design. I did this trimming with a chisel, and preferred to leave the cut marks in place instead of sanding this part smooth

Pre-assembly cross section, just to see how this little thing goes together. The bottom is facing upwards here, and so the idea is to place the lid into the side holes, and then glue it all together at the dovetail pin/tail junctions. Pretty simple

closed and finished. I'm no fan of stains that change wood's intrinsic colors and varnish or thick sticky resins are not my thing either. I use a paste wax. It doesn't really change the color much at all. I find it very sensuous to apply, and it smells like oranges...wonderful.

Here, you can just make out the 1/4" dowel pin where the hinge nests through the side of the box. everything is encased. sure, you loose a bit of storage capacity by my answer to that problem is: make some more boxes!!

yawning open. Sarah likes the tab for the lid. makes it easy to open. The box is still new and there is a bit of friction in the hinge and the lid sides rub against the inside of the box. I imagine it will loose this friction with use, which is too bad (i like the way it behaves right now)

Ecco!

2010-09-06T13:12:00.000-07:00

Joining the top

2010-09-06T13:06:00.000-07:00

I saved all Saturday just for the mortises. Four inches deep, 2" wide or thereabouts. Ouch.

So I wimped out and got my trusty hand drill out with the biggest bit in my arsenal, a 1/2 incher! It went pretty quick and I could use my brace to chew out the interior and then pare away the rest with my chisels

First time I tested fitment of the legs into the mortises, they got wedged in REALLY TIGHT, and no amount of huffing could get them out. I knew I had a scissor jack in the trunk of our car, but in a fit of laziness located a two boards near by, and FORSOOTH, a FIRST CLASS LEVER was born!

it actually worked pretty well, I could lift the trestle up, shove a couple boards under the tennon shoulders on one end, and then creep the other side up in a similar manner. I only had to do this about 57 times before the fit was working.

The next step was to figure out how to drill in a reasonably accurate way. A couple years ago in a stupor of inaccuracy, I grabbed a doweling jig at the local hardware store. These things are absolute junk for doweling, but the one I had had a nice metal index for the drill bits that I remembered. So I harvested it from the jig assembly and clamped it to the walls of my benchtop like so. Worked pretty well, and I was able to then use the same approach to place the holes for the tennons with a tad of offset in a reasonably predictable manner:

After attaching the legs, it was time to flip it over onto its feet.

Sarah implored me to wait for some house guests to arrive to help with lifting this thing (we were going out to dinner this evening). But I couldn't wait for them, and I could not lift the thing on my own. So I decided to use my dolly like so as a second class lever:

And I was able to get the bench on its side pretty easily like this:

Pause to drill some 3/4" holes for work holding pegs to support material during edge work.

trestle part 2

2010-09-06T13:01:00.001-07:00

I had planned on using draw bored pegs to provide the tension necessary to hold the long stretchers in place when building the trestle. However my capability to precisely locate an offset hole in a tenon is not up to the job

So I decided to just tack a couple cleats to the inside of the stretchers for a board that could act as a clamping bridge to hold my glue job together. I'd then just drill and peg the joints as I had done previously

The trestle ended up pretty square so I wasn't too disappointed, but I'd have to come up with a different strategy if I wanted to use drawboring for the top.

trestle part 1

2010-09-02T06:38:00.000-07:00

Well, OK then! Now that the legs are cut to length, time to put the stretchers together.

I'm making the stretchers out of, GET THIS, reclaimed 2x10's I found at the architectural salvage site. some were reasonably straight but had some cup and wind in them that needed to be attended to. I first ripped them down to 6" wide with my skillsaw trick, and roughed them to flat with my scrub plane, then finished with a jack plane. The scrub plane got a lot of miles in today

I've mapped out the joints into the legs to look kind of like so: 1,1/4" thick tennons, 2" deep:

The stretchers will consist of a lamination of the above boards, looking like so:

I based the dimensions on how the legs lay up against the edges of the bottom of the top here. The critical one to measure out here is the tennon shoulder of the outside part of the stretcher lamination. It's close, but of course not perfect.

I'll have to fiddlefart a bit to get the two ends of the trestle close before mortising and drawboring. But my plan is to get the ends fitted and glued up first, and then I'll be able to have them set up for the more awkward fitment of the longer stretchers later. Make sense?

Back to the mortising! eeks, even with a 1,1/4 auger bit, bashing away 6”x1,1/4”x2” deep mortises is a workout. I don’t do them much so it’s good practice.

Doug fir seems to get harder with age, or rather the the late summer, slow growing part of the rings seems to get harder. Here, the ossified rings feel almost crystalline against the chissel.

after a lot of shoulder pairing (I should have been a bit more careful with the shoulder cutting in the first plae), the joints close up fairly well. The gap-filing capabilities of Titebond III will be explored here.

I did NOT drawbore these pegs since I have a wide enough clamp to hold the end pieces together.

The second pair of legs went together much like the first, but now I had something to build them off which helped with making the alignment decisions.

OK it’s now time to stitch the two lateral sections together with some beefy stretchers.

Once the end assemblies were finished, I went for the long stretchers, but before laminating them up, I clamped the boards up to the base to mark off the tennon shoulders like so:

Then, after marking and cutting the shoulders, and then laminating the stretchers, i tested fitment of the assembly like so, note the temporary cleats I screwed onto the tennons to hold the clamps in tension. worked okay but was awkward with only one pair of hands. I think Rube Goldberg would approve:

sorting out the legs

2010-08-23T22:14:00.000-07:00

Here's how the legs will be spaced, overall height will be about 33" tall so that I can get over the bench planes when working the wood. The legs here will have 4" long tenons draw-bored directly into the top like so:

I'll offset the shoulders such that there's 1,1/2" clearance on the outside, and 1/2" on the inside like this:

face vice install

2010-08-18T06:52:00.000-07:00

time to get this twinscrew vice in place. Most designs i've seen have tabs cantilevered off of the bottom of the benchtop which accept the large threaded nuts for the screws. Your vice chop then is wide enough to attach at these lower points but still be flush with the top surface of the bench. In my case, with a 5,1/2" thick top, I was facing quite a wide chop. I didn't like the potential wracking that would happen to the vice if I was clamping small material...

...plus I wanted to use this last piece of wood from the original beam, which would only be the thickness of the bench itself. So I decided to plunge the vice screws deep into the underside of the bench such that they protruded from the middle.

layout looks as follows:

I then went crazy with a 1,1/4" auger bit to bore out as much material as possible

Making these deep trenches to relive the vice screw had me a little concerned about compromising the bench's strength. Originally I planned to cut the sides of a deep groove all the way across the width of the underside with my skill saw, which would have been much easier to beaver out the waste than boring with a 6" brace. But I figured it would be stronger if I could leave some of the full thickness of the bench intact, and only relieve that part that had to accommodate the screw. it actually didn't take that long to rough out:

I then made two wooden holders for the nuts that sink into the recess like so:

After fiddling a bit to get the nuts properly oriented in their recesses, here's how it looks all bolted up from underneath

I then flipped everything over and roughed out some handles

and here's the first test drive, it holds really well, don't have to apply much torque to the screws to hold this 2x4.

I kind of like working at this height, really low to the floor makes sawing with my japanese saws very easy. Might have to spend some more time rethinking my height of 34"

flattening the bottom of the top

2010-08-10T20:20:00.000-07:00

Yup, spent an evening after work beavering away at the bottom surface of the top now that the glue's reasonably dry. You want this sort of flat so that the attachment of the legs/stretchers is reasonably predictable. It also provides a bounty of shavings for the litterbox of our cat Spartapuss.

First with the plane designed to remove lots of material in one swoop with its heavily radiused blade (Lee Valley makes 'em). Diagonal strokes per Schwarz et. al.

...then proceed to my Jack plane, the longest one in my small harbor of bench planes

top glueup & leg dressing

2010-08-08T10:05:00.000-07:00

after repeated checks for gaps and refitting the two sides of the top together, it finally made a strong enough fit that the boards closed up pretty well.

So now to MacBeath Hardwoods for a few more large clamps, and then a complex ordeal sorting out the glue-up dance, which amounted to playing the game of jenga underneath each beam for a couple hours, but finally it's pressed tightly and drying here:

With that done, time to concentrate on cleaning up the two legs I cut earlier from the smaller length of beam. Takes some doing but still had some of the patina from the beam's original use left over. A few framing hammer dents here, some nail holes that have stained the wood from the rust there:

edge jointing top

2010-08-03T21:02:00.000-07:00

Now the delicate act of edge joining these two beefy beams. hoo boy. watch your toes, this is 98" x 24" x 5,1/2" of WATCH YOUR TOES AND FINGERS.

benchwork begins in earnest

2010-08-02T21:16:00.000-07:00

I begin with milling the beam. Had 2 8' sections for the bench top and some left over to attempt to rip for a few sturdy legs. ripping by handsaw is futile at this width so I made a couple increasing depth passes using the skill saw pete "gave" me. worked okay but i hope he doesn't see this as I'm sure the motor of got fairly cooked from it all.

The Skillsaw blade does not fully reach 1/2 the depth of the material, so after flipping the beam over, I will make a matching cut and then finish off the remainder with my ryoba. not too much fuss

Next came the 8 footers. same dance with ripping the wood to width and getting rid of that crown on the edge

Now the precision step of the operation (?). Cleaning up the edges of the beams for lamination. Just don't be in too much a hurry and keep the plane blades sharp...

A HUGE beam

2010-05-23T19:38:00.000-07:00

Been eyein' a wonderful old timber at the architectural salvage site that i pick through on my lunch hour near work most of the winter. Kept thinking it would make an old European style woodworking bench top with its heft.

Impulse and fair weather made me throw down some dosh for the sweet thing before it rotted in a pile of underachieving hippie debris. Love the bill of sale:

What kept me from an earlier rescue was mostly logistics. It's very heavy and 21 feet long.

I rented a CityCarShare truck for 90 minutes yesterday morning with a plan to break the beam down into 2 8' segments with a remainder left over for some other project. That short candle is smeared across the face of my Ryoba blade for smooth operation. thing cut though the beam in short order, leaving a few AM crustaceans picking over architectural debris incredulous.

I'm quite sore today after getting them to sanctuary here inside the pleasing compound. Rain in the forecast, so need to get them in the garage soon. They need to dry out for a while, but the plan is to have the two 8' sections laminated together for the bench top. While I was at the salvage yard, I also found these two old growth timbers on the top of the stack which could form the legs for the bench. We'll see.

A Good Day 'Round Briones Reservoir

2010-04-24T21:56:00.000-07:00

Temps: 75degF, Wind: mild, Road: open

an excellent manual lathe craftsman

2010-04-21T06:36:00.000-07:00

Ratka's Sewing caddy finished

2010-02-13T10:36:00.000-08:00

Gratuitous photos

A gap exists between the frame and the base of the sewing machine on the right there to allow for the power cord.

I included a little bubingawood letter opener attached to the roof here as a joke, we'll see when she notices it, hehehe

Getting a handle of it

2010-02-07T18:15:00.000-08:00

More head scratching; surely there is a better way to center some holes in this carcass than my half arsed hairy eyeballing.

here are the reinforcment bearings out of mahogany for the handle arm pivots. There's a pair on the inside of the sarcofagus, too. Oak pegs drilled and tapped into the assembly reinforce

Now rotating the hadle and arm assembly clamped together through the arc of the bearings. Just want to test to see how out of coplanar the opposing sides are. Seems I can compromise to a certain extent at a consistent width, give or take.

Tapped some bubinga wedges into the oak doweling shaft when I finally glued the arms to the shaft. Should help lock it into place and look kinda cool, too.

Testing fitment of the handle with the arms again, this time with tenons cut into the handle. I think I'll drive another pin through the tenon on the outside of the arm to lock it into place when I finally glue this part up. For now, just testing. And I'll have a 3/8" washer on the interior backed by a cotter key going through the shaft to keep the arms in place when it's all said and done...

...On second thought, I can secure the arms from the inside just using a wood screw like so

strong arm

2010-01-30T18:05:00.000-08:00

More time spent shaping the mahogany arms for the handle. Yep, another test in precision. First getting orthogonal holes drilled into the arms for the axle without a drill press! Dowling jig to the (approximate) rescue. And again with drilling pilot holes for tenon of handle. Now! How to make sure these bearings through the hull are collinear? Hmmm.. will have to think on this one...

sussing out a handle

2010-01-27T22:14:00.000-08:00

A simple but sturdy handle for Ratka's sewing caddy. I tested 1/2" thick mahogany with a 3/8" oak dowel for sheer strength by holding onto the mahogany piece suspended while the protruding dowel hooked the edge of a stud in the garage wall. Should be sturdy enough for the pivoting arms. Then through-tennons holding the horizontal member to the pivoting arms, probably made of this fine old doug-fir i resawed here a while ago. Cardboard mockup of pivot arms below to test proportions...

I got these nice cast-off pieces of African Mahogany from the local hardwood place. Very handsome and a true joy to work with. These will be the "arms" connecting the handle to the carcass

Now the Fun Part

2010-01-24T18:13:00.000-08:00

Planing the contours into the top of Ratka's sewing caddy was a joy.

Just roughing out the lines here for final glueup. Will continue shaping until I'm happy and there is no more tear-out in the wood.

lateralized capstone

2010-01-21T19:30:00.000-08:00

As expected, this was the most challenging facet to arrange in the top. The side piece wedges will then be the last hard part in this roof.

Handy Bits

2010-01-18T19:06:00.000-08:00

My favorite part has been repurposing the mahogany from Ratka's old sewing machine bench legs into small details of the new piece. It's a very well behaved wood and has a scent that I've taken a liking to.

E.g. the "daggers" securing the undercarriage to the sarcophagus needed some sort of tab for easier handling. To wit, I resawed some of this nice old wood and made a pair of little doo-dads for easy grabby:

more on sewing caddy hat

2010-01-18T18:59:00.001-08:00

There is the plan, and then there is the object, and the former is a vague rudder pushing me towards the latter, but in the end I always end up somewhere in the mud. That's okay. Not all facets terminate to points in the same origin!

I Kind of knew this would be a reality of the caddy's top for this piece: coopering the top side and then expecting every wedge adjoining to the lateral sides to end up directly towards some ideal geometric point we call "origin" was something to scoff at. As long as the seams hold, it's good enough for me tho!

Now, onto sections 3 and 4 (in the works, but being glued up...

BRAAAAAAAP!!!

2010-01-13T21:39:00.000-08:00

Scraped this short track link from Sideburn's web log. Guy named Dale Lineaweaver took some indoor short track videos of an event happening in Las Vegas this weekend. Epic DICE!

BRAAAAAAAAAAAAP!!!

sewing caddy hat

2010-01-12T19:23:00.000-08:00

now to focus on the top of the sarcophagus for ratka's sewing machine.

I had originally planned a coopered top, with an even radius, attaching the lengthwise facets to the end via dovetailed "wedges". I'll still try to achieve this, but due to the sewing machine's thread spools being offset towards one side, I decided to make it a bit eccentric:

Planing all this rough old wood and then making gapless jointed edges using a powered jointer might have saved a bit of time. Hand tools give me that tiny fragment of wiggle-room for adjustments, though.

Witholding comments on this piece's rather severe proportions until I can round off the edges with a plane; hopefully that will make it a bit more inviting to the touch.

sewing caddy undercarriage attachment

2010-01-05T21:57:00.000-08:00

My next step was to cut some grooves into the lateral sides of the undercarriage to receive the interior edge of a long "tennon" used to hold the piece together inside of the outer carcass:

I used a chisel to beaver out most of the material between the saw kerfs, but resorted to fabbing up a 1/4" sanding stick to smooth out the bottom surface

Here, you see a few cleats I glued up to the interior of the carcass. These will be reinforced with oak doweling

Here are all the parts: undercarriage, carcass, and two "tennons" that I hacked out of a piece of bubinga from a local hardwood store's cast-off bin

Everything together:

Here's a vid of how it works

sewing caddy outer carcass

2009-12-29T17:42:00.000-08:00

OK, few more tentative steps towards a sewing caddy to put forth. now that the interior carriage is sort of done, it's time to build the "husk" that will nest directly outside of it. This involved rescussitation of a few old doug fir/redwood siding boards harvested from the throes of my rotting garage's rafters from an earlier post, jointed forth.

The vertical sides will be 9" tall so had to glue up a panel, making sure to note grain direction in the boards

One old trick about jointing mating surfaces is to fold them over and plane them thus:

glue-up and wait. wish I had more large mouth clamps to apply the pressure:

Now the tricky blocking out of the panels to length. That strut of wood interior to the xacto knife and outer carcass piece will be glued to the inside of the carcass and form the opposing cleat surface for the wedge which holds this entire piece together. Need to take it's width into consideration when measuring out the pieces and almost forgot this morning:

Chopping the tails for the carcass joints. Using a J. Krenov influenced layout where the tails are narrower towards the edges:

A lot of cautious sawing, and a few hours later and every joint is chopped out and fitment is tested. Looking actually pretty okay for my level of accuracy. Next step is glue up

sewing caddy undercarriage

2009-12-20T17:55:00.000-08:00

OK! spent some more time on the gutz of this assembly: the undercarriage for the sewing machine. This is just a simple frame of hard wood that the sewing machine will rest upon. I have no present intention to affix the frame to the sewing machine; its main purpose will be to be the interior support of a pair of lateral rods which hold the lower frame into the external "shell" cover. I'm sure this doesn't make any sense in words, but imagine a horizontal grove on the outside of the below frame, and an interior grove on the shell at the same place, and a long rod shoved down the middle to hold 'em together.

Anyway, the frame wood I saved from the happy destruction of an old lounge chair that Sarah had mercifully allowed me to architecturally reconfigure with my handy 10 pound hammer. we wanted it out of the house, and I wanted the material since it was made mostly of oak and maple. the maple seems okay, but punky in spots. The oak has a few worm holes but is harder than hell mostly. Had to rehone my POS 1/2" chisel a few times before I could punch it through these dovetail chops:

Testing fitment of the joints

How she rests right now

Ratka's Sewing Caddy Part 1

2009-12-13T21:08:00.000-08:00

Here's the Sewing Machine, gorgeous old iron. Ratka wanted something to house it other than the janky veneered particle board desk that it was attached to:

I'm going to go for a sort of "lunch pail" assembly. I'll make an undercarriage which will support the sewing machine from the underside of it's perimeter frame. This carriage will then have a sort of cleat which will connect to the exterior "shell". I have not diagrammed this well below, but should be apparent in later posts!

Job starts with wood, and I'm using some old panels that were up in the rafters of the garage when we bought the place. Really beautiful wood. Tight, tight grain, probably fir, but it could be redwood, I don't know. The key is how fine the rings are, which to me says: "Old" and Old Wood Is Beautiful:

My "Table Saw" is kind of Barbaric, but get's me close, and I thank my mate Peter Sutherland for hooking me up with an extra circular saw for the job!

Typical of wood siding, it has a bit of a cup to it so you plane out the bowed side, before you flatten out the cup here:

The tight tight grain of this wood made planing a real joy. I'm used to old, salvaged wood being kind of temperamental, and prone to tear out, but this behaved really nicely. The 14" Jack Plane from Lee Valley helps

Trailtech Install, Part 22

2009-11-21T18:22:00.000-08:00

Cruised around the internet forums for clues on how RFVC impaired riders mount the thermometer to their engines. One idea is to place the sensor right where the oil line feeds into the cylinder head. I replaced the Alu washer proximal to the rockerbox cover. I don't think the pressures are great enough through that banjo bolt to cause much blood loss, so hopefully it will be okay. I've got the bolt backed out right now just to illustrate how it goes together here:

Tacho wire was simple enough, just wrap the busy end five times around the spark plug lead, and ground into the nearest convenient earth circuit, which for me was easiest done via that posilock tap up 'ere

One cannot underestimate the utility of having a cache of used inner tubes. 700x35c worked best to insulate my power switch terminals

And here it's all coming together

Installing the Trailtech computer

2009-11-18T20:54:00.000-08:00

Pretty cool device, in theory. Polarity agnostic, so you don't have to worry too much about supply/ground issues. Their tech support said you do not even need to have a fuse on the supply side. I wish I understood why but when I touched the power leads to my battery, it all lit up just fine. Not that you absolutely need to have it hooked up to the bike's power circuit given the CR2032 battery that the unit will work with as well (albeit not as much illumination). Simple magnetic sender for front wheel, and all I have to do is wrap another wire around the spark plug lead to get revs...I fabbed up a little alu plate for mounting, included my ignition switch to be tidy:

The trailtech even comes with a thermometer and while I'd be eager to use it, the sensor takes the place of the crush washer for the spark plug. Any Honda RFVC thug will tell you how little elbow room there is in that zone...ah, the naughty parallels I could rattle off but wont...

Instrumentation? Who needs Instrumentation???!!!

2009-11-14T18:13:00.000-08:00

Tachometer enemas afoot. Tried a VDO but it was a NO-GO. Stupid sensor pickup was made for a car (or a harley), but not a bike.

Buckled and went for a digital Trailtech; its ubiquity and ease of use should make this work okay. But, but, but, that means removing the existing sheet alu "dash" Banke cut for an analog instrument, and with it the ignition switch. So I had to figure out a way to handle the ignition-kill circuits, leading me bypass the use of a key and just use a simple on/off switch approach. I saw this application of a ubiquitous hardware store toggle switch on the wrenchmonkees website and decided that it was kind of my speed:

Mine's quite uglier, but within reach, handling lights-on, and KILL. The key ignition was kind of a joke anyway. one could have easily cross wired the bike and made off with it. The only real test of security is whether a person could actually kickstart the temperamental engine:

For now? No instruments, and who needs em? I'm not raising hell on the highways. I'm putzing around in the hills and if someone asks, i'll just say it's about as fast as i want.

Ran out of gas today, tho. Felt the engine hiccuping at the top of grizzly peak, so luckily, just a long coast down the hill for a few lumps of petrol. I guess an odo would be helpful...

Here's a wiring diagram from a previous post on how the kill/ignition circuits look.

More Tacho Fail

2009-10-09T16:41:00.001-07:00

I give up. Not sure how I could have fried the refurb tacho like this; wish I could have taken a photo of its guts before returning way back when I initially had a problem -- I'm betting those burn scars were always there. Can't imagine that I fried it a second time on install. Much ado about nothing. Guess I should just go looking for a VDO.

From their Tech Support

Hi Adam,

Sorry for all the troubles we are having here. We got the tacho back. It has blown the internal fuse again. Unfortunately it appears to have got some heat into it before it went. I have attached a picture of the board. When we went to replace the fuse the part on the circuit board it solders to came off, form the heat. Unfortunately there is no repair for this. I the picture this is the area in front of the harness plug right side.

As far as the gauge we sent that somebody stole from you mail. Not sure what to do there as cant really blame you for that.

Kind Regards,
Dan

More Boxes

2009-09-28T15:58:00.001-07:00

OK, well I thought I was done making the favor box design but Sarah and I came across an old wine box at curbside while jogging two weeks ago in Emeryville. It was a 6 bottle, vintage 2000, who knows what per bottle, sad Robert Mondavi collaboration with Moulton-Rothchild in Opus One. Sad because of everything that Mondavi means to Napa valley but I'm not gonna hop on the bandwagon and throw turds at the family, I'll leav that to the oenophile hens out there. Still love the moniker and also getting handy with old wood*; turning it into something else. Not sure who'd want them but they're finished here:

------
* Did I just write that???

tach attack!

2009-09-24T06:42:00.000-07:00

Well, the repaired tach didn't work, so the kind fellows at SPA sent me another one in the mail a few weeks ago. I never saw the new one. I explain below in the letter enclosed in the parcel for the old tach that I'm sending back today:

Hey Dan - Adam here - sending back the old tach. Maybe you can find out if there's something wrong with it.

We talked about you sending a replacement a few weeks ago, and that I should send this broken one back to Indianapolis once I got the new one. Directly after our last email chat, I received an email notification from USPS tracing the replacement parcel's route to me, and I just assumed it would show up at my doorstep early the following week. So I waited some days and figured it would be at my doorstep when I got home from work some evening. However, more days passed, and I then went back and referred to the USPS tracking number; this time it claimed that the delivery had been made a few days earlier! I can only assume someone must have seen the delivery next to our front door from our street and decided to steel it. How unforgivably stupid of me to be so trusting. Actually, we had some other person try to break into our house through the back window a few weeks earlier, so I should have been aware enough to have the parcel shipped to my office. Doubly stupid.

At this point, I've cost the world two beautiful SPA tachometers from my own foolhardiness. It's an awful shame. I must apologize as I think you all have done what you could, but some people are simply beyond reasonable help and must be culled for crop fertilizer. I've returned my human-viability card to the proper authorities and will be reporting into the nearest DMV for organ harvesting. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Sincerely,
Adam Tracy

New Tacho On....The...Waaaaayyyyy!!!

2009-09-14T21:05:00.000-07:00

but until then, 'tis boxes, boxes, boxes...my Inner Stalin likes to line them all up and play "Tanks rolling thru Moscow"

A little tongue oil and here they line up:

tach fail!

2009-09-08T21:49:00.001-07:00

well, tried patching in the refurbished tach, and it appears to not be working. doing some back and forth with SPA in Indianapolis but here's the pudding

got my tachometer back!

2009-09-03T20:24:00.000-07:00

...but too absorbed in how to come up with an easy to produce lid for the favor boxes. Was trying to use a transverse dowel peg to form a sort of "cleat" that would hook up to a trench dug into the interior sides of the box with a chisel or my dremel. That lid appears on the right. But it's complicated to get everything lined up and I don't want to spend a lot of time fiddle farting with a drill.

Instead I'm gonna try something I've always liked about Japanese woodworkers' tool boxes which you see on the left and animated at the bottom.

by 'manual' I mean 'by hand'

2009-08-30T19:03:00.000-07:00

This space has been moto specific for so long. Bikes will always be a big part of the equation, It's also about doing other things, like chopping out dovetails, or the experimenting with my own bicycle shifting mechanism.

Anyway, I've got like 30 little wooden boxes to make for this upcoming wedding party. Hope I make it all in time. Just spent the weekend organizing my tools, honing the irons, building some jigs, making a proper shooting board...Macbeth Hardwoods is 5 minutes away and the logo on their staff shirt says it all: "Wood Is Wonderful"

Still chasing that oil leak in John Henry's cylinder head, tho. Don't think I wont be getting into that until the week after October 3, but for now, wish me bueno suerte!

what is he building in there?

2009-08-27T11:16:00.000-07:00

ride report

2009-08-17T18:08:00.000-07:00

OK, a handful of scrambles up into the hills and around briones reservoir, and I've accumulated a little data. Butt dyno says it's pretty good. Got a bit of an oil leak around the cylinder head, left side. Now a little oil leak aint the end of the world and there are more than a few XL600's out there with the affliction...I prefer to think of an oil leak as affirmation of oil actually getting to that part of the insides, myself...would be awful lot worse if it weren't. Still, how much is too much? I notice little spatters of oil on my left boot after a ride, so it's obviously producing more than just a little bit. I'm guessing that black stuff is road soot as opposed to some sort of precipitate from the oil, which itself looked pretty clean to me:

Here's a closeup of my plug. I did a Wide Open Throttle run in an industrial area right near home, probably not long enough to truly test that fuel circuit but still here's what the plug looks like

And finally, that rubber interface between the carbs and the intake manifuld does get pretty hot, not sure how I feel about the fuel line draping across like that. There's a mechanic's joke from the North Woods about assessing something ambiguous yet critical like this, you're supposed to shrug and then say: "It's probably OK". But you're laughing because you know that's the same thing muttered by regretful space shuttle engineers, aircraft ground crew men, and any number of botched shade tree mechanics out there.

Addendum

Here's a picture of the cylinder when I was doing the engine rebuild. I don't see how oil could be weeping out the left side of where the head makes contact...most likely oil coming from somewhere else...but where...

finishing up seatpan

2009-08-06T21:54:00.000-07:00

...hahah so funny to use the word 'finishing' when discussing this project which will never be done...

Well after a short trip to a land of tasty treats: , I've been back at it in earnest with what time there is left in a day.

Just had to reposition some mounting warts for the turn indicators, rewire the lighting and get the mounting hardware glued up

I had a Lucas style tail light from the J&P catalog kicking around and decided to go with it since it throws a more emphatic signal than the LED array that I had previously. Plus the clearance makes it okay now for a bigger light...heck There might even be enough room for some TRUCK BALLS on that thing:

The finish is rougher than a pimply teenager's face when you get up close thanks to my hamfisted technique but it's at least road worthy enough to vroom around in the local hills...soI think that's what I'm gonna do. Bye for now!

jetting reference

2009-08-05T14:35:00.000-07:00

Just placing this thread submission here for now, a succinct rundown on how to tune a carb; probably my next exercise once back on the road...

From caferacer.net: http://www.caferacer.net/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=11580:

Tuning a carb is far more than just changing out a jet. Your first step is to ensure the engine runs well at full bore - that's when the jet is in full flow. You do this by putting in a new set of plugs and run the bike up to full throttle (on the road). Cut the ignition and check the burn color on the plugs - if they are a nice light brown and your bike is running good at full throttle then the jet size is correct. Your next step is to determine how the bike runs at 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 throttle. These settings are adjusted by moving the jet needle up or down depending on the reaction of the engine. When the needle is moved down, it leans the bike out - when moved up it will richen up the mixture. This tuning step is used to adjust the mid-range of the carb. In most cases there is a little give and take when adjusting the mid-range.

Finally - there is the idle adjustment setting. This is done be adjusting the idle air screw. Typical setting is 1 and 1/8th turn out from the air screwed all the way in. On some bikes there is an additional idle screw that is used to set the carb idle. In a multi carb setup (2~6), carb sync gauges should be used to sync the carbs to each other. Again the air screw and/or the cable is adjusted so each carb provides the proper amount of gas for all throttle settings.

Bikes that stumble a little during fast throttle cracking is usually cased by the mid-range not set up correctly. Engines popping is usually a combination of valve, ignition and carb adjustment settings. Valve timing is easy - just set them up as called for by the manual. Ignition timing again is an easy setup. Carb tuning is done in the order of full jet operation, mid-range and finally idle settings.

Strictly referring to a chart to pick a jet size will only get you into a ball park. You still must do a plug reading to determine if you have selected the proper size jet. Things like state of your engine (beat or new), density altitude, what kind of pipe and air filter you use will determine your jet size selection. Charts are useful to getting your close - you still must tune for good performance.

From your description - it difficult to tell you if you have the proper jetting. Try checking the plug burn at full throttle and move on to mid-range adjustment. Your valve and ignition timing should be checked and adjusted before you start messing with the carbs. Remember to ONLY change one item at a time and check for improvement.

Take your time, follow your manual and you should have good results.

seatpan frame interface glueup

2009-07-25T08:09:00.000-07:00

OK, well from last night it looks like this is going to be good enough; I tried to photograph it but it's hard to make out. Here's a 3/4 profile from below where you can see the strips of fiberglass that were first formed around the frame rails, and then while that was wet, I "Nested" the seatpan onto them, allowing a bond to occur.

This is how it looks ejected this morning. I think it'll work out okay once it's cleaned up with a dremmel. Might add some more reinforcement in the gaps where the frame and seatpan deviate. I can also adjust the height/orientation of the seatpan off the rails by varying the thickness of the rubber pads used when they are applied, but for now it's "close enough"

As an added bennie, this assembly is much lighter than the original, and the license/light holders are integrated as opposed to bolt-on:

new seatpan mold, and assembly

2009-07-24T20:02:00.000-07:00

Right, so I busted arse this week at work and staying up late trying to bang this seatpan out before leaving for a trip abroad (anyone reading this near Bilbao, Spain??).

However glue dries on its own clock, and given my propensity for being kind of slow at all this...well here we go:

First, The plug, prepped for the splash mold lay up. I hotgluegunned some cardboard flanges to define the edges; also to make a simple tail light and license plate structure.

That turned out okay

I did a layup into the splash mold. Used tinted resin, and here you see the ejected part. Typically rough finish for me, but I'll go with it. Some of the boogers will sand out but I got a few stupid air bubbles which left me fuming, but that insult is nowhere near the sad revelation that those cute little warts on the flanking area of the fender where I had planned to attach my turn signals are NOT going to work because I AM A SHIT HEAD and forgot to FEEL UNDERNEATH to OBSERVE THE FRAME RAIL directly on the interior side. Just one more trough in the daily sinusoidal plot. god fucking damn me. I'll just have to make some sort of wart 2cm aft of the present warts to mount the lights.

OK well moving on I did another layup like the initial seatpan, and then just nested teh top part right onto the drying epoxy layup. We'll see how this fails tomorrow morning.

Here's what the turn signals look like; you can see how the stalks mount up with wires threading through the interior:

revising the aft section

2009-07-19T21:16:00.000-07:00

Right so I didn't like the proximity of the license plate holder/light assy to the rear wheel and at one point I think the wheel touched the plate which is just not good. I'm gonna use the existing seatpan as a plug for a mold to create a new one.

Here's how the plug looks right now, a bit higher and stretching back a bit more. I actually find the more horizontal line to work a bit better; we'll see how the final part comes out. next up is to prep this piece for constructing a splash mold, so fine grit sand paper, wax, wax, wax, pva, boogie nights!

I don't have the best before/after pics so the after pic is a bit distorted via paralax, but hopefully this illustrates it well enough

before:

after:

rolling into the hills!

2009-07-11T17:59:00.000-07:00

Well that little trot across town two weeks back is technically the first real ride but today I actually reached into the hills for my first OFFICIAL ride up to the Wall, an East Bay motorcyclist's stopping point with a panoramic view reaching over the UC Berkeley campus, Oakland, the bay, the Golden Gate, and some clear days you can even make out the Farallon Islands where great white sharks still roam...oh and San Francisco. Claremont Ave->Tunnel Road->Grizzly Peak->The Wall.

A few other gents up there waxing on about the state of MotoGP and it was fun hearing people talking about bikes. It was flattering to have a few questions and compliments about my 'tracker. That's a Ducati Hypermotard right behind mine:

What did I learn? Well, my forks are in dire need of a rebuild. They have a harsh clunk sensation, probably from being hammered to death by the 1989 CR-500 where the Showas originated. Looks like there might be a little oil dribble forming right on the threshold of the carb intake insulator...not sure where it would be coming from. Bike makes a ripe oil smell when I'm parked at a light; I think that's outgassing from the crank case breather which no longer recirculates through the air intake. I also should remember to tighten some bolts around the tail light so that my lights aren't wagging around shamefully.

I improvised a speedo with one of Sarah's old cycling computers (programmable circumference). Max speed hit was around 50mph indicated. Felt pretty good. This bike is gonna be all kinds of fun once it's dialed!

...I'm going to build a new seatpan/rear fender with more clearance, and better attachment of the plate/lights. bang it out quick now that I know what to do!

uncluttering some wiring ii

2009-07-05T18:00:00.000-07:00

I last left if off at here

And took it to here:

Then tried to make some sense of the front by shoring up some of the slack, adding some sunimoto 0.110" pin connectors from "Eastern Beaver" moto wiring supply. Redoing pin connectors and crimping wire is a very absorbing process...hours pass without me knowing :)

Everything was going great (or as great as these things go since I spend half my time on my knees looking for some goddamned thing I just dropped on the floor with my fumbling digits). But then disaster struck somewhere along the way I fried my dear Tachometer. BITCH! At first I thought it was just the fuse because I tested it and indeed it looks like it gave way. But then I replaced it with another 500mA tube and goddammit, nothing. And no connectivity between the (+) and (-) pins in the connector leaves me to think it's something inside. I've read around about these SPAs and apparently there's an internal fuse that blows in them as well, but it looks like it needs a trip back to it's factory for that remedy.

That was the only big splurge I did on this project and it's toast. expletive, expletive, expletive...

Anyway after refactoring the wiring harness, everything else seems to work, so as long as I'm not too concerned with knowing absolute engine or air speed, things are fine.

Poof!

uncluttering some of the wiring.

2009-07-02T18:13:00.000-07:00

Well now that it's reasonably functional, I'll make a little effort to clean up the wiring enough to make a longer range foray into the hills "testing" the new sled. Up front, I have some real challenges getting the tacho wiring nested well with the rest of the gear, while also trimming a lot of the existing wires down since they are now wadded up a little too much. Before attacking that, I'll try to sort out the simpler area which is the aft lighting connections, and taking out some lengths of wire in the main lines off the battery, etc.

I'll use some pin connectors for the lighting so that the rear fender can be yanked off easily, and will also be using some cute connectors made by a company called "PosiLock" for splicing onto the (-) line originating from the battery:

Here's the snarl right now:

from flyscreen to speedo skirt

2009-07-01T19:17:00.000-07:00

worried that a flyscreen might evoke papal notions, I also realized that I'd be deviating from the flat-tracker roots a little much by shrouding the headlight/console/handlbar in roundy plastic bodywork. We all know deep down that fairings are not only hard to make, they are also decidedly not very macho.

I am now trying something just to protect the underside of the clever tachometer. Probably something that just outlines the perimeter of the console, black and just enough spare room to house a few odds and ends concerning wires.

I'm also leaning towards recycling an Illy coffee can. I've always liked their containers; the logo, the shiny aluminum. The coffee is pretty good, too, straight from Trieste, Italy in the crotch of the Adriatic on the cusp of Italy and Croatia. The metal's wall thickness is quite a bit heftier than your average 12oz aluminum beverage can so it ought to be able to work as a skin here if it had a little support riveted to the underside

how about a flyscreen?

2009-06-29T19:51:00.000-07:00

I should have a little shield between the headlight and the tachometer's body for a little bug protection at speed. Plus I need something that some of this ugly wire can hide behind. How about this shape?

The console is asymetrical by design; I'm not affraid to proliferate this to the bodywork. Kind of like it's giving you a sideways glance or a little knowing smirk?

P.S. fiberglass is not my only fabrication medium, but if it gets any more complex than this speedo sensor hanger, I would rather do it in something involving chemicals

wiring tach part three

2009-06-28T17:06:00.000-07:00

OK, well I powered up the tacho using the black ignition switch lead as advised by pop earlier. Worked fine. Then came splicing the sensor wire into the coil. I tried using the green/ground line first but no signal. Perhaps there was a signal but not the kind the tach needed? There are was a voltage setting that I had to use when calibrating the tach and in the manual it says to set it to the "hi" setting when going off the coil, so my guess is that they are expecting the pulse to come from wire to the CDI...and that was what it required! Thanks guys for sending some comments to help this thing along!

I love how the needle changes color:

wiring tach part two

2009-06-28T11:48:00.000-07:00

OK, now for the head scratching. I could use some help here! This bike does not come with any facilities for tach output management, so I'm parsing their instructions on how to patch the sensor into my engine coil directly:

If you wish to connect the ignition coil, the SPA tacho is fully protected. It will connect to any coil including magneto's and is not damaged by reverse polarity. Connect black to chassis, and red to the ignition pulse side of the coil. Do not make any kind of connection to the HT leads or the spark plugs, this voltage is highly destructive

So my guess is to splice both the skinny black, and green tach lead with the "eye" terminal directly to the frame ground in the picture below. And my gut says the red should splice into the CDI line right there.

The coil installation schematic is in the lower right of this page from the manual. When I first read this, it sounded like I should patch the red tach lead into the green/ground lead of the coil because it has a (-) insignia at the terminal on the coil...but that just doesn't make any sense to me!

The bike's wiring diagram is fairly simple as far as these things go.

Below is a table of the various connections to the meter's body. The 10 element array is the one I'm concerned with.

Aside from the +/- leads coming from the tach sensor at the coil which we went over at the beginning, there are 3 other leads attaching here that I need to safely incorporate into the bike's harness somehow:

Ground was easy: I just spliced it into the same ground line used for my front turn signals.
Red "+12 Volts Battery" lead. It has an inline fuse. I had originally spliced it into the red battery line by the ignition switch, but that made no sense because the tach's LCD lit up as soon as I connected it. Perhaps I'm supposed to use something called a "relay" to mitigate this, but I see no mention of doing so with the tach installation instructions.
There is another red lead with a label on it: "lights on" presumably having something to do with...lights.

Curiously, I tried connecting the "+12 Volts Battery" line to the brown line in my bike's wiring harness, thinking it the tach could use the same line that my tail light uses (which switches on with my ignition key). THAT seems to work okay in that the tach powers on only when the ignition is turned on, no idea if I'm overloading my circuit insodoing...presumably the tach doesn't draw that much power tho ???

Oh well, thanks for reading through this for me. If you have any ideas I'd love to hear them. I look at the map on the upper right corner of this window tracking the visitors and wonder what you all are up to?

thumbs up! first shakedown!

2009-06-27T20:33:00.001-07:00

Okay, just a limp across town to a friend's afternoon barbecue, but still a real enough ride to shake it through some gears and attempt a stoppie or two (that 320mm brembo works). Still, Sarah was happy for me to have reached this point and insisted on some pictures. Well it's been 2,1/2 years. Through open heart surgery, 2 moves, shlepping parts here and there. Countless hours pondering, sketching, rebuilding, pondering more...

...And now that I'm back home, I see so much more to do. 3 miles of loose wiring needing to be trimmed out of the situation, suspension is totally out of whack, I think I ran out of clearance under the fender in back and scuffed the pipe and made an unnatural sound with the back of the license plate on a bump...but still...Face in the helmet says it all.

A little back yard burnout

Spent the morning wiring all the signal lighting gear in place. Man, I went through so many failed crimp connectors. Good thing I bought 3x more than I needed. It was good practice, I'll be revisiting this all at some point for the tacho. Dad turned me onto this coiled plastic stuff that really bundles up your loom nice and you can see it below. Since I had the harness all apart trying to figure out the turn signal logic, I took some time to clean off all that gooey tape that had been resident with the spiders since before polyps were even a twinkle in Ronald Reagan's colon.

Also took some time to affix some adhesive insulation under the tank just for a little more peace of mind

side panels fitted

2009-06-25T19:17:00.000-07:00

OK, well while I was waiting for some electrical stuff to show up in the mail, continued work on the side panels. They were kind of a fuss but I like 'em well enough now that they're in place.

Here I'm making the splash molds from those plugs I did earlier

Then I did a quick layup of the parts that you see demolded here, you can see the boogers along the edges. I'm not too particular about this...sidepanels get scuffed up pretty well no matter what. I think I need to put a sticker or two on them. Probably a SIDEBURN logo :)

To mount them up, I made hollow "pegs" from a tubular layup around some foam. When the tube dried, I chopped the sections up and then glued to another fiberglass layup, placing some washers so that there would be something for the mounting bolts to interface with. On the touching side, I'll apply some bicycle inner tube rubber so that there's some vibration dampening

Here, I'm gluing up the pegs to the back of the panels

After the tacking glue set, I removed the panels and applied a bit more reinforcement. The black tips are a few layers of bicycle inner tube that were glued together and then onto the pegs using barge contact cement. It all cleans up well with a bit of hot Dremel action:

Here's how they are mounted up to the bike. I got some adhesive insulating stuff from Pegasus Auto Racing that I'll apply to the right side eventually.

P.S.I used an angle grinder to clean up neoprene of the saddle foam; it looks a bit smoother now on the edges. Peter lent me the angle grinder. It's a great tool, he has six of them because his father in law is insane and keeps giving him spares. I think I'll do well if I have one for each hand, Pete!

rent 'dust to glory'

2009-06-14T17:06:00.000-07:00

awesome documentary of baja 1000...I think this might have been one of the last years before Honda moved to the oversquare 450 mill. I see a lot of early 2000 XR650R's around here that are plated and man, I wish I had one before California made it impossible to license dirtbikes for road:

on chain slack

2009-06-13T20:06:00.000-07:00

Joel and I had a good exchange on chain slack earlier and I felt it needs a bonafide post with some hopefully clearer pictures to see how things look.

For review, here's what the system looks like with the stock dogbone connecting link (nevermind the blue tiedown, it's not compressing anything yet):

When I measure the chain slack, it's at about 1,1/4", the tight side of the manual's spec of 1,1/4 to 1,5/8".

Here's what I look like with my 1" lowering link (the gold member -- hehe):

Here's what it looks like with the pivot in line with the axes

And here is how much play is left over when everything is in line under light pressure with my finger:

Everyone says it's better to be a little loose than too tight and I agree. My question is whether this is too tight still.

And here's the unnerving part. If I had another link in the chain I would have some elbow room but this is awfully close. Tires do weird things sometimes, and this is less than 1/8"

Firrrrrst SIDEBUUUUUUUUURN!!!!!

2009-06-11T19:19:00.000-07:00

HEY! well as luck would have it, diddling with the air mixture screw actually made a difference. I tell you, it's such a little thing, you'd never think. But I imagine because I have this homegrown airbox and pod filter setup, plus the report of the head and new exhaust, that you just can't go with the stock 2 turns out and expect it to work. I backed the screw out to 3 whole turns after starting and could tell that it was making a difference. My intuition said it would idle okay once the choke was off and it did. However I did recalibrate the idle as it had been set for when the fuel enrichener was switched on, which is too low when switched over to the pilot circuit.

Anyway, I was too giddy to not take it out for a quick spin up and down the street so I strapped on my helmet and leaped out into the street...luckily nothing horrible happened in the ensuing runs up and down the block --- just through 1st and 2nd. Jesus, the rear sprocket only has half it's mounting bolts attaching it to the hub. Banke must have left them in the bits box somewhere, i can't find them but they're easy enough to source.

My crotch-dyno says it is waaaay more oomph at the lower end than my XR650L. Just felt wheelie friendly. Stock 650L's are horrible off idle and even when uncorked, they don't ever yield an assured PULL when throttle is rolled on. With my hamfisted tuning, it seems like this bike's gonna do better than my L ever did. Sorry L:

Anyway, I couldn't resist breaking the rear wheel loose in our mulch project out back. Tried to capture the moment below, kind of like I envision a parent might take a picture and blog/facebook/twitter their baby's first turd.

straight to video

2009-06-10T18:48:00.000-07:00

OK! Well I yanked off 1/2 the discs from the supertrapp. Also backed the fuel-air mixture screw out 2,1/2 turns (from 2). Here you see two vids below, the cold start just to prove it starts after a day of rest, and then a few minutes later after it's had some time to warm up, maybe 2 minutes, I switch off the choke and directly after a backfire (cough) with a puff of smoke. Curiously it won't restart, even with the choke on...like i startled it or something...motorcycle foreplay is a dark art when dealing with large bore thumpers: such sensitive beasts.

Now, IF there was an air leak, I would imagine that the idle would be surging much more than it is, even with the starter enrichener engaged, right?

Maybe something else is awry here.

Here you see it die and me go at it with the kickstart. Yes, I strap those lineman's boots on every time. Doing it with flip-flops would ravage even the heartiest Barbarian size 13.

third start

2009-06-08T20:36:00.000-07:00

OK, So got eberyting back together after yesterday's carb-cleansing! Re-recalled the lovely lovelies on how to reattach the throttle cables, etc back together. No hating: You can't have a tight little motorcycle without having the bits-n-pieces kind of close.

Anyway, I noticed something funny about my feeler gauge on the way to following Herr Joel's (aka Groundhog, aka ZombieStomp) recommendation to check the valve clearance. the .002" strip looked unused. You can tell they've been used because they get kind of bent and abused in order to reach into the valve ports threaded into the rockerbox cover. Which meant I couldn't have had my intake valves adjusted properly. 0.004" exhaust. 0.002" intake. OK! Well rechecked the exhaust and they looked okay. I checked the intake and they were too loose. Too loose because I was able to pass a 0.003" feeler through the tappets. So I carefully made it possible to cinch up that last 0.001" and crossed my fingers.

Started first kick just fine and sat there idling with the choke on while I called Dad so that he could hear the engine over the phone. Damn hot however. The header completely discolored and had some blueing proximal to the exhaust manifold. Few minutes and then a backfire and some smoke. I don't ahve a screen in the airbox so sometimes the flames puff out into the filter which is not good and why I got the fire extinguisher in the first place. Time to shut off and hope nothing bursts into flames. Plastic gas tanks don't do so well against fire, nor do airboxes or all the other fiberglass shit I've made. Damn it's hot. Hope it settles but at least it seems promising on try number three:

second start

2009-06-08T06:14:00.000-07:00

Restarted the bike again yesterday and managed to verify while running that oil was indeed flowing (gushing) out the head feed line so that was a good sign that the life juice is getting where it ought to.

Still, the thing felt a LOT hotter than what I recall my 650L got in the minute or two that it was idling on it's own in that time. and then as I was backing it out of the garage to go do some DOT approved test runs up and down the street, engine died and would not come back to life.

First thought was: carbs might have a booger in the idle circuit. Since the thing wasn't going to be doing anything for an hour anyway I decided to yank the carb assy (Forgot how much fun that was!) and just give everything a once over since it had been sitting for so long...all those seals hate drying out with no gasoline running through. This time was much easier because I replaced every OEM phillips screw with an equivalent stainless allen head in the rebuild. This turned a screwdriver and four-letter-word shouting afternoon into a non-event: an old lady's fart out on a windy Manhattan street would have proved a greater interruption.

Everything looked okay inside the carbs, altho I did see a little residue in the pilot jet -- likely because I made the mistake of running dirty gasoline from the original bike thru the carb when I started it back in '07...dumb. Still not something I'd expect to cause the bike to die like this.

Somewhere after I was too committed to yanking the carbs, I recalled that the valve clearance could definitely be an issue from the forums and most recently here. Then Joel, the XL600 Whisperer, chimes in here from my previous post

That's right, you'd better start it!

You adjusted the valves I'm sure. You may want to do it again. Also make sure the manual decompresor (on the right exh. valve) is adjusted right and not decompressing even a little.

Try turning the idle screw up. Way up. You can always turn it back down.

Still only runs on choke? Now look for leaks on the intake manifold. Unlit propane torch, WD40, starting fluid, you know, to see if the idle perks up any.

The reason it may not have restarted is that if you don't get it all the way warmed up to about 150 or so degrees, it is somewhere between wanting choke and not wanting it, so it is hard to start. This is made worse if the idle is set way too low. Then you try to correct that with opening the throttle, and without the right feel for doing so, it can kick back on you if you open the throttle too much. Sometimes in this confused choke/no choke situation the best thing to do, with the idle adjusted crrectly to start with, is to just turn the choke off and kick it about six times. Around the sixth kick, you may be able to apply the slightest throttle to coax it, and it should sputter right to life.

Good work, FINALLY you start it. Took you long enough, you Really Finnicky Vulnerable Creep.

Will check those valves tonight, Joel, PROMISE! Not so sure about hte Creep part...but claims of my vulnerability are nothing new :)

Meanwhile, SIDEBURN Magazine left a nice oomph in my direction today. Funny because I just sealed an envelope for their latest issue yesterday. If you haven't checked it out, a very lovely print magazine, so always an honor to get on their radar.

Check 'em out, I personally can't wait to read about D. Mann and that builder in So. Cal, Mule:

first start

2009-06-06T19:58:00.000-07:00

OK, Well today was the day. Went and got some conventional 10W40, a gas can, a fire extinguisher and 1/2 gal of chevron 91. Made a few last checks to make sure things were closed up that needed to be, and then filled it up with 1.5L of oil (about one liter shy of capacity but this is the manual's recipe: you top it off after it's warmed up a bit).

Anyway, it started to my complete amazement. This only after I solved the puzzle of why the carbs were both peeing fuel out all over the garage floor (I had opened the drain screws before putting her in drydock back in 2007).

Only idled with the choke on or if I had the throttle turned. Probably some adjustments necessary. My main concern was how damned hot the head/cylinder got in just a few minutes...Dad's plane engine ran hot when it was new so perhaps this is just how new iron works...

One trick the old salts at XR's Only told me about is to loosen the top banjo bolt of the oil line feeding the cylinder head while the thing is running to make sure oil is getting up there and that the pump is working...It being so hot I figured things were not getting lube. However, I couldn't operate the throttle and do this simultaneously so after a few minutes I let the bike die and checked the line out. Looked like there was some evidence of fuel flow just loosening the bolts. Will need to try while running.

Then, I tried restarting. No go. Choke, no go. Hmm. Had a terrible vomit-addled migraine headache all day today so too tired to keep kicking. Pulled the plug below. Looked a little sooty, not terrible. Probably from the few Tbs of oil I dumped in there with a syringe a couple months ago to keep it wet:

Wait: SIDEPANELS!

2009-05-29T20:03:00.000-07:00

Joel, I'm just posting this superfluous bodywork fab entry to irritate you!

I haven't been able to get a batt yet...It's an unusual battery, 12V, 3Amps. Prolly not getting one till Monday so I've got some time to do some more work that I hadn't intended on doing before gassing 'er up. SIDEPANELS!

I thought I'd just do something simple with a direct layup but it's so much easier to sand and wax a plug than fair out a final layup. So I did a quick foam plug for the left and right sides. Right side will extend outwards a bit more to accommodate the muffler.

plumbing fuel tank, revisit

2009-05-23T07:37:00.000-07:00

OK, finally got the moto specific fuel line from J&P. It's much more flexible than the automotive kind while still having some substance. With the elbow filter, and a Tee connection, I'm able to get both sides of the tank connected to the carb without any kinking. It's draped across the rubber carb/intake manifold adapter there so hopefully not too hot! 8 hoseclamps later:

By the way, is my filter oriented with the flow of fuel correctly? I couldn't find any indicator arrows on the body of the filter saying which direction the flow went. This is a screen type filter so not sure it matters as long as you don't switch after in use

seat base construction

2009-05-22T15:14:00.001-07:00

While I wait for fuel plumbing to arrive in the mail, I'm attempting a saddle from a few layers of neoprene rubber glued down to a fiberglass substrate which will then in turn velcro to seatpan that nests onto the frame. Some rainy day I'll upholster the assembly but for now it'll just be raw foam.

I'll form the 'glass substrate directly off the seatpan using my usual processes. Begins with a layup formed around the contours of the seatpan. I'll then attach foam rubber to the resulting part. Here I've prepped added some cardboard reliefs for the seatpan's mountpoints and prepped with tape&PVA.

After layup

Before gluing up the foam, I epoxied a bunch of 1/8" ID washers and drilled out their interior holes so that I have some support for pop-riveting the seat cover in place. Not sure I will need this or not but figured it was an easy enough thing to do, might as well.

I used a glue called "Barge Cement". It's a wonderful glue that I use whenever I need a really strong, yet pliable glue for soft/porous materials like foam (or bicycle handlebar tape, or shoe repair). Its process is much like contact cements where you apply to both faces, allow to dry for some minutes, then press together.

Here's teh second layer. Looks kind of rough but If I'm going to cover it, then it will be okay. One noteworthy item is how quickly the foam dulled the Exacto blades I used to cut it. Really amazing.

Another gratuitous profile :-)

wiring tacho

2009-05-21T07:05:00.000-07:00

Well at some point I'm gonna want to wire in this nice tach I have. It will also function as my speedo/odo. For now, lots of brushing up on motorcycle electrical stuff. My wiring harness has seen better days and all the reading I've done indicates I'd be well served to do it all up proper with MIL spec wire and sealed connectors. All, and I mean ALL the connectors had little spider nests and spider poop. But somehow, it ran before I began this epic process, so let's see If I can get it limping along with the dusty old stuff first.

Anyway, let's roll out some diagrams. Here's the bike's wiring I copied from a Clymer Manual:

The SPA tach that I have came with a few directions; I found their manual PDF on line and show the schematics contained therein below. Since my bike had no tach originally, I guess this means I am left to wire the new one into the ignition coil:

This is just a table of the various connections to the meter's body. SPA provides a wiring harness that plugs into the 10 prong port atop; the shiftlights are left as an exercise for the user who wants to dragrace

The tach also comes with a speedo pickup. I'll run the sensor wire for this thing along the hydraulic line for the front disc brake, I think:

Tail Light Assy

2009-05-13T19:25:00.001-07:00

Waiting for some better fuel plumbing gear to arrive in the mail, so here's a first attempt at a plate/light holder I did out of a two piece construction using fiberglass layups. Clearance is going to be pretty tight but this will hopefully work for now.

plumbing fuel tank

2009-05-11T06:59:00.000-07:00

OK, got back to some progress on the bike. Used the Caswell snot to seal the interior, hope it holds. Been off line because I've got a bit of a conundrum with fuel plumbing here, and it's probably, well, important to get it right to make sure I don't get a lap full of gasoline while straddling this home made beast.

Recall I've got petcocks on both sides of the tank here and I need to run an inline fuel filter. Clearance is going to be tough and my first parts sourcing for the application is a total failure. Here, you see a petcock and the filter attached to the carb. In between these two needs to be a "TEE" connector to receive the fuel line from the other side of the tank, joining this petcock to then lead to the filter:

I got the petcocks from Clarke Mfg (they make the big plastic tanks for motorbikes, primarily). They're pretty large and I did myself no good by attaching them so far aft on the tank. Anyway, the Automotive 1/4" fuel line is way too stiff for bending and the fuel filter I bought from J&P Cycles is too long.

I found some more flexible (tho reinforced) moto-specific fuel line in their catalog with some help from an actual human on their end. Plus a shorter fuel filter that should only take up about 1/2" of length, barbs aside. Hopefully that will work

I'll also need a better "Tee" connector for joining the two sides of the tank first before leading to the fuel filter and then the carb. I'm on the lookout for a sort of 3 dimentional Tee, I think: where the barbs are all oriented 90 degrees off of a central origin, each pointing along the X, Y, Z axes...That might help keep the fuel line from making such a tight bend.

dad the exemplar

2009-05-02T17:04:00.000-07:00

Dad flew down from Seattle area to visit people in so-cal. Spent some time with Sarah and I in Oakland. Looked over his plane on his way out and co-piloted one go-round in the pattern before he left for sunnier weather. Very shiny. He built this rv-7 by hand in his basement. putting the MAN in Manual!

Stock foto from up North:

Took a few vids of the plane, awesome picture quality, I know! Weather was crap so we weren't even sure he would fly out until ten minutes before takeoff. All worked, tho. Not much talking, but "chit-chat" is not appropriate in this moment; we're concentrating on all the little things you have to think about before takeoff, so silence, please!

readying for santa inez

plotting trip; ignition

taxi, queue

takeoff

more idling

on back, getting hungry

2009-04-28T10:21:00.000-07:00

running into headscratcher.

will continue as soon as lumbar region regains some mobility.

more puttering

2009-04-23T19:31:00.000-07:00

Testing fitment of seatpan/fender with the tank. Finish is really rough right now but I swear I can hear the valve train rusting from nonuse as I type this, so taking it down to 600 grit is about as far as I can stomach in an afternoon. Hard to tell in this picture but the glass fibers mixed with the black tinted resin looks kind of cool to me....

I should have extended the fender out a bit more to allow some extra room for the tail light and license plate. My next fabrication will involve building the truss for holding these bits. It will bolt directly to the underside of the fender.

Pardon the ailing calla lilies; they were just transposed from another location where Sarah and I plan on sheet mulching.

electrical tray fitment

2009-04-16T19:49:00.000-07:00

OK, looking a bit rough around the edges but if it successfully holds a battery and a regulator/rectifier while supporting a mount point for the airbox, I call it good enough. Used 4 6mm blind "Tee" nuts for attachment.

All this epoxy and glass fiber goop is making me wish I knew a thing or two about TIG welding aluminum...heck, pop-riveting and using a sheet metal brake would be fine enough for this application!

Detail of how the airbox tab attaches to the tray...

Here's how it looks installed...that air filter is a wee bit too long there...

more coming...in the meantime:

2009-04-16T13:21:00.000-07:00

"Now let it work: mischief, thou art afoot/Take thou what course thou wilt!"

check out thierry's XL street tracker work in progress

2009-04-07T08:07:00.000-07:00

It's good to know I'm not the only XL600 Chopping lunatic. Check out Thierry Coup's Progress at: http://street-tracker.blogspot.com

electrical component tray mockup

2009-04-04T14:55:00.001-07:00

OK, now just making a wiring/batt hanger that can attach to some existing mount points. I'll do a layup directly off of this piece once it's prepped with clear tape & PVA

Here's the layup. I'm wrapping glass/epoxy around the gusset forms in two places, but this glass was recalcitrant in it's manipulation so i pinched it together with some pva-treated cardboard paper clamps as so:

aft mounting bracket II

2009-03-30T20:08:00.001-07:00

Here's how it looks now

aft mounting bracket

2009-03-28T22:56:00.000-07:00

The forward mounting brackets worked out okay so I reinforced them and sanded them down a bit. Now it is time to get the rear bracket sorted out.

I wanted to use the OEM rubber damper that fit the original tank to it's mounting post that we left intact here, so I'm going to fabricate a tab that attempts to use it. The layup here was as quick as possible: build up a cardboard form with some thickness at the bottom to accommodate the offset of the rubber. I'd then prep it and rest the tank on the glass/epoxy layup while it was still curing so that everything dried in place.

I folded up some newspaper to support the cardboard form right where it would make contact with the tank.

Here you see everything prepped and draped with paper to prevent drips from sticking to the bike. In the upper left you see a wooden block that the tank will rest on during the cure.

Here it now sits. We'll see how it looks tomorrow morning!

forward mounting brackets

2009-03-23T06:25:00.000-07:00

Had the hardest time trying to figure out how to place the forward mounting tabs for the tank. The tabs are nothing more than a "C" cross section that I molded around a foam block. Well I eventually cut the tabs to size and then press fit that foam block in where the mounting posts would be, and then tacking the "C" tabs into place. It sort of works, but It was hard to transfer the mounting points exactly onto the tank when it was in position.

I'll lightly test fitment tonight and if it looks okay, reinforce the attachment with more glass and epoxy.

more work on airbox

2009-03-21T18:36:00.000-07:00

OK took some time while the tank glue-up dried to finish and test out the fit of the air intake adapter. Worked pretty good but I am going to have to put a slight "elbow" for the inlet flange to orient the air filter a little upwards and a little inwards for better tire clearance. I'm wondering if 6,1/2" long filter is really necessary but If I can get it to fit, then no worries.

tank assembled

2009-03-21T12:24:00.000-07:00

OK, mixed another slury of the milled glass fibers with the slow cure epoxy and laid a bead along the interfaces. Got a lot of squeeze-out once the thing was taped down (especially along the inside when I peered in with a flashlight through the cap hole). Hopefully it'll be alright.

one last check before closing up the tank

2009-03-20T19:09:00.000-07:00

OK, I talked to the tank sealer guys at Caswell and they said I ought to scuff up the insides of the tank since I can and it'd help adherence. They said go ahead and glue everything up before dumping their sealer into the tank to coat the interior. So that's what I'll do.

It's been a long process so I'll take a sec to make sure everything's wiped down clean with acetone after sanding and vacuuming all the dust. Nothing but rubber gloves at this point; you don't want any of your finger grime/oil getting onto joint surfaces.

losing the foam

2009-03-16T18:55:00.000-07:00

OK! a few CC of acetone into the inlet duct and it just sort of devours the foam:

A few minutes of clawing away at the inside with a long screw driver and I've got most of the guts barfed out the intake orifice. The PVA melts with the acetone as well, so the tape that sealed the foam inside peeled from the walls pretty easily. any remainder will come off in a hot water bath...here's my new shower toy:

airbox layup

2009-03-15T16:14:00.000-07:00

OK, wrapped the foam mold up in packing tape and treated with PVA. Also remembered to glue a stick into one of the entry points so that I have something to hold onto while carrying on with the goopy mess:

petcock fitment

2009-03-15T10:00:00.000-07:00

looks like they'll bolt right on no probs. You can see on the right side how the positioning plates formed the epoxy/paste mixture into a flat surface that the petcocks can interface with all nicey-nice.

intake intake intake

2009-03-14T18:56:00.000-07:00

While all that was going on I was spending time on a new airbox assembly using a 6x3.5" K&N Pod filter attaching to a much smaller "plenum" than my original design. I did this because the older airbox I had fabbed was taking up too much room for the battery and the exhaust pipe.

Here's the profile, that glowing white thing is a polystyrene foam plug for the mold. I used some sticks to locate the angle of where the intake rubbers mate to the airbox because they have some protrusions which would make it difficult to orient the airbox plug once the final assembly is insatlled. (the rubber is resting atop the frame in this picture). This will be a male mold. I'll do the final layup around this foam piece and then pour a little acetone into the intake hole to melt away the foam like butter! It's known as the "lost foam" method:

Here's a view of how all the big pieces will be oriented, filter on left, batt on right. I'll fabricate another fiberglass assembly to house the battery and electricals once the airbox plenum is situated.

more fitting glue-up

2009-03-14T18:46:00.000-07:00

OK, Milled glass fibers came in the mail and so now onto mixing into a thick slurry with epoxy to finish off the T-nuts that mount the petcocks, and then the gas cap assembly.

I pressed some PVA-released positioning plates into the mixture as it'll make a flat surface interface to the petcocks.

I took the outer surface of the tank down to 600grit sandpaper to clean up the flash and a few boogers on the outer surface; It'll look okay once I get a coat of wax on there, kind of satin hopefully.

mounting petcock nuts.

2009-03-12T22:02:00.000-07:00

OK, managed to epoxy on a few "T" nuts to the bottom piece which will attach the petcock valves. I've positioned them with a few jigs I cut from some old fiberglass layup done on a previous project; just cut some holes the correct distance apart to fit the petcock valves. Once this glue sets, I'll lay down a slurry of epoxy and milled glass fibers to really solidify the assembly. I actually would have done this all in one step but ran out of the milled fibers to make the reinforcement with. Figure it's okay to "tack" the nuts down right now and then reinforce them later.

demolding the top part

2009-03-02T20:19:00.000-08:00

I probably should have let the thing cure a bit longer in the mold but it looked solid enough and I just couldn't wait. I'm that way with scabs, too. And like a scab unready for the picking, it took plenty of encouragement to bust the mold loose. First some prying between the flanges, then a bit of drumming on the hull to pop free along the surface, more prying, more pounding, you get the idea. These things stick together quite a bit because of the PVA. It's weird stuff: a thin membrane that starts off applied to the mold but when you take everything apart, it ends up on as a coating on the final part that you just rinse off with water.

This is how it looked immediately out of the mold, so a lot of boogers and some flash to clean up, but the part seems pretty sound!

I ran it out to the garage to confirm fitment with the bottom, and after roughing out the edges a bit they look to be mating pretty well.

Next step will be to double up a few more layers on the top part from the inside where it looks a little thin, then it's on to fitting up the petcocks and gas cap.

An opera in 3 pots.

2009-03-02T06:16:00.000-08:00

Never made a gas tank before. It's obvious I'm way over my head here. Anyway, let's begin making the top part.

I chose to use four facets of glass per layer. As luck would have it the tank is reasonably symmetrical, so the pattern consisted of 2 facets, roughly looking like this:

Keep that mildly pissed off woman's expression in mind, because by 8:00pm yesterday, I was right with her, maybe even several lengths past that, ready for a bucket of plonk and a flintlock to point at strangers.

Making the patterns is pretty easy, just hanging some news print off of the plug, and cutting notches around the compound contours. Kind of like so:

(I like how her picture ended up upside down...perhaps that's why she's giving me that scorning look of disapproval -- as if my shenanigans have no purpose to her discussion on philanthropy for the Arts in the post-Bush, pre-economic apocalypse).

Layup for the top was a complex affair. I knew I'd take too long to get it all in one pot of resin before it started to gel. Even with the slow hardener, after 30 minutes resin begins to cure really fast when it's amassed together in the mixing dish. I carried forth the layup in these overtures:

First a topcoat of black tinted resin right on the mold that I'd let cure to the point of tackiness. This from an idea taken directly out of Tygaboy's advice on Bay Area Riders Forum to achieve a smooth outer surface and facilitate adhesion with the first layer of glass.
Then mix some milled glass fibers with more black resin to fill in the cracks/crannies around the fuel cap recess, as well as the dimples around the shoulder of the tank that are there to: a) clear the fork triple clamp bolts, and b) make it harder for the glass to lay down smoothly.
While the topcoat dried to a tacky consistency, I cut the glass for the main facets. Once cut, I mixed the first pot of tinted resin and went at it. After a couple layers the resin started to get kind of snotty, so I found a stopping point, ran inside and took the turkey thighs I had roasting out of the oven, and mixed a pot of clear resin to finish out the layup.
Vacuum bagging. This exercise was fail from the get-go. First, I didn't cut the peel-ply big enough to extend past the overhang in the tank -- crucial because I wanted to tape it down to the outside of the mold. I then had a few wads of breather cloth jammed into the interior, some bunched up into the shoulder and under the overhang to help apply pressure from the bag. I then stuffed all this into the bag and began pulling air with my bicycle pump. After not long, it was apparent that there was not enough surface area of the bag to reach into the overhangs of the tank *and* all the way into the depths of the shoulder of the tank, even with all the extra wadding I had used to take up these areas. I decided to quickly pull the layup from the bag, remove the wadding, peel-ply and just let it cure on its own.

Six pairs of rubber gloves later, and this is what the place looked like last night. Note the brush right in front of the mold, I sawed off the handle for easier maneuverability within the mold:

Yeah, vacuum bagging is a nice to have thing, and a lot of composites geeks use it to consolidate a layup and get the optimal ratio of resin to reinforcement for the lightest possible construction. I've never been as interested in that factor as much as the way vacuum bagging helps the fiberglass to wrap around complex edges. Since I'm laying glass on the interior of the mold, it actually seems to have laid down pretty well. I'll leave it and see how it comes out of the mold in a day or two.