Report V: A day of gettin it done

Last week I ended up getting pretty sick, so not much was done in the building. But yesterday I finished up the rear dropout miters, filed the fit of the chain stays into the bottom bracket (which took most of the day) and cut the chain stay lengths and mitered them out. Also finished the fork legs in terms of getting them exactly dialed to the same length. So today, after drilling a handful of vent holes, and prepping all the surfaces, I could finally do a lot of brazing. First, the silver flowed around the water bottle bosses, and the braze on boss for the front derailleur, then into the lugged crown as the whole fork went together. Then out came the brass for some rear dropout brazing.

It's funny how days of work finally go together in a matter of hours. Right when I start to feel like I'm taking too long to get anything done, it all goes together. There are some matters that I still have to work out (get faster at) before I'll ever be able to do this with any sort of dollars per hour ratio. But it is still a great source of enjoyment and challenge for me.

As of right now, I've spent thousands from my own "savings" and have yet to show a dollar for it. I've had (and have) more cuts, scrapes, bruises, and some pretty good burns than I care to count. With my day job to fund all of this, I'll often go for months at a time without any real "days off." But at the end of the day, when I climb up the stairs from my basement workshop, smelling of steel shavings and acetylene, and crawl into the shower to wash off the three days of dirty cotton clothes and facial hair that have surrounded me, I can't think of much I'd rather be doing.



And as always, more pictures on my flickr site