hi I'm Paul Brodie I'm here with Mitch she's behind the camera and this is my shop welcome
this is is video number 11 one of the challenges I've found is to think up a new project every week
I said to Mitch a couple weeks ago I said if we ever do the alignment gauge you know that I'm
almost out of ideas well yes and no I do have a list of projects but if you do a project if
I do a project I need either a part to work on awesome metal and of that whole list here the only
only only project we can do today is the alignment gauge this is one that I made a long long time ago
I think in 1985 and what it does it it checks the down tube and the top tube off the bottom bracket
on a bicycle frame so this is lost it really well there's nothing wrong with it but I'd like to make
one that's a little fancier and more ergonomic and and balanced if I okay the bottom bracket goes
right here obviously it's not balanced I thought I would make one that has some balance let's start
right here we'll go to the lathe I'm going to make this a little bit smaller and I'm gonna put and a
neural on there because you have to move this with your fingers this one's smooth it works fine but
if I had a little bit of a neural there that would that would be good so first step is the lathe
there we go that's a pretty nice no I'll go with that so I'm gonna I'm gonna switch on the lathe
and the Chuck's gonna spin I'm gonna switch off the lathe into the top and then finish it off by
tapping bras which is a fairly soft material so this is red loctite it's a threadlocker
it's good stuff okay so that that's done what we've done is to refabricate that part there
this one's a little nicer it's got a neural on there and the bronze or the brass makes it look
a little different I think the next thing is to make the pad it's gonna be this pad here I want
it to be a little bit wider just a little bit wider because this is inch and a half and the
bottom brackets are off an inch and a half those are gonna be the two holes let's go set that up
in the mill okay what I'm gonna do here is I got the digital readout set up what I'm doing is is
spacing the holes cuz if defined I drill on the stainless steel pad inch in half and then on the
I also drew it in ha those holes are gonna be perfect
so I don't know if you can see but those holes up are perfectly spaced they're not
even out of that I like that so as I turn it I'm I'm pressing down so that the tap
starts if you don't put it downward pressure the tap isn't going to bite
it's good to use your hands I hope if you're watching these videos it inspires you to use
your hands make something fix something modify something whatever it is just use those hands
fold it over the cardboard so when I cut it see both sides will be perfectly equal because I'll
fold it so we'll go over to the bandsaw now the vertical band saw will cut that out and then
we'll make it smooth on the belt sander and then this piece is done and then we'll start working
on the on the actual arm I'm gonna mark out the hole here which is going to be the threaded hole
so the adjuster can have the hole there and then I want this to be rounded and slowly get larger
that's that's basically what I want so to make that radius there I'm gonna do that on the rotary
table because I don't want to have to file it I'm gonna mark this out and then I'm gonna go
to the bandsaw rough out the out the profile okay so it goes like so and this is only an inch long I
don't want to I don't have to cut the whole thing so I'm gonna measure I'm gonna go down an inch
so that's what we ended up with we've got a nice nice radius all around next
we have to drill the hole logit and tap that okay
so I've switched it off holding the leaver down still loosening the Chuck
remember these lines here I want to take off all this metal from right from about
right there I want to want to take all that off and then I can smooth in in that radius there
so we'll take this out I'll take off the birds will flip it over side to
I need to do this in in stages because if I'm going to do four segments I can do one
segment at a time because if I if I hacksaw this off I can't hold that anymore and this
is at a taper now and to have that as a taper as well doesn't work so I have to do segments
so what I'll do is I'll ban sore up to here and then I'm gonna I'm gonna hollow out here make it
lighter so that's basically what I'm looking for I want to cut out some slots like that
we'll go mock out this one here Oh hot so that off hold it here do that slide
it's coming along so we got two more
later I did a little sanding I've narrowed everything down a little bit to make it a
little sleeker it is lighter I noticed that I got a balance point right here right now and I
put some marks where I want to make some holes so I think the next step to do is to go to the
mill these two will be the same and this one's smaller because the end has to chamfer in so I
can open up a little bit see this that's how you move the tool over it's called
a single point tool there's only one cutter so if I that's 50,000 hundreds a larger hole
so I switch it on and switch it off and bring it down
I got a spiral point tap so I can just wind it down I don't
have to go back and forth like I would with the machine tap down
this needs to be fairly tight
I'm happy with that we're gonna go back to the mill now I'm going to get rid of the
thread I'm going to make a quarter-inch hole because that's what size the shaft
is so after I drilled the hole I'll remit and that that shaft should just
that's it okay so this is how I hold it so I'm gonna round these corners now I'm
gonna round them and I have to do a shape here I'm not quite sure what I want but
let's see what happens I don't want to go too far past here because then it's gonna
make that area there a little thinner so I need to be careful see this space here
right there I want the same space up here so that's why I'm that's why the holes were all
sent offset a little bit because I want a rounded because that's where my hand goes
okay I'm gonna say that's close enough now now we'll get the file out
I have my belt sander I have my gloves on I was using this
one last week and I felt broken it it gave me a good whack so safety third
I rip the Emery cloth in half then I forget right in here if I have
had the full width it doesn't contour as well I
spent quite a while working on these these corners here that was not a quick process
what the scotch-brite does it kind of makes a uniform surface so it's kind of
a nice we have counted sont allen screws here these these tend to hold really well
if you've ever put them in try to get them out later they're hard to get out
so I'm not gonna use any Loctite I like how that ended up there's a little just
a little tiny little shoulder there just off of the pad I like that little detail
so I'll take it over to the vise now take a file I'll take off the shop pages around
there and then we just have to make the wait at the back nine five four someone even wrote
it on there and it's a really good bronze it has a tensile strength equal to chromoly
I was kind of surprised when I learned that so I'm going to machine it down a
little bit I want it to be a little little bit smaller on the OD and then I'm gonna put on an
eighth degree taper I'm gonna drill a hole and remit and that's where the shot is gonna go on
let's go clean that end up
that's the counterweight why don't we start out at 30 I think that's way too long okay well it's
okay to stop long are you filming this I am oh you are okay so it's too heavy we're gonna take
off about an inch at a time okay so we took off about an inch just a little bit not bad
look at that if we took off another eight to an inch something like that oh yes the red stuff
and do we need any luck tape oh yeah we need luck I'm just something else
to take a center punch I'll put some punch marks there what it
does is to flare up the metal of the net in that area and they won't go in so easy
excuse me the moment of truth that looks good that's balanced okay so a frame you're gonna
look at a frame so what we're gonna do is just to take off the pan so I tried not to take off
any extra metal do the same thing to this side and then we'll just see if this frame
is okay so I'm just bringing a bit of masking tape here because normally when I'm checking
a frame its roar I just put the felt pen right on but probably hard to see felt pen on top of
the brown so how you use an alignment gauge this really needs to be faced but this is
how you use the tool so let there you go a little bit of a gap and then I flip it over
oh I got more of a gap so what that tells me is that the frame I always put a mark on
there the frame has to go that way because if you don't put a mark and you pull it and then
you can't remember which way you went so you always make them on let's check the seat too
and see if that's one way or the other okay this feels hauling this on here this feels
a lot straighter this way okay so I'm very very close not quite touching very close
huge gap so the frame has to come this way it's gotta go the frame has to go that way
okay what's happening here is that each of them has to come the same way which is better than
one to wanting to go one way and the other to wanting to go the other way because when
you you see how the tubes are joined here a little bit when you pull this to this way it
wants to pull this tube that way a little bit as well so this tube has to pull this way and
this is the actual workbench we use for many many years so you see this bar here there's
a reason that bar is right there cuz look you can put a foot there that's really good because
now I'm pushing a gate to my first I get a sense of how much force I'm putting on there
so put some force on there so it looks like it's fairly close now
so that's how you align a frame you have to put force on the tube and
then it moves all right so that's our alignment gauge I think we're done for
the day thank you for watching hope you like this see you next week stay safe