Vallie Components - bicycle part and accessory design

I'm still at it.

I've spent 3 of the past 6 days at the machine shop, turning out cogs. Its pretty much the logical thing to do at this point. Its crazy though. The 4140 is so hard that it kills an end mill in just 10 parts. ..and that's if it doesn't catastrophically fail and shatter, sending high speed carbide pieces in 360° in what sounds like a gunshot going off. Unfortunately, when that happens, it kills the cog it was working on too. I made more garbage then I wanted before we got the program dialed in for cutting depths and feed rates.

The new cog tooth profile works quite well I'm happy to report. I picked up a new KMC 710 chain along with a cog fresh out of the mill, and slapped them on my truck bike with the chain tension WAY too high, and its still reasonably smooth. So that's good at least.

Once I've got a full batch of cogs cut, I'll be taking them (possibly by bike?) to Molectro Plating in Richmond, for black oxide coating. After that, they'll be available. So basically a few more weeks at this point.

In the other 3 days I worked two at Mighty Broadway. Its a different environment there to a lot of bike stores. I ended up teaching a newb quite a bit about fit, cycling in general, security, everything. He's going to be commuting to Burnaby starting now, in order to train his computer programmer ass back into shape, as he's been challenged to do a big ride in the summer. He's extremely stoked on the bike we built him. That sort of thing really makes me like the job.

..and Yesterday.. I worked in my own shop, banging this thing out in about 8 hours:

This is the 4th in the Flite Club rack series. I haven't made the struts yet, or decided what colour it's going to be.  This is about as light as I'm comfortable making porteur racks. Its still got the 1/2" tubing bridging the deck between the struts, and the angle section at the back. Basically, I feel you have to be able to double a friend home on a rack for it to be worth anything.

I'm still trying to figure out if its worth it for me to attend NAHBS or not. Austin was pretty good to me last time I was there (Thank you, Gary Fisher!), and I really want to go back. Just looking into my travel and accommodation options now in order to tally it up.

 

 

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