Alex Wetmore is always busy with something…

Christine and I went for our second ski (sort of third for me) on Saturday. Visibility was low, but the snow was falling, the woods were quiet, and the crowds were light so it was a great day for us.

This is my first year of cross country skiing, but I’m really enjoying it so far. It reminds me of the types of mountain biking that I like. Thanks to Nate for letting me borrow his skis when we were out a few weeks ago. Here is a photo from that day:

Does anyone have a recommendation for their favorite place to go? So far we’ve gone to Gold Creek, Hyak, and Easton State Park, all near Snoqualmie Pass. Easton was our favorite.

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted a Rack Building Basics entry, but I still have some in the queue.

Today’s photo series is about making the eyelets that connect the rack to the fork or frame. There are a couple of ways of doing this, but this series focuses on doing it with brazed in tabs made of flat stock. This is similar to how dropouts are made.

The first step is making a slot in the end of the tube for the tab. I draw the slot and then use a hacksaw and a thin file to make it:

Now we need to cut a piece of flat stock to fit. I purchased 3′ of 1″ wide 4130 which is perfect for this purpose. You only need to make a single cut. I use the tubing as a gauge to how wide it should be.

The tab is the same width as the tubing:

Brazing just the tab in is probably strong enough. Note that I filed the end of the tube to slope the tubing towards the tab:

I like to fill the whole end of the tube with a “plug” of brass. To do this you heat the whole end of the tube and draw the brass around below the tab. I’d do a few tests first and cut them apart to see how well you do at pulling the brass in. It is a bit hard to see in this photo, but the whole end of the tube has brass in it.

After removing the flux I doa little work with a round file (12″ round which is about 10mm or 3/8″ in diameter) to make a nice clean scallop. The tab has also been bent to match the angle needed for this rack:

A bolt hole is drilled and a file is used to ease off the edges:

A final photo showing where this tab is used on the rack. It connects the stays to the fork blades:

At the start of the entry I mentioned that there are other alternatives. A nice and easy one is to braze a piece of tubing perpendicular to the stay and run the bolt through it.5/16 x 0.035 tubing is a nice fit for an M5 bolt. This is an especially good idea if you need a spacer to clear part of the fork blade. In this example the tubing is extended on the inside so that the rack can clear the fork blade even if the fenders aren’t installed. This is from the first rack that I built:

Another option is to simply flatten the tubing in a vise and drill a hole through it. I think that this looks a little less refined, but it is strong. Sorry, I don’t have any photos of this approach.

We came back from playing in the snow on Wednesday evening and watched a dead pigeon drop out of the sky.  We were a little startled and trying to figure out where it came from when Nate spotted a much larger bird flying to our neighbor’s roof.

We all sat inside the living room for 30 minutes and watched the hawk return, monitor the area, and collect his kill.

It’s pretty cool having birds of prey in an urban setting!

Based on our tiny Birds of Seattle guide I think this is a Cooper’s Hawk.

This is a normal internet-BOB (a bicyclemailing list)way of finishing out the year. I sort of missed it this year (spent too much time on the basement to read the list), so I’ll try doing it with the blog. There is bike and not bike stuff here to make all blog readers happy.

Not Bike

Le Creuset Omelette Pan — Le Creuset makes this item really difficult to buy, but it is amazing. I think that it is impossible to make a bad omelettewith it. The non-stick coating is not teflon and works really well. The cast iron retains heat really well, so the pan doesn’t cool down when you add food to it. We have one of their frying pans too, and it gets some use, but the omelette pan is used almost every day. We’ve owned other omelette pans, but none were as good as this. We have the smaller size (7 or 8″) and it is perfect for 2 egg omelettes.

I’ve tried to buy these as gifts and they are really hard to find. They are sometimes in Le Creuset “outlet” stores. Amazon and most kitchen stores don’t carry them.

One Car Family — Christine and I were a one car, one driver family from moving to Seattle in 1996 until 2002. Then we bought a new car, I got a driver’s license, and we bought a second new car. We sold our second car in April and don’t miss it at all. Cars are expensive. They can be handy tools, but we don’t need or benefit from two of them.

Fuzzy Logic Rice Cooker — We rarely use it for rice, but it is amazing for steel cut oats. One of my favorite foods,butI never liked standing around for 45 minutes stiring it. The rice cooker makes it better than I do. The timer means wecan have oatmeal ready when we wake up. I’m not a big kitchen gadget/appliance guy,but this one is great.

Virtual Computers– I replaced 3 servers with one physical machine. The new machine has about 30% of the power consumption of the previous 3 machines, is quieter, and takes up less space. This blog is hosted on a virtual computer.

Smaller Plates — For years I’ve wonderedwhy normal dinner plates hold more than one should eat. I doubt they’ve always been thisbig. I spent a while trying to findsmaller ones and finally did. Denby salad plates are the right size (9″, instead of 10 or 11″) for a normal sized meal. Their stonewear is really durable too, we’ve hadtheir dishes for a year and have chipped anything despite a few drops. They do make full size plates which we use on special occasions.

Eating Fish — I’ve been lacto-ovo vegetarian since my junior year of high school. In 2006 I started eating fish to get more food in common with Christine. My first experiences with fish weren’t great, I didn’t get the subtle flavor and didn’t like the texture. This year I’ve come to really appreciate the flavor, enjoy cooking it, and the lean protein is probably good for me. I am careful with the sources of my fish and worry about sustainability.

Bike

New Clubs — I’ve been riding with point83 and playing Rollo (mini bike polo) this year. It’s fun riding with a younger and less serious crowd. I’d like to finda group that did some more weekend rides but with a similar mentality.

Metal Fabricating — It was only last January when I first lit a torch. In March I bought my own. Since then I’ve built about 5 racks and have learned a lot more. This year Ihope to do even more. Fabricating my own bike parts and modifications is really enjoyable and a nice way to grow the hobby. This week I got a lathe which will take me to the next step of fabrication.

Porteur Racks — Building racks has given me the chance to really get used to big front platform racks. I really like carrying gear up front and have plans to build racks for all of my bikes. The porteur rack does most of what I used a trailer for and most of what I used panniers for. It’s always there too. I wish that there were some good production models.

Bicycle Fixation’s Knickers — In 2006 I discovered the Ibex Breakaway Jacket. A great jacket, but I needed something great for my legs. The Bicycle Fixation knickers do the job. I have them in hemp and wool. I like both, but I like the hemp ones better (unless it is raining hard, then the wool ones are warmer). The knickers are comfortable on and off the bike, lightweight,look pretty good (for bike clothing…pants would be even better) and work well in a wide range of temps. Below around 40F I put very light tights underneath. 40F to 65F they are perfect by themselves.

Flat Pedals (no retention) – about 10 years I’ve ridden everywhere with clipless pedals. Since I ride pretty much every day and don’t like to change shoes I end up wearing my bike shoes all day. I didn’t even really think that there was another option. When I went to the Oregon BCA show I didn’t want to take two pairs of shoes and knew that I’d be on my feet almost all day. Flat pedals with good walking shoes made a lot of sense. So I picked up a pair of the MKS Sneaker pedals and put them on my commuter. A week later I didn’t really miss the clipless pedals much. Now I have one bike permanently setup with flat pedals and might do another.

Bike Friday Tikit — It folds small, it rides well, it is reasonably priced for a USmade product.I converted it to a 7sp internal gearhub (which is how they should sell it stock) and it’s a great bike. It’s my city rider, my folder, and my travel bike. I’ve owned a Bike Friday New World Tourist for years and hardly used it, but the Tikit is getting a lot of miles.

Gifford Pinchot Tour — Bicycle Touring isn’t new for me, but this tour was incredible. 6 months later I still think about it often. This was the best 5 days that I’ve spent on a bicycle.

alex

The workshop remodel is done enough to do other stuff with the basement besides work on the basement.  I’m really happy with how it came out, the new shop layout has much more space and is better organized.

In the photo above you can see the two main workbenches.  The one on the left is more wood oriented while the one on the right is more metal/brazing/bicycle oriented.  It’s nice having these close together, in the old layout they were in different corners of the basement and so tools were never put away properly.

I went back and forth on building vs buying workbenches and ended up mostly buying to save time.  The bike workbench is 8′ long, maple top, and has sturdy legs.  I liked it because it is high enough to put rolling tool cabinets underneath it.  I bought the last two 4′ power strips at Home Depot and used those to get 20 outlets along the back of the workbench.  Probably overkill, but they’ll come in handy.

My old bike workbench had small bins for random parts along the back and I found them useful.  This time I left more space for them.  I’m still experimenting with the spacing and bin size.

The wood workbench has a commercial top with a couple of vises.  This photo makes me laugh because you can see my old bike workbench on the right, it is tiny (and cluttered, as always) in comparison.  I built that a few years ago as a potting bench for Christine, but it ended up becoming my main workbench even though it is too small and not really sturdy enough.

Bike storage is similar to the old basement, 6 bike hooks set at 14″ intervals alternating up/down.  It looks a little messy in this photo because my trailer is jammed in there (I haven’t found a good location for it yet). 

I bought a small lathe (7×8 inch, soon to be 7×14 inch) on Craigslist and set it up on this workbench.  I’ve only started playing with it today and so far I’ve only made a little gear holder to hold some of the threading gears.  I’m enjoying playing with this and think it’ll be useful.  My first bike projects will be some taillight housing and a copy of the Hub-Bub Rohloff Shift Adapter.  If I get really fancy I’d like to build a cable travel adapter to make a 9sp Shimano bar-end shifter shift a 9sp SRAM internal hub gear.

There is tire and wheel storage under the stairs.  I need to clean up the random pile of stuff sitting on top of that, eventually the trailer will probably live there.

Brewing equipment is behind the wood workbench and is much better organized.  It used to be scattered in bins around the basement,now it is all on these two sets of shelves.

There is still more to do,but it can happen slowly instead of all being done today.  I’m still organizing and figuring out what should live where.  I need a place to store metal (right now it is on the floor under the lathe) and need to build a door into the crawlspace.  The back wall (which has the wood storage and connects to the crawl space) is a bit of a dumping ground.

Overall it probably doesn’t look like much, but I think it is a big improvement over the old space.  You can see photos of that taken two years ago.

Thanks to Christine, Rory, and Kathy for their help on different parts of the project and to Jimmy for his idea of combining the storage and laundry rooms.  This layout seems to have maximized the available space.

Thurston County(south of Seattle, where Olympia is located)was hit hard by the heavy rain here a few weeks ago. While my basement has some minor flooding there were farms there with many feet of water rushing through their fields, barns, work vehicles, and houses. Many Western Washington residents rely on these farms for locally grown organic food.

(click link for more photos)

Larry Leveen sent me this first hand view of it earlier this month. He has been volunteering at Boistfort Valley Farm during his days off to help clean up from the flooding.

It’s hard to comprehend the exact impact of having say six feet of standing water on your property/in your house. I can’t believe how stressful that would be. I’d probably freak out.

Yesterday I was at Rising River Farm, where their vehicles were on high ground and their house was spared, but their outbuildings here hit hard. Still, an older tractor that was disassembled now has mud inside the engine case — how will that ever come out? Beats me. We built high storage shelves. a loft and put a second story on their pump house so the well and tank could be raised up 8 feet. There is a lot of help from the community. A downtown pizza place sent a bunch
of pies down to the work party and by the time I got home, there was a message from them offering to do that and for any future work parties on any local farms. The woman got my name from a mutual friend and she’s callling me to offer that. How cool?

Today we took pizza and hot coffee to a work party at our friend Diana’s place, Simply Life Farm where we demo’d wrecked greenhouses, clean and sorted things (trash, recyclables,salvageables). Diana lost a bunch,but has been busy helping other folks who have been hit worse. That’s the kind of people I am fortunate to know. It’s humbling.

Every night I have been dreaming of mud.

I’d have to spend about 3-4 hours of time in the car to go down and volunteer, so I’m helping out financially. Olyblog seems to have the best information on what is going on with the flooded farms. The Seattle Times also had an article on the Lewis County flooding and recovery yesterday.

During the last week we finished the new wall, moved almost everything in the basement, and then today I took down the old wall.

It’s hard to tell from this photo, but the new space is pretty huge.  It’ll make a great workshop after much more work.  It is about 50% larger than the biggest workshop I had thought I’d be able to build.

The laundry/storage room came out nicely too:

The wood rack, dust collector, and general building materials will move out of the way of course.  The wall came out the perfect size for 3 48″ wide by 18″ deep shelves.

Now I just need to figure out how to get the old wall to the dump.  I hate throwing away this much stuff, especially since it appears to have been built in the last couple of decades.  The old storage room was insulated for some reason and that really increases the amount of debris.  There is a lot more to come, I still need to remove most of the ceiling and the back and outside walls.

Jimmy gave me a good idea on the basement layout after my last post. Here is what I’m going for:

This setup combines the laundry and storage area and keeps them away from the workshop area.

In the last week I’ve built the new wall for the laundry/storage room. Rory came over on Saturday and helped me hang the drywall and plywood that finish it. I’ve been putting on drywall mud since Sunday and the last coat went on yesterday. The wall is drywall on the laundry/storage side and plywood on the bike/workshop side. Hopefully by this weekend we’ll be moving items into the new storage room from the old and preparing to take out the walls that made the old storage room.

Now that the wall is moving along I’ve been thinking about cabinets and workbenches. I have good enough wall cabinets scavenged from places like The Restore, but I’d like to get a few more cabinets with drawers. My best one right now is an old punch card filing cabinet, but those are very hard to find. It’s too bad because they are perfect for holding bike parts and tools. The drawers aren’t too deep, they are very well made, and 20 years ago they were being thrown away everywhere.

Since I can’t find another punchcard catalog I’ve been looking at some stuff actually built for basements and mechanics. The Gladiator stuff made by Whirlpool has caught my eye. It is a little pricey, but appears to be well made, is on sale at Sears, is domestically produced, and is nicely modular. I like that the cabinets roll around, fit under the workbench, and you can mount a small worksurface on top of them.

It won’t be this fancy (this looks more like a kitchen than a workshop), but I might end up with a couple of pieces:

This was taken after I collectedmy stuff from the BikeShack’s homebrew tasting benefit party on Sunday. It was a great event and raised a good amount of money for the Shack. They were broken into a few months ago and many of the valuable tools were stolen. Their rent also went up quite a bit recently. The benefit was raising money to help with both issues.

A pretty heavy full size cooler up front, three homebrew kegs (one mostly full, two mostly empty) in the trailer. Total load probably in the 100-150lb range.

I’m guessing that Bike Friday wouldn’t approve, but the setup handled great.

This load is nothing compared to Remi, Lee, and Kelly from point83 moving Remi by bike from Lynnwood to Roosevelt in the rain and snow. You can’t tell from this photo, but that is a full size mattress on the trailer closest to the house.

We’re having record rains in Seattle.Seattle is known as a wet place, but I usually think of it as a damp place. It rains a lot here, but not very hard. This weekend that changed and we’re getting a few inches of rain per day.

This morning I woke up and checked on the basement and found water. The storage room had a 1/4″ puddle across most of it and it was making a little stream running across the basement floor to the low spot on the other side of the house. We’ve had flooding like this in the past, so I wasn’t too surprised. However I was getting sick of vacuuming a few gallons of it up every 30 minutes, so I checked outside.It’s just a little damp now, but this room had a lot of standing water this morning. In the second photo you can see the remains of the stream that ran across our basement.

Our house has french drains and I found that the east-side one was not functioning. The water was leaking out of the inlet pipe at a high rate and pouring down the foundation wall where it would come up through cracks in the floor. Christine and I made a hasty attempt to patch it with duct tape, but it was clear that wasn’t going anywhere. So we went to the hardware store and bought 50′ of new gutter downspouts. Now we have a temporary and very hacky gutter system, but the basement is dry. Our french drains were built with the wrong type of tubing, so we’ll probably need to repair/replace them instead of just being able to clean them out.

The temporary gutters:

We’re lucky, I know that many other houses in Seattle are getting more than puddles in their basements. The roads are a nightmare too, many of them have very deep puddles and we saw some sewer drains that were spewing water instead of accepting it. I hope everyone is staying dry out there.

Anyone know of a good french drain/gutterperson in Seattle?