hi i'm paul brodie this is my shop on the other side of the camera is mitch
he's recording thank you and we're going to work on a fork today what i have here
is basically the evolution of the gator blade this is the first generation second and third
so the first generation had a straight crown where where the crown is in line with the steer tube and
the blades come down and are curved we made maybe i'm i'm guessing now a hundred of these
and and some collectors really like these because they were the first ones and they're
somewhat rare now and hard to find this is the second generation it got offset
i did a lot of these crowns myself on the lathe and the mill and this is a heavier
tube and it's got a dropout made out of steel and the wall thickness down here is point nine
the last generation which was the most sophisticated it had an extrusion for the crown
and the blades were at 0.7 mil which is nice and light a little bit of flex and it had
the alloy dropout so in a nutshell this is the evolution of the gator blade i know a guy he's
tall and he wants to use this particular fork on his frame but the steer tube is too short
so what we're gonna do today is extend this so we're gonna make one fork
out of two forks we're gonna we're gonna make a cut here and cut this one off at the right length
and join this onto here here's the inside of a steer tube you can see here is the butt
this is the strongest part and this is going to be from here to here and then you have the
tapered section so i'm going to this is going to be a hacksaw cut here and i want this to be about
a little over one inch between here and here and then there's going to be a tube inserted inside
so i've got a tube here it's chromoly it's fairly thick wall 083 we're going to put that tube inside
i'll put a chamfer on this here to make it a little lighter
a little nicer i'll also put a shaft here and that's for the tig welds so you get some
penetration going and i'll be all around the tube be tig welded there'll be a little a little bump
in the in the weld file it smooth sand it so if you look at it you can't even tell
it's been extended i've got a a quilt tube off a stem and if i put this down
it stops right there so if i mark it see i've got a mark there i got a red felt pen mark
so that tells me where the butt starts because i have to know that so if i pull that out
i've made a mark there so that's where it is that's where the butt starts internally
and then i want about so much here that's about an inch inch and a bit inch and an eighth
that's where the axle is going to come and then the insert will go down that far now i
have to make sure that after the insert comes up here and i put on the steered tube off this
fork a donor fork i still have room inside the top so that the quill stem can can go down far
enough because it would be kind of silly to extend it and not have the quill go down enough
so you have to take all this into consideration first step is the hacksaw
i'm told the steer tube has to be eight and a quarter inches long
that's its final size maybe a little shorter but we're gonna make it eight and a quarter
and so this is how i find out how long i have to cut it so this will be the donor
i think we'll go over to the lathe now and i'll sand off the paint
we'll face the end put a little chamfer on there
so we'll have have to check the size now to make sure there's a little bit of a fit with
the tube that goes in what i'd like ultimately is size on size where the tube has to be just
or the steer tube has to be hit just very lightly and it goes on that's the fit that i'm looking for
i mentioned it was 083 wall and i think it's it's a couple thou over
well it's a thou and a half over seven eighths of an inch so that makes it
.8765 so if i if i take a telescoping gauge
i'll just hold this in the vise very lightly so i open it up i move it over center
oh it's it's quite oversized it's like 880 881
so this is gonna well actually that's i think what's happening is it's not
round i must have measured on the large part because if that was really five
thou larger this would fall in so that's good that's that's the kind of fit i want
so i'll take the burrows off this and then we'll check the idea of this
okay that's the bird let's see what size this one is
it's smaller than the last one it's the same size as the tube it's one and a half thou
over so that's good so this is going to work fine this piece of tubing
so if i cut this out at two and a half inches or two and three quarters that should be fine
actually two and a half or a little bit less than two and a half
i just use the file and i put a little chamfer it's it it's not an angle like
that it's more like a roundedness a little bit of a roundedness so that if the tube is
flexing if the steroid tube is flexing there's no sharp edge that might cause a stress riser
i'm going to set up a boring bar now and i'm going to put a slight angle on the inside
because it doesn't have to be the 083 right out to the very very end
so just makes a little nicer job i'll do the second side now
this is my sanding stick can you see how it's a quarter inch rod and it's got a slot made by a
hacksaw what i do is i wrap some emery cloth in there around and i put it in a hand drill
i want to take the rust out of there because that can that could stop that insert from going down
i just made this and i just used a hand hack saw in the vise
you can you can make one of these too you don't need any fancy tools
wind this up so that fits inside
there we go i've got some press lube here what this does it helps to stop any any scoring going
on if you press a steel insert into steel sometimes it can gall it picks up one metal
moves from one piece onto the other and then it gets really hard to put in so i'm going to use
a little bit of a press lube and i'm going to put it inside but i'm going to i'm going to start from
about here because i don't want any of this in the world area so i put a little bit on my finger
don't need much at all go inside and put just kind of smooth it around
if i use a hammer i'm going to deform the end don't want that so i'm going to use an
aluminum block and the aluminum is softer than the steel than the chromoly so the halfway point
is right about there
let's see how this works should just tap in nicely that was good that's that's exactly what
i wanted that's that's a good press fit that's that's about size on size that's what you call
it when they're both the same size so there's no slop this should go on pretty easy now i
want to line up the back i know this one's a bit looser so i'm not going to use any press lube here
we're gonna do a little tig welding now
i think what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna do a little bit on one side a little bit on the other
side i'll i'll go back and forth around i won't just start and go all around i can use a
a slightly larger rod this time this is o45 most of the welding i do on on steel frames is 0.35
so it's ten thou larger i tried to make the world slightly proud
so that i got something i can file off and and not have any holes afterwards
if you've noticed as well i don't have the torch at an angle i've got the torch i've got the
tungsten aiming right down so the heat is going right into the metal i get lots of penetration
i don't want to just have a surface weld i want it to go down as far as the inserted tube
oops a little little air bubble happening there i don't know if
there's a bit of dirt i thought i cleaned everything pretty well
i suppose when i file it up i'll see if there's anything under there
little bubble or anything i think it's okay i'm just going to use a small file here and
how long can it take it can't take that long
so always go at a 45 if you go at a 90 it's too easy to gouge so 45 is good
so you can see i'm only taking off the least amount
i haven't seen any air bubbles yet so i guess i caught him
good so no air holes no low spots i don't have to go back to the tig
i'm gonna grab my belt sander give this a little polish and then some memory cloth
invisible welding that's what i call it
yeah that's that's what i want where it all looks the same
and you don't see the standing notch from the belt sander
it looks like brand new
and you can't tell that that's been extended unless someone told you
i might have showed you how to align a fork earlier but i can't remember if i did but
so we're going to go through the process here right now so this is
something that when you put the fork in you close this screw here it holds it against this face
and then this piece here is 100 millimeters and so that simulates an axle
actually it's not 100 millimeters it's 95 so you have to have a space on each side
so the actual spacing of the dropout should be 101 millimeters so it's it's it's it's one
millimeter larger than the axle so it always goes on and the spacing is 101 can you see how there's
a little bit more space here than over here so i need to pull these blades slightly this way
so i'll give it a little pull so i'm going to give it a little pull on both of them just
a little pull a little pull it's a little pull
it's pretty even it's not way out and it's at 101 so that's good
so that's the first stage of aligning a fork the second stage is to make sure that the dropouts the
axle is in line with the crown all this is is is a piece of aluminum it's an extrusion
and then i have an axle here and so what i'll do is i'll cite i'll hold it up into the dropout
and i'll sight down there that should be level with this and according to my eye that's level
it could be out a few thou but that's close enough and the next stage is i'm going to take off these
so that i can see a little better and i've got a fixture here that got made years ago
and it fits into the axle slots it's a little bit wider so you so see how the how the fork
blades have to spring a little bit so there's equal pressure and then you lower this down
and it should be equal on each side and according to my eye that looks good so that's the third
way of the third part of aligning a fork and the last step
is to align the dropouts for that we use the campy tools they go in
like that and these might be out a little bit not bad though you can it is out just just a little
bit these these faces aren't quite lining up can can you see how there's a so what i do how how i
align that i give a little bit of pressure and it doesn't take that much force because these
aren't hugely strong so there's a little bit of force and this one needs a little bit too
a little bit that way so so as you hold them together you shouldn't see in
any daylight there and that looks good so those are the four ways that you align a fork
that's it for today it's a shorty hope you enjoyed it see you next week stay safe