What have you fettled today?

[Mr Larrington]

Installed a desk fan in the Estate Office.  More complicated than just plugging it in, coz I had to shut down a couple of network drives.

[cycleman]

Removing the front boom of the trice and cleaned the rust off, regressed and replaced it 

[jsabine]

Removing the front boom of the trice and cleaned the rust off, regressed and replaced it 

Part of your testing protocol?

[cycleman]

Yes     . Spell checkers 

[Mr Larrington]

Yes     . Spell checkers 

The autocorrect on my fondleslab is getting quite well trained these days; it knows now that the word "disgraced" will almost certainly be followed by "former", "defence", "secretary", "Liam" and "Fox".  Recently I had cause to describe members of Britain First as "nutbars"; it suggested "Nuttalls"

[ElyDave]

I had a colleague, Colin Daffern

MS word spellcheck came up with Colon Deafen

[T42]

Well, yesterday I didn't have enough beans for my lunchtime chilli con carne so I bulked it up with lentils.  Come evening the chilli winds were blowing.

Anyway, fettledom: I screwed my daughter's broken neck to a board and clamped it up in a vice. Tomorrow I'll have at it with a kitchen knife and the hot air gun.

[Torslanda]

Good thing we know what you mean . . .

[Kim]

Finished the repairs to the Red Baron.  Chiefly, fitting the right kind of front derailleur^[1].  Also crimped a new spade connector onto the dangling cable for the lights, and replaced the bottle cage which had been converted into a super-lightweight model by the slide along the road.

Then, out of curiosity, and since the bike was mounted in the turbo trainer, I had a go at pedalling it.  FuckingHellHowPainful.  I suspect that once the road rash heals, I'll have to stick to saddles for a bit until the bruising subsides.

Also swapped the Schrader tubes in the Brompton for Presta ones, because the great thing about standards.


_{[1] Recumbentists and tourists take note: FD-R453 is the magic front mech that shifts road-sized chainrings with a MTB-shifter-compatible pull ratio.}

[JonBuoy]

Cobbled together a pull through for the tube on my Camelbak.  It was 

[Cudzoziemiec]

Attempting to replace a bottom bracket. Cannot remove drive-side of present one. Installed by LBS, I think they employ a gorilla. Or maybe an elephant. Or power tools. (Yes, I do know it's left-hand thread on right-hand side.)

[Vince]

Started taking my daughter's busted-neck bass apart. Gawd, it's horrible: hollow nut (fractured) and neck shimmed with a tiny piece of plastic.  The electronics are probably vile as well.  Annoying thing is that a set of bass nut files will run me about 80€ and I'm never likely to use them again.

I'm not sure they will cover bass strings, but I'm awaiting delivery of a set of these from china. £1.70 inc postage seems not a lot if they are crap.

[Kim]

Attempting to replace a bottom bracket. Cannot remove drive-side of present one. Installed by LBS, I think they employ a gorilla. Or maybe an elephant. Or power tools. (Yes, I do know it's left-hand thread on right-hand side.)

Contrive an arrangement of bolts and washers and gaffer tape to hold the tool and spanner in place, then attempt to pedal it off.  Works best on recumbents, as you're not limited to body weight + arm strength.  A turbo trainer probably helps, too.

[Cudzoziemiec]

How can I pedal it off when, in order to access the BB cups, I've had to remove the cranks? Anyway, I removed it by simple means of wheeling it to LBS (they're pretty close) and smiling.  (I have in the past brought them doughnuts, they know me... )

[Kim]

The spanner acts as a crank.  You don't really need a pedal.

[Cudzoziemiec]

In other words, foot on a spanner? Might, as you say, work on a turbo trainer, but basically it's just "use a bigger spanner", isn't it?

Anyway, seems I might have got the wrong length bottom bracket now. 

[Kim]

In other words, foot on a spanner? Might, as you say, work on a turbo trainer, but basically it's just "use a bigger spanner", isn't it?

Or at least use a bigger muscle, while restraining the bike frame in a useful manner.

Anyway, seems I might have got the wrong length bottom bracket now. 

Ah yes, BTDT.  I've probably had the full set of lengths by now...

On a related note, after removing the damaged front mech from the Baron, I discovered a grub screw on the derailleur post.  It turns out that the thick, seat-tube-diameter part of the post bolts onto the thinner piece brazed to the front part of the boom.  In a minor moment of genius, whoever designed this made the drilling in the thicker piece eccentric, so by loosening the grub screw it can be rotated to adjust the derailleur's effective chainline.  Which is good because it means bottom bracket length is much less critical, but bad because it means you've got yet another axis of adjustment to fuck around with in the quest for a properly indexing front mech.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Ah, like V brakes where you have numerous flat, concave and convex washers to enable you to adjust height, up-down angle and toe-in angle all at the same time; so whenever you've got one right, it puts the others out.

[TheLurker]

Whereas putting a bike rack on is a piece of cake.  Which I have done.  Temporary reinstatement of bike rack, model aeroplane, carrying, for the use of.  The hope is that I can try the glider out on one (or more) of the local slopes all of which are short ride from home.

Tell you what though that rack is coming off by Tuesday morning.

[Gattopardo]

Bought the wrong pad infills, thought it would fit in a road caliper instead bought the xtr infills

[Karla]

Building up one of these frames, I realise that the top tube cable routing meant I had nowhere to put my 8 speed Shimano downtube shifters.  I'm hoping to take it some fairly gnarly places so would like to avoid STIs and 10 speed - especially as the 10 speed STIs I could transfer across are currently playing up and may be at the end of their lives ...

... but then I had a brainwave!  My old pair of 10 speed Campag TT shifters, which I've replaced with return-to-centre models, will fit in the bar ends and I can shimergo them to an 8 speed drivetrain!  Bodgetastic!

[T42]

Started fishing for the broken end of cable inside my RH shifter, managed to clamp a grip wrench on the frayed end but broddling it out of there is going to take witchcraft.

[Si S]

An entire bedroom suite of Ikea furniture...Oh my word, knackered.

[T42]

Witchcraft duly applied - all it needed was a Mighty Oath and a little blood. That, and to pull the rubber hood back far enough that it didn't foul the funny wee lever that connects the shifter trigger to the mechanism, so that it would move round far enough to get the blob on the end of the cable opposite the hole. Blood was frayed end under fingernail, always a joy.  Replaced the cable.

Have also been flattening the sole of a new plane, an early '60s Stanley N° 6 in lovely condition. It came in the original box with the Stanley-imprinted tissue wrapper and set of instructions.  It did actually take shavings straight off but a couple of hours work will get it ready for jointing. Luvly.

Collected the filings from above and plonked them in vinegar in my rusty-nail jar to make iron acetate for darkening wood.

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

Finished my Strong and Stable shower cubicle.  Just need to add the shower thingy..


Oh, and clean the floor.