Injury and Ti...the week in review

Ok, to catch y'all up a bit...

As many of you know, besides fabricating, I also work as a firefighter for our community and despite the time constraints of working two full time jobs, the two rarely cause conflict.  This last week was an exception.  Half an hour before shift change, we caught a fully involved apartment building fire with a report of people trapped.  My guys did a fantastic job of aggressively attacking the fire and searching the building, rescuing two dogs and assisting an occupant out.  As is often the case in today's fire service, we just do not have the manpower to accomplish everything that needs done within the first 30 minutes of the incident, so everybody extends beyond their abilities to continue forward progression.  Long story shortened, in the hours following the fire, I noticed my back began to tighten up and hurt.  What followed was three days of lying flat, downing 4000mg of Ibuprofen a day, waiting for it to settle enough that I could be on my feet more than just to go to the potty.

I ended up losing four days of solid prep time in the shop and am at a point where I can only work for about 4 hours at a time on my feet before I need to call it quits.  So, a lot of what I planned to take will not come to fruition as it needs to ship this week.  Such is life.

So the revised list looks to be Dave's bike, the retro single speed, and I am continuing to work forward on Martin's belt drive Ti bike.

That said, here are some progress shots showing the initial fabrication of the custom EBB...

We start out with a massive piece of Ti (that aint cheap!)...

 After cutting it down to our rough starting size, it's into the lathe to face it to the correct width...

 Checking to make sure we are dead on...

 Back into the lathe we go to begin to bore out the id to fit our custom EBB insert...

 After boring it out to the correct id, we'll check the fit.  Should slide in easily but not have any wiggle room, as the shell will constrict a bit during welding then open back up a bit after slotting.

 Now it's back to the lathe to turn down the od to a more respectable thickness..don't want to be porky, now do we?

 And a little blood later, we have our finished shell.

I'm working on the Ti forks for a couple of builds today, so will post up more pics soon.

cheers,

rody