I have been thinking and researching and thinking some more, but I still don’t have much in the way of progress to report. Also the injured finger has been breaking open and bleeding all over things, which can get a little messy as well as not safe because of spreading a growth medium for germs, so I took a walk to the CVS and bought a fresh box of bandages using the last bit of money left in the gift card this one gig I work uses to pay me. But seriously, I really had to buy a box of bandaids yesterday. When I take the old bandaid off the clean the finger I’m constantly snagging the flap of skin still attached to the finger and pulling it up and causing the injury to bleed like mad, but the flap is still alive so I need to keep it attached to the finger so it will heal. The situation is unless I can keep that flap alive I will have yet another nasty scar on my finger…
The issues with the finger also affect the Mini Sprint-T. My dexterity is reduced and my grip is hindered and that means making the kind of precision cuts needed to build the frame is a no-go until the finger is healed enough to work without the bandage. A slip of 0.01″ translates to a part that is a scale 0.25″ too big or too small, and wasted raw stock if I make it too small. So I have to wait until I can handle my tools safely before I can get to work on the Mini Sprint-T. If there is one thing I have learned in my 60 years, it’s patience. I will have to wait.
Another thing I have had to worry about is the weight of the front axle assembly with all the bits and pieces attached compared to the sprung weight of that end. There is nothing I can do about the excess weight except turn the heavy bits into “drillium”, also known as “swiss cheesing” the parts. The process involves a drill press, a lot of time, and usually several worn-out drill bits as holes are drilled in areas that don’t get a lot of stress in use and shouldn’t suffer fatigue failure. This only goes so far, and the parts that have the highest weight can’t be drilled out, like the spindles and wheels and especially the tires. Drilled tires would be useless. 🙂
And my finger is starting to hurt from typing, so this is pretty much it for the day.
Witch on a Bicycle 