this weekend was the north american hand built bicycle show.  i've been trying to astral-project myself there.  if you can't do that, these pictures are almost as good. 

Sheldon Brown of SheldonBrown.com died last night of an apparent heart attack. Many of us stumbled upon Sheldon Brown's EXPANSIVE website in our first attempts to upgrade our own rides. He is a legend and will be deeply missed. Today is the end of an era, like the day Schwinn declared bankruptcy. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family. More here.

Tubes are great. They stretch. You can jam them into a tire that’s too small. You can force them into tires that are too wide. You don’t have to be a mechanic with a college degree to change a flat.

 

Tires are a completely different story. We recently received two 1950s Hercules cruisers (pre-Raleigh merger). The rubber was pretty shot, so that was the first thing to go. The brand new Kenda 26 x 1 3/8 inch tires we had would not go on these vintage rims. We broke two tire irons trying to stretch the rubber. The rims were too big.

 

as you may have noticed, the phrase "a resounding success" gets thrown around a lot these days.
just yesterday i was saying that if i did not die while testing out the two speed fixed gear hub, it would be a so called resounding success. as this post proves, by that definition, i did indeed succeed. unfortunately, by any other definition the outcome is nowhere as lofty.
it shifts, it pedals forward fine, but it is a decidedly semi-fixed gear. on anything more than moderate back-pressure on the pedals, it slips. its the worst of both worlds. you always have to pedal but you can't brake by pedalling.
the pawls are slipping. if it had been the clutch that went i dont think it could shift anymore. in true dana scully fashion, i did a post-mortem. the autopsy confirmed that the pawls were the culprit. you can actually see where the ratchet ring squeezed the metal of the pawls in and back a little. and having spent some time filing those to shape, i can tell you, they are made of some

for the past few days i've been working on what just may be the next coolest thing ever. you know sturmey-archer aw three speed hubs? theyre somewhat of a classic. you see them all the time on old english three speeds. well it turns out that if you open them up, take out a few parts move over a few other parts and then grind them down a little, instead of a three speed, all of a sudden you have a two speed fixed gear hub on your hands. all the convenience of two different speeds but you can keep that lovely fixed gear feeling and you never have to involve one of those surly dingle cogs. you lose the highest gear, leaving you with 3:4 and 1:1. you have a regular gear and granny gear, or you can be cool and have regular and overdrive. id say you should man up and do the latter, but to each his own i guess.
i've read about this being done a few times before. Continued...