A Wednesday in March...

Hey folks,

Long day today so this post will be a bit short and sweet.

I've been needing a new piece of tooling for a while and have not made time to build it...today was the day. I needed a new heat sink to be placed into the seat tube to control the structural shape during welding. Without it, the junction of the top tube and seatstays can pull the tube into an oval, resulting in an internal dimension that requires a lot of reaming to open back up. This little guy falls into the work smarter, not harder category.

Once I have a bit of time, I'll put all the fabrication pics together into a short video so y'all can see how to build one. Total cost about 2 hours and 20 bucks.

A batch of Ti from Titanium Joe landed for the April Luv Handle order, so I started parting it up into the required sizes.

As the rough lengths are around 20+ feet, they are normally cut to 48" lengths for shipping. I was gathering (and paying for) quite a bucket of cut offs, so Joe was able to adjust the cut length so I am not wasting as much material and money. Here's the difference a little adjustment of the chop saw can make...at 2 bucks an inch, it adds up.

I also roughed in Roger's front triangle so it will be ready for welding next day.

The real story today is below. Cubby, our aussie, was scheduled to have his manhood snipped today. My son was disapointed that Cubby had never had a chance to get his schwerve on. Well, last fall we were riding at Vultures Knob in the evenings and taking Cubby along to run the trail with us. As we would be getting ready, he'd run over to Tims house and check out Sierra, Tim's blue heeler. We didn't think much of it until this week when we ran out to the knob for the first time this season. Cubs ran up to Tim's house as usual, and when I went to get him to hit the trail, there he sat in the grass, surrounded by five puppies that look astonishingly just like him.

The kids could not resist, so we brought one of his offspring home with us.

Meet Frankie, our newest trail dog. So, happy ending. Cubs got his groove on, brought his son home with us, and got snipped today.

cheers,

rody