Pain

Do not let pain cause you to suffer, because then you have deal with both pain and suffering. The pain is real, the suffering is not. Accept the pain and the suffering will disappear, leaving only the pain to deal with. If the pain is physical in time it too will disappear as you heal. If the pain remains, at least your tolerance to it will increase.

If the pain is one of depression, then it is different, the suffering goes hand in hand with the pain. It is the person’s own thoughts that cause the pain and suffering. Practice mediation, (Not thinking.) engage in creative endeavors, exercise. Anything to distract one from thinking.

Writing is wonderful therapy, because one is taking their thoughts and getting them outside of their mind. (Writing the shit out, as I call it.) Sometimes those thoughts will then stay out. Save these writings, in a journal, or computer file, when you read them again the problems will seem less important.

In time there will be less and less problems to write about. When one runs out of problems to write about, it could lead to the end of the problems. If one writes about the serious problems first, the ones that follow will seem trivial by comparison. In time they will all seem less important.

If you are a depressed older person, think back to when you were happy, and know that before the pain you were, and after the pain you will remain. The pain is transient, you are not.

If you are a depressed young person, take it from an old person, it does get better as you age. In fact, if part of your depression is caused by people your own age, seek out some older people to talk to, they will be less judgmental, and more likely to accept you for who you are.

Lastly, if your depression is so bad that you are thinking of suicide, don’t do it. Get help. I have managed to live my life into old age, and I still have much I need to accomplish. So do you. When we die, we will be a long time dead. To bring it on before it is time is not the answer. Death is permanent, depression does not have to be.  

https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

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Headset Removal and Replacement

The removal and replacement of the headset cups and bearings in a vintage steel frame is a simple task, and you can do this with a few inexpensive items picked up from your local hardware store.

To remove the bearing cups from the frame, purchase a piece of copper tube. I found a ¾ inch repair coupling that was ¾ inch diameter inside and slightly under and inch outside. These come in various lengths. 12 inch long works fine for most frames and the ends are already machined nice and square.

Cut four slots down the length of the tube about 4 inches long, using a hacksaw, and bend the four pieces outwards as shown in the picture above. These squeeze in to insert through the headset cup and then spring out again inside the head tube. With a hammer or mallet, the cups can be safely knocked out of the frame.

This works in exactly the same way as the professional Campagnolo tool that costs a great deal more. To remove the lower ring from the fork, turn the fork upside down resting the threaded end on a wooden block, and drive the ring off with a hammer and flat punch.

It is necessary to tap first one side of the ring, then the other to get it to come off straight. The bottom ring is hardened steel so the flat punch will not damage it in any way.

To press the cups in the frame, buy a 5/8 dia. nut, bolt, and several large flat washers. Measure the head tube length to estimate the length of bolt needed. Press the top cup in first, which again is usually hardened steel, with the bolt facing up and washers and the nut on top. Tightening the nut on the bolt squeezes the cup into the frame.

Then remove the nut and bolt, reversed it and press the lower cup in. (See picture, left.) If the bottom cup is light alloy, place the lower steel fork ring inside, upside down. This brings it flush with the outside edges of the cup so the washers are pressing on the inner hardened steel bearing surfaces, rather than the soft alloy outer edge of the cup.

Don’t press the cups in with the ball bearings in place, or you may damage the balls or the bearing surfaces.

Finally, to drive the lower ring on to the fork, purchase a short piece of one inch black iron pipe. This should be slightly bigger than an inch inside, check that is so it slides easily over the one-inch steering column.

Holding the fork in one hand, drive the bearing ring onto the crown race, sliding the piece of iron pipe up and down, using it as a hammer. (See picture, right.)

Once again, because the lower ring is hardened steel the softer iron pipe will do no damage. The piece of iron pipe does not have to be threaded as shown here. It just happened to come that way, as long as it is the length and weight needed to do the job.

Final note, use a smear of grease on the inside of the head tube. It will help the cups slide in and prevent corrosion in the future.

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The ideal handling bicycle

Back in the early days of my framebuilding career, mostly in the 1960s. I was experimenting with head angles, fork rake, and trail.

It was in the days before electronic calculators, and computers, so I kept track of my progress with a graph drawn by hand on squared graph paper.

It looked something like the graph above, only it would have been in inches rather than centimeters. Today there are online trail calculators available.

Trail not only gives a bike stability and keeps it tracking on a straight line, but also gives it self-steering qualities.

When you lean into a corner, the bike will for the most part steer itself around the bend.

Because the bike and rider are leaning, the rider’s weight is being pushed outwards by centrifugal force.

However, there is an optimum amount of lean, too much and the bike will slide out from under the rider.

Therefore, there is an optimum trail, if a certain amount of trail is good, more trail is not necessarily better.

The amount of trail is not the same throughout a range of different head angles. The steeper the head angle the more sensitive the steering, therefore less trail is needed to have the same effect as it would on a bike with a shallower head angle.

In time I found there was an “Optimum Handling” line that I could draw on my graph, that would show me the fork rake needed for a given head angle.

Reading vertically down from where the fork rake line crosses the head angle line shows the amount of trail. As you will see, steeper angles, less trail, shallower angles, more.

The example shown 73-degree head, 35 mm. fork offset, and 67.3 mm. of trail, was my standard road geometry on the John Howard, Fuso, and Recherche frames I built.

I would build a track bike with a steeper head angle (75 degrees, 25 mm. rake.) making for  more sensitive steering because it is designed to be ridden on a banked velodrome.

The banking has the effect of riding in a straight line, not cornering like a road bike. The rider needs a bike that he can physically steer around an opponent in a quick move.

Also, in the event of another rider falling in front of him, he needs to be able to change direction in an instant. This was also my thinking, when I built a criterium frame with a 74-degree head, and 30 mm. of fork rake.

However, my standard road geometry gave this same ability to lean into a corner, let the bike take you round, but if you needed to correct your line, or steer around an obstruction, you can physically steer the bike by turning the bars, and pointing the bike in the direction you need to go.

I have said before, my bikes had a little more trail than most others built back when I was building, and more than on bikes produced today. That is not to say I am right, and all others are wrong, it is just my design philosophy is different.

The handling qualities of a bike do not depend on the steering geometry alone, it is the design of the whole frame, weight distribution, etc., etc.

When I recently rode a carbon-fiber framed bike, it felt okay, but the steering was different. Not bad, nothing I could put my finger on, or nothing that I could not get used to, given time.

My philosophy has always been, build a good handling bike, put a novice on that bike and he becomes an adequate bike handler. Put an experienced bike rider on the same bike and he becomes a brilliant bike handler.

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Vent Holes

I am sometimes asked, why are there tiny holes drilled in certain parts of a bicycle frame, like the ones shown on the left?

These are vent holes. During the brazing process the air inside the tube expands as it is heated. The vent hole allows the air to escape as it warms up and allows for air to enter as it cools.

If the tube is totally enclosed, on cooling the air contracts sucking the molten brass inside the tube leaving a pin hole that is almost impossible to fill.

Worse still pressure can build up in an un-vented tube and hot brass can blow back in your face. Anyone not knowing this will soon learn the importance of vent holes after picking little globules of brass embedded in their face or finds little brass balls hanging like tiny Christmas Tree decorations from eyebrows, mustache, or other facial hair

Vent holes are only needed when a tube is closed both ends like the example shown above. The top tube is closed at both ends and is usually vented with holes into the seat tube and head tube. (When the bike is assembled these holes are hidden.)

Seatstays are enclosed with a fork dropout one end and the seatstay cap at the top. The front fork blades are also  enclosed both ends between the fork crown and the fork tip or dropout.

Other tubes like the seat tube, down tube and the chainstays are open inside the bottom bracket shell. These tubes are not totally enclosed so do not need any additional vent holes; neither does the brake bridge because it has a brake bolt hole.

On some of my custom frames you won't see holes in the chainstay bridge like the one in the picture. They are hidden inside the bridge tube by drilling holes sideways through the left and right chainstay tube, before the bridge tube was put into place. Only one hole is needed for venting but often two holes are drilled for better drainage of moisture later.

The vent hole in the seatstays on my frames is on the inside up near the seat lug. You might have to turn the bike upside down to see it.

On my front fork blades I drilled one vent hole in each fork blade near the bottom, but after the fork was fully brazed and had cooled I went back and filled it by brazing a piece of wire in the hole. The heat generated in doing this was so small and the air space inside the fork blade was big enough that it did not cause a problem. This whole process only took a minute to complete.

I did this for two reasons. Front fork blades are highly stressed, so filling the hole eliminated a potential weakness at that point. Also rust needs oxygen, and with the fork blades completely enclosed and airtight, no corrosion inside is possible, even years down the road.

A small and probably unnecessary precaution, but one that took such a small amount of time, I always figured, why not?

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The Past will Never Improve

If there is one life lesson, I have learned over the years it is that no matter how hard I try, my past will never get any better. All one can do is deal with it and move on. I was physically beaten as a child, both by my father and the British School System. Except it was not seen as abuse back in the 1940s, it was viewed as discipline. 

History too will not improve, bad things happened, we cannot change that. However, we can learn from it and move on. Today at 84 years old, I can remember almost 80 years of living history. Much of it I did not understand at the time, other events I still don’t understand to this day.

The first black men I ever saw were the African American soldiers who came over to England in 1944 along with the rest of the American army. They came in readiness for the Normandy Invasion.  The black soldiers had their own separate segregated camp. I was told by other kids at school, “The white soldiers don’t like the black soldiers.” I never understood why? “Aren’t they all on the same side?” I asked.

Later in the mid-1950s and early 1960s while in my teens and early 20s still in England I watched the Newsreel at my local movie theater. I saw white police in the Southern States beating black people with clubs, attacking with police dogs, and high-pressure water cannons. Again, I asked why? What is their problem?

Here we are 60 years later, and we are still seeing the same police brutality, not just in the US, but the world over. When a police officer kills someone, it is often found that this same officer has had numerous complaints filed against him and nothing was done.

When a District Attorney is found to have convicted several innocent people, why are they not held accountable? Why is there not an inquiry? If it were a CEO of a large corporation who was showing this level of incompetence, there would certainly be an enquiry.

In any country, even in the so-called Free World, we are only as free as the police allow us to be. People are protesting police brutality all over the world; a very real and pressing issue. However, people are getting side-tracked, and trying to erase history. 

I ask myself, what is the point of going back, sometimes hundreds of years and accusing people of racism and white supremacy, when they are long dead, and it wasn’t even known by those terms back then, any more than my being beaten with a stick was seen as child abuse. There are plenty of pressing current issues.

Here is a piece of history we can learn from; peaceful demonstrations by large numbers of people are far more effective than violent and destructive one’s. Martin Luther King proved that. So too are large numbers of people making their voice heard at the ballot box. Going violently against police in full riot gear is an exercise in futility, like poking a bear with a stick.

We cannot erase history and forget it happened, and if we do not learn from it, it is bound to repeat. Sadly, every time it does, the price goes up.

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