A New Project is Brewing

Happy in the car
Originally uploaded by Snak Shak

I completed my second wheel and brought that in for a final blessing from the high priest of spoked things this afternoon. The wheel, which will be the front half of a pair of Deore/Velocity Synergy wheels I built for the Rawland, turned out well. I took this home from Hiawatha laced but not tensioned or trued. In the basement, I got the wheel up to tension, fixed an out-of-round problem and then got it trued up quite well. Jim tweaked it a bit but it only needed some minor attention, so a pat on the back to myself. I am feeling as smugly satisfied as Coltrane the Cat for that one.

Last night over glass of wine at the Dakota, my wife confided in me that she is curious about riding single speed after I sang its praises this year. That set the wheels in motion (no pun intended) and I am hatching scheme involves building a flip-flop single speed wheel using a Sun CR18 rim for a Phillips 3-speed that is cluttering up the garage. I'll keep the 3-speed bits but swap out the wheels for a true single, drop the gearing down to about 64 inches or so and see what happens.

I think it will be a success. She likes the bike; it's comfortable and upright so she can look around on it, and it's got nice old British style. Worst case scenario and she hates this contraption, then I have a second set of Sun rims and an extra flip-flop hub laying around, all of which I can find a use for in about 4 minutes.

With the holidays nearly over, it's good to turn to another project to fill the winter evenings.