LWB Steering rod

Until you have actually been me you cannot know what it is to be stupid. Yesterday I walked into the workshop and picked up a broken rear mech that I didn't need and repaired it which I didn't have to do and then used it to bite three cubic millimetres out of my left index finger which immediately bled as if a mediaeval surgeon was in attendance and had forgotten his leech. And it hurt.

After which uninteresting bit of whingeing, where was I back in the Pleistocene when I last made an entry to this blog? - Oh yes, microscopes, and there are another four to do and still four more after that. (Actually you can get quite bored cleaning microscopes. Actually I don't mind if she doesn't bring me any more for oh about fifty years.) - We're onto steering.

The Ricardo bike (see past entries if obsessional or sufficiently moved) yielded some beautifully light-weight seat stays. In the Olden Days I got my steering rods from East Midlands Alloys, but lacking ready access thereto, I welded these seat-stays together end-to-end and back-to-back with the usual pokey-inny bit inside to stiffen the joint.

And welded 6mm nuts on the ends. And cycled to Richmond where the Exclusive Brethren have a bearing supply shop where I bought some track rod ends. Actually it was an Exclusive Sister who served me, probably the owner's wife. I've often wondered if the shop is owned by several Exclusive Brethren or just one, because if the latter we are posed with the difficult quandary of what to call him. Is he an Exclusive Breth? Exclusive Brother does sound a bit mundane. And since they aren't allowed to have computers and will never happen on my linguistic concerns I suspect we shall never know the answer.

Then back to the bike heap to see what else I could recycle, and it struck me that I could weld a cantilever brake stub to the fork to connect front wheel to handlebar, and so it proved.

So next I have to steel myself for the task of making webbing strips, which I most hate doing, and then fitting cables, which I moster hate doing, and painting it, which I mostest hate doing.

The longer arm at the handlebar sort of gears up the steering movement. How much is a bit of a guess at this stage, but a guess based on past machines.

And right now the flowering cherry's doing its annual fortnight's worth of decorative garden-work so it must be springtime in the Dominion of New Zealand and soon it will be dry enough to resume gluing together yon proa hull which has spent the winter getting in the way and generally being a tripping-over workshop nuisance. But right now it is eventide so I have to stop to check on Mr. Larrington's progress as he attempts to cross every bridge in our Colony of America on his way back from Battle Mountain.