I devoted most of today to unicycle projects that I’ve been working on for what seems like forever. The first project today was a nice MUni ride! I’m very lucky to have a great trail within about 4 blocks of my shop so that’s where I rode.
I’ve been on the “South Beach Diet” and have lost about 15 pounds in that last couple months … makes a noticable difference not packing around that extra lard. The attached photo is me on my way down the trail about to cross a creek that the single track follows all the way. Beautiful trail!
After my ride I set to work: I’ve been making some extra wide hubs. I have all the parts done and was going to weld everything together but I didn’t like the looks of the flanges I made. The spoke holes were too close to the edge of the flange so I decided to make another set of flanges. The hard part of making flanges is drilling all those little spoke holes in the stainless steel flanges. I stack the flanges up and drill them all together but it takes a long time. Fortunately, it’s done on a CNC mill so once everything is set up and running the machine will take care of it’s self. While the flanges were being drilled I worked on other things.
I’ve been building another MUni. All that needed to be done was to convert a right handed 170mm Shimano crank to left hand. That process went pretty smooth so I went ahead and started converting another set of 170mm Shimano cranks to 138.5mm. Yes … they are 138.5mm … 135mm is too short and 140mm is too long! Here’s a link to some photos of the crank project:
http://www.unicyclist.com/gallery/albut00
With the Shimano crank converted and the hub flanges still drilling I assembled the new MUni. I must say that it’s kind of pretty. The brand new Gazz and new red KH saddle help the looks out a bunch. Here’s a link to a couple pictures of it along side my dirty, old (but also kind of pretty) MUni:
http://www.unicyclist.com/gallery/albus99
As you might know, I recently bought Jagur’s Summit 20" trials uni. I’ve never owned a 20" and thought it would be a good to have but more than that I wanted to check out it’s splined axle and cranks. The “protrusions” on the cranks barked my ankles right away so today, after the other projects and while the flanges were still being drilled I took on the Summit cranks.
It was really pretty easy to get rid of the protrusion. I machine so much stainless steel that I’ve forgotten how easy carbon steel (even 4140 alloy) is to machine. Those protrusions came off like butter! Here’s a link to some photo’s of that process:
http://www.unicyclist.com/gallery/albut01
All in all a very productive day and the flanges did finally get drilled. Tomorrow I’ll weld them together and perhaps have yet another photo gallery of the wide hubs to add to the collection.
Steve Howard
