What are your jeans doing today?

[smoothsailor]

Made a stem. Always liked and was amazed when I saw a custom made stem from steel. Now I made one, still on the learning curve.

 

[smoothsailor]

On a different note I painted some designs for John Papa Nui.

Its for John to show them but can’t resist to show a teaser

 

[Double 0 Soul]

1 hour ago, smoothsailor said:

Made a stem. Always liked and was amazed when I saw a custom made stem from steel. Now I made one, still on the learning curve.

 

The quality of the finish^ on your fillet brazing has improved massively since the early frames.

[smoothsailor]

Thank you Neal, since I kind of know what I’m actually doing made it controllable 

[Double 0 Soul]

I had a couple of hours daylight left after work so i walked down to the river and yoinked out this magnificent trout..

Pretty good for the Don

[n0torious]

That's a good looking fish. Hope it makes a great meal.

[Double 0 Soul]

It was! .. I'm usually a catch and release kinda guy, i don't mind catching and eating sea fish but where i caught it.. the river runs through an area of historic industry so the river beds will be rich in heavy metals.

[Dr_Heech]

16 hours ago, Double 0 Soul said:

 

...so the river beds will be rich in heavy metals.

Surprised Maynard hasn't made anything out of this yet 😉

Nice catch Neal. Reminds me of when l was a kid (11 or so) when my dad brought a poachers rod back from the States - basically a 1970's extendable rod, something you couldn't get here at the time - and we used to hang above the bridge in the nearby village just hooking brown trout mostly with ease before the old gamekeeper attempted to stop us. After a quick getaway we would get home and mum would roll her eyes at us before cooking them up. Yum.

Edited January 26 by Dr_Heech
To edit obvs

[Double 0 Soul]

Thanks Charlie, That's similar to what i use.. a compact 2x piece 5.5', carp stalker rod, the bottom section extends out of the handle.. i bought it for the boy (as an easy to handle rod) when he was around 5 or 6yrs old but this is the rod i use 90% of the time.. it's perfect for river banks with lots of tree cover, you can fish areas inaccessible with a longer rod.

The offspring hasn't been fishing for 5 or so years now.. he caught some fantastic fish but it was as though.. "i've done that now.. what's next" ..like he'd completed a playstation game

There is a bridge in Bakewell over the river Wye, just behind the Bakewell Pudding Shop, folks will buy a pudding and they'll give you a couple of slices of stale bread for feeding the ducks.. massive trout congregate under the bridge, folks stand on the bridge and ball up a piece of bread in their hands and chuck it in the river for the trout.. it's like a feeding frenzy.. i could catch some absolute specimens there but the locals would be outraged!!

When i caught that^ trout, i was fishing for pike using this roach shad

..i knew it wasn't a pike as soon as i'd hooked it but i had no clue what else it could be.. i didn't think there was anything large enough in there to take that bait.. i was amazed when i landed that trout

[reallypeacedoff]

20 hours ago, Double 0 Soul said:

...heavy metals.

Slayer or Black Sabbath?

[Double 0 Soul]

Made an omlette with some Gruyere

..made a flask of coffee

..set off through Whiteley Woods, it's very icey!

..looking over the city near the Peak District border, we live around here

..took a right at Ringinglow, looking at Stanage Edge

..rode the Burbage loop first

..stopped for a coffee

..featuring a new pack to replace my 30yr old Lowe Alpine fell running pack (i don't think i'll be doing anymore fell running anytime soon ) along with a water bottle which @CSL kindly proxied from the SimWorks sale

The Velo Canteen comes with a different cap which incorperates a straw system for drinking? but i figured, if im civalised enough to drink decent coffee, im civalised enough to not do it through a straw so i brought along a Snow Peak double walled Ti cup.

..into the stanage loop

..hampers hang

..some boldering pr0n for @julian-wolf

dude on the left is wearing rock shoes, bouldering pants, sheepskin trapper hat and  3/4 length sheepskin jacket.. ..warm and dry without down or gore

..up to Stanage Pole

..down to the reservoirs at Redmires

..around the reservoirs.. through Wyming Brook to Lodge Moor.. looking back

..through the Mayfield Valley where my legs turned to jelly so i ate a full box of blury Jaffa Cakes while i cleaned my bike

..the end

[jkbrwn]

I rarely miss England, but that post certainly did it for me. Very nice bike too.

[indigoeagle]

Great

Especially lovely the mostly blue sky.

[Double 0 Soul]

They forcast a couple of good days.. yesterday was dry, warmer than late but a bit grey.. today was very cold but lovely blue skies.. i think i made the right choice to go today.

[indigoeagle]

Good choice to use that opportunity.
We've had mostly overcast skies, all grey, for the last three months.
Sometimes (like once a week) you get a bit of blue sky in the morning, but by noon it's somehow grey again.

[Double 0 Soul]

Just been out to Olive on Eccesall Rd South for some fat t-bones (Sarah had Casarecce Arabiata)

Starters of calamari and mussels were awesome too! .. it's def worth a visit.

[Maynard Friedman]

Looks tasty. Is it your birthday Neal?

[Double 0 Soul]

It's been and gone Martin but i am off work for a few days.. remember when we had that storm after Christmas? it completely destroyed my mums fence.. the concrete fence post disintegrated, she said it sounded like an explosion.. it set all the car alarms off in the street .. but she was going on holiday with her mates on the 27th for New Year and her back garden was exposed so she was a bit panicky.

The days after Christmas when i should have been off work with my feet up, i was digging fence posts out of frozen ground so i could build a new fence.. they'd been set in concrete 70cm deep so i had to chip them out with a cold chisel in -10 tempratures.. then when i got home, i noticed the storm had blown the bargeboards off our gable end, they were in nextdoors apple tree so Christmas week for me was just work.. so i've took some time off now the rain has stopped..

[Double 0 Soul]

On the way out tonight.. my neighbour was just coming home from yoga and said "you look smart".. i was wearing Brown's Beach Full Count over MF covert cloth mechanic shirt, SC47s and Lofgren pumps.. "i like the jacket (she said).. sort of halfway between a jacket and a cardigan.. it's a bit Val Doonicany"

Wtf!.. We go to all this expense and effort to project Val Doonican

[Maynard Friedman]

Val Doonican, eh? That would explain your late mid-life style crisis that’s been playing out on here over the last few days! 😆

[Dr_Heech]

^ 🤣 Yeah Neal, get in that rocking chair and start singing "tie a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree..."

[Double 0 Soul]

9 hours ago, Maynard Friedman said:

Val Doonican, eh? That would explain your late mid-life style crisis that’s been playing out on here over the last few days! 😆

Now.. Martin, you know me well enough to know that not everything I say in the nonsense thread is entirely legit.. if you look back at a lot of the discourse which plays out.. it usually starts with a gif of me poking a hornets nest 

I am feeling bored shitless with repros tho.. 

[CSL]

Double 0,

Wasn't it you who said the beige colored Brown's Beach stuff was reminiscent of Terry Wogan? You may be experiencing some mild karma😉.

[Double 0 Soul]

Yes! definitely me.. floral dance-esque

[Geeman]

Me and my eldest went to a noodle master class this week, learnt to make Dandanmain and Tonkatsu Ramen.

Started off prepping the broth and a black garlic oil. Then onto braising the pork belly.

Onto making the noodles from scratch. The chef leading us demo'd a mix at 50% hydration and said 40% were harder to make but resulted in much better noodles.... both of us are OCD/detail fixated so challenge accepted. (Featuring Bronson, Resolute & Birks on me)

 

 

While the Tonkatsu broth was finishing off (smell was amazing)  we made the Dandanmain (spicy beef Chinese noodles) and shared amongst the class. 

No photos of it finished because we wolfed it down with a couple Asahi.

Pork was ready to go.

 

And the finished product with seasoned egg, drizzled with the aforementioned garlic oil

Edited February 1 by Geeman

[chicote]

That ramen looks amazing @Geeman, and so cool to walk through and give equal attention to each of the many laborious parts of ramen making as part of the class. Reading your descriptions reminded me of the movie Tampopo, I imagine you’ve seen it perhaps?? If not it would be a perfect follow up!

[chicote]

I’ve been nerding out about sign painting this week, after finishing a big series of signs for a farm on the Oaxaca coast I’ve been working at since January. Here are a few of those:

Afterwards I rode up to Oaxaca on my way to Mexico City, stopping at a postal museum on the way that happened to have a small sign painting exhibition:

 

And last night got to go to the opening of an amazing show featuring dozens of sign painters from around Mexico, including some who work in near-forgotten styles, such as the man who painted the signs on the right side of this pic:

I love the top right one, it says: “Life is a popsicle; it’s melting whether you suck it or not”! The artist of these signs was in attendance but had a mob of people around him asking for pictures, lol … surely enjoying the resurgence in interest in sign painting, i hope!

A close up of some lettering done on a small mirror, maybe 50cm across.

i actually didn’t get any other photos besides these, but will add some more on a different day as the show will be up all month. Anyway, thanks for looking!

[Geeman]

4 hours ago, chicote said:

That ramen looks amazing @Geeman, and so cool to walk through and give equal attention to each of the many laborious parts of ramen making as part of the class. Reading your descriptions reminded me of the movie Tampopo, I imagine you’ve seen it perhaps?? If not it would be a perfect follow up!

I haven't but will look it up!

[Double 0 Soul]

I've been doing a bit of old school pattern making this week..

I started making a pattern for a valve angle body.. it's going to be cast in WCB grade carbon but because molten metal is weird shit.. i'm making the outside of the pattern in 1/38 contraction (for every 38mm i will add 1mm) to allow for the shrinkage so when the casting cools it will be dimensionally correct at standard.. but the inside of the casting will be made at 1/48 contraction because internal dimensions behave differently to external dimensions even though it's the same material  the flanges being thicker tend to contract at 1/38 on the outer face but will contract at 1/60 between the flanges.. it's fkin nuts how liquid metal behaves but i haven't got time to explain metallurgy 101 today..

Started making the core / internal shape.. the wall thickness of the casting needs to be 15mm so all these allowances i'm making need to be made wrong at this stage but absolutely correct when cast..

It's made in halves and doweled together using perfectly round silver steel pegs

Dusty Warehouse 506 repro in action

..finish building the former / positive which creates the (negative) internal shape for the liquid to flow through the pump

Both halves fit together.. the pink is car body filler, it's easier to create radius's and developments.. ie- the plywood disc is a diameter and the pine is a diameter.. but once the pine has been cut at 45 degrees, it ceases to be a diameter on the angled face, so one needs blending from one shape into the other.. i'm just trying to feel how the liquid would flow through the pump without restricting flow rate.. of creating turbulence at high pressure..

..half of the core on the joint of half of pattern to double check the wall thicknesses.. this will make more sense on the sketches at the bottom..

The core needs to be very slightly smaller than the print (the print doesn't actually exist, it's just there to support/position the core within the cavity which the pattern will create in the mould) i've allowed 0.25mm around the radius for clearance.. too little and you're in danger of the core not fitting in or not being able to close the mould .. too much and you're 15mm wall thickness will be out of tolerance

..made a few plywood discs, just by drilling a hole through 6x pieces of 1.5mm ply, then using the drill to spin them on the sander..

Set half of the core box former up on a perfectly flat board.. used the discs^ to mount the dowels, build a frame around and cast up in liquid PU resin..

..once cured, build the other half onto the joint uising the silversteel location pegs.. cast that half too.. once cured, split the mould, and make some levers to gently extract the former..

creating vibration by tapping on the joint with a small hammer will help.. the sand core will just fall out, because it's heavier..

..lift out the former to leave a perfect resin mould to create the sand core..

..these are examples of smaller sand cores.. in the foundry, sand is mixed with amine and then blasted into a core box under pressure on a core blowing machine, you can see the line left by the joint line of the corebox

brass vents are inserted to allow the air out as the sand/amine mix comes in.. the metal dowel locates both halves of box together to blow the core

..two halves of corebox with a hole in the top to blow sand through

..clipped together with suitcase clips so the sand doesn't blow out of the joint.

..now i have to start mounting the pattern on a male and female joint, to allow the two halves to perfectly locate together in the foundry..

.. then i have to use my metallurgy skills again to create a runner system to allow the metal to flow into the mould.. and feed the casting.. ie- the thick flanges will stay hot longer than the 15mm wall thickness.. but if the 15mm wall cools too quickly, it will contract while the flanges are still liquid which creates small cracks at the point where the 15mm wall meets the flange and the very expensive casting will fail radiography.

This is an exothermic sleeve which keeps the metal hot to feed the casting

.. so theory is this.. half of the pattern is mounted on a male picture frame joint.. i build the female frame around this platform to ensure a perfect fit for the other half.. i've drawn on part of the runner system with the exothermic sleeve

..a moulding frame is put around the pattern and filled with sand / amine

..the pattern is removed and the sand core drops in.. located by the prints

..the bottom half of sand mould is then dropped on top to close the mould, encasing the core and leaving a cavity / space between the sand moulds and the internal sand core..

..the whole thing is turned over and metal is cast into the runner system.. filling the cavity with what will become our casting.. when cooled, the sand is broken away, the runner system is cut off with a radiac cutter, the casting then goes to radiography to makes sure it's sound, the flanges are machined up to allow other parts of the pumping system to be cleanly bolted to it .. and off it goes, on it's merry way..

Edited March 1 by Double 0 Soul

[smoothsailor]

Speechless  Neal. You are a thru craftsman