A couple of guys in the shop today were telling us Virginia Beach is a horrible place to ride.
"They really don't get it down there," said one. "They really don't want you out there on the road. When I go to visit my sister there, I just don't go out riding."
When I hear a thing like that I immediately want to go there and ride. I want to see if it is as bad as they say or if something about their riding style attracts problems. And if it is as bad as all that, I want to get on the road and assert cyclists' rights.
In driver education, many decades ago, I was told repeatedly that driving is a privilege, not a right. Unsafe and unsociable behavior would lead to loss of driving privileges. This many years later, with the automobile widely assumed to be an indispensable appliance, I wonder if the government could therefore take away someone's right to this ubiquitous transportation device. They do, and not often enough, but that's a constitutional question for another day.
No one has ever said that cycling was a privilege. Walking certainly is not a privilege. And, in our car-centric "civilization," neither one is exactly a treat in many places. Our automotive overlords shower their scorn on us like chickenshit tyrants from within the cabs of their armored limousines. We are asserting a right of free passage on the public right of way. They are rubbing their privileged asses all over us.
In my neighborhood, the drivers are remarkably accommodating, with the usual glaring exceptions. Some spineless, micro-manhood loser will decide to use the power of his vehicle to make up for the inadequacy of his physical and intellectual capacity by ripping by with inches to spare, maybe downshifting noisily or laying on the horn. Or it might be a woman, though that happens less often. And, when summer traffic packs the roads with people "from away," some of them may be inattentive or impatient in the custom of their urban and suburban homelands. But this is generally a pretty nice area for cycling.
My fortunate circumstances don't keep me from identifying with the downtrodden, such as I was in Maryland. The Annapolis area has gotten better in some ways and worse in others. I didn't move to New Hampshire for better cycling. The better cycling was a bit of a surprise.
Today when I listened to our visitors and remembered things I've read about many dangerous riding venues, mostly in the south, I wondered if we could institute our own version of the Freedom Riders. Send activists into areas that need their consciousness raised about cycling. Don't go all Critical Mass on them, but put a large number of cyclists into their traffic mix right away, to jump start the interactions of motorist and cyclist on a more even footing.
Obviously our civil rights position is not as dire as that of African Americans in the 1950s and '60s. But the motorist bigots do injure and kill cyclists and engage in hate speech against us. We are viewed monolithically as bike riders, lumped into one pool of disparaged sub-humanity because of our bikes. Cycling freedom riders could expect to meet violence. The confrontations would bring the dialogue about cyclists' rights to the forefront of the media.
It would be vitally important for the front-line riders of this campaign to behave with the utmost scruples. It can't be just a handful of local kooks who can be taken out separately. It has to be a campaign of organized activity. It has to be in significant numbers.
This is not civil disobedience. Apparently, in some parts of the so-called Land of the Free, the playground bullies have successfully scared the pencil-necked cyclist geeks into giving up their lunch money and cowering in the audio-visual room during recess. What cyclists want to do is legal. What the bullies are doing is not. We just want to use our bikes. Our right slows down their privilege from time to time. That makes us fair game in their eyes.
That ain't right.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Monday, May 25, 2009
Annual Reminder
As the weather gets warmer, remember to be careful when ejecting the products of nasal congestion. Many convertible cars sit much lower than a cyclist. I think I nailed one yesterday. He started to pull over and then decided to move on. I did my best to look apologetic. It really was an accident.
It can also be done tactically. That's completely different.
It can also be done tactically. That's completely different.
Detailed assembly makes the rest of life easier
Bikes come from the factory with the pedals, seat and front wheel off. Some of them come in more pieces than that. The shop mechanics have to finish assembling the bike before it can go onto the sales floor.
Assembly is a seasonal ritual. Shops receive preseason orders in the fall or early spring. Depending on the shop's off-season business, mechanics will assemble these bikes over the winter or in the spring.
Faced with a large number of assemblies, and perhaps limited time in which to get them done, one might be tempted to take the shortest route and simply slap on the parts that aren't attached. If you have limited mechanical staff in assembly season, but more and better mechanics when you're actually selling, you might get away with that. Or, if you think your customers won't know the difference and don't require or deserve a bike that's put together well, you can justify taking every short cut.
At the most basic ethical level, the handlebars need to be tight and the brakes have to work. Anything else is gravy. But you leap quickly into a large gray area if the customer actually rides the bike much.
I prefer a more detailed approach. It is better for numerous reasons. You don't know who will buy the bike or how busy the shop will be at the time. A well-assembled bike is less likely to fail prematurely. Breakdowns embarrass the shop as well as possibly imperiling the customer. Why take the chance?
How detailed is detailed enough? Rather than waste time wondering whether this is the time you need to do a good job, why not make a habit of doing a good job?
Grease the seatpost and pedal threads before installing each of those items. If the bike has a quill-type stem, grease that, including the wedge that holds it in the steerer tube.
Before installing the handlebars, make any adjustments to cable routing, such as crossing the shift cables for smoother operation.
Remove the rear wheel from the frame. Remove the cassette or freewheel from the hub. Adjust the hub cones. Start by locking the cone and locknut on the right side, which will be concealed inside the freehub or freewheel body. The right side is more likely to stay properly locked after that, so you can do future adjustments from the accessible left side.
Grease the threads of the cassette lock ring or the freewheel before reinstalling the gear cluster. Set the rear wheel by the truing stand.
Adjust the cones of the front hub. You may have to pop the little rubber dust covers off to get to the locknuts. Just do it.
Before truing the wheels, grip pairs of spokes in your hands and squeeze them as you work your way around the wheel. You'll hear a crackling noise as accumulated stress is released from the spokes. You can perform this procedure with the wheel in the truing stand. You will probably notice that the wheel goes out of true as a result. Give everything another good squeeze and then true the wheel.
With both wheels true, put air in the tires, install the wheels and adjust the brakes. On linear pull brakes it's a good idea to undo the nuts on the threaded posts on the brake pads, grease those threads and reassemble before adjusting pad height and angle. It's a good idea to grease the threads of just about anything with threads.
For linear pull and cantilever brakes, set the pads high on the rim, near the outer edge, so they stay on the braking surface as they wear. On brakes with pivots beside and below the rim, brake pads hit lower as they wear. If they're too low at the start, they will quickly drop below the rim and develop a lip.
For caliper brakes with the pivot bolt centered above the tire, more common on road bikes, the arms come in and up. Set the pads nearer the bottom of the rim.
To eliminate squealing brakes, you may toe the pads slightly so that the end nearer the front of the bike hits slightly sooner. This is more crucial on cheap brakes made of soft metals that deform a lot under braking force.
As stated above, grease the threads of just about everything with threads. This includes water bottle and rack bolts even if no accessory is installed, and the threaded adjusters of brake levers, shifters and derailleurs.
Greased accessory bolts save you that step if you're slapping accessories on a newly-sold bike on an insanely busy day. On the same insanely busy day, well-assembled bikes take far less time to check over with a customer breathing down your neck. Later, when they come back for the free tuneup, a well assembled bike will need virtually nothing unless the customer has damaged it. That's more time saved when impatient people might be standing around tapping their foot.
Greased adjusters work more smoothly and don't corrode as readily if the bike gets used hard or stored carelessly.
Grease the crank arm bolts. They will torque more accurately. Grease the top cap bolt of a threadless headset. Ungreased, those bolts can rust into the star nut.
Why isn't this the bike owner's responsibility? It certainly could be. But most people don't have the time, knowledge or confidence to maintain their own bikes. They depend on the guys at the shop to be trustworthy, courteous and kind, as well as knowledgeable and proud enough of their work to do it well. You're stuck there for hours anyway. Why not do a decent job?
Ironically, shops make less money on expensive, high-end bikes, so they may be more tempted to cut corners on assembly. But if a mechanic follows a standard, high-quality procedure on every bike, he or she knows what's called for and just does it. Speed comes from efficiency, not from leaving stuff out.
It's difficult when an employee has higher standards than the shop that employs him. The shop management then views meticulousness as a liability, or as a quirk they indulge until they lose patience. A shop's reputation depends on what people think of it, not on what they really produce. So friendly goof-ups will have a bigger following than crusty perfectionists. But which bike would you rather be riding down a hill at 20-40 miles per hour?
I confess I do not take apart the cranksets and grease the chain ring bolts unless I'm doing a complete overhaul. Some things are beyond the scope of an ethical assembly. I do it on expensive special-order bikes, but not on routine assemblies. I can justify everything else I do by showing advantages to the shop as well as the consumer. So a word to those who care: grease your chainring bolts.
Even though cycling is a trivial backwater occupied by the dregs of society, I try to imagine what we do matters. Someone truly important might, for reasons of temporary insanity or gross misjudgment, briefly take up cycling in youth or adulthood. In that case we would hold this person's destiny in our greasy hands. Imagine uncaring slackers building and maintaining commercial aircraft, or the highway bridges over which millions of people travel every day. Cynics will say that they already do. I say that in any occupation, more pride in craftsmanship can't hurt.
Assembly is a seasonal ritual. Shops receive preseason orders in the fall or early spring. Depending on the shop's off-season business, mechanics will assemble these bikes over the winter or in the spring.
Faced with a large number of assemblies, and perhaps limited time in which to get them done, one might be tempted to take the shortest route and simply slap on the parts that aren't attached. If you have limited mechanical staff in assembly season, but more and better mechanics when you're actually selling, you might get away with that. Or, if you think your customers won't know the difference and don't require or deserve a bike that's put together well, you can justify taking every short cut.
At the most basic ethical level, the handlebars need to be tight and the brakes have to work. Anything else is gravy. But you leap quickly into a large gray area if the customer actually rides the bike much.
I prefer a more detailed approach. It is better for numerous reasons. You don't know who will buy the bike or how busy the shop will be at the time. A well-assembled bike is less likely to fail prematurely. Breakdowns embarrass the shop as well as possibly imperiling the customer. Why take the chance?
How detailed is detailed enough? Rather than waste time wondering whether this is the time you need to do a good job, why not make a habit of doing a good job?
Grease the seatpost and pedal threads before installing each of those items. If the bike has a quill-type stem, grease that, including the wedge that holds it in the steerer tube.
Before installing the handlebars, make any adjustments to cable routing, such as crossing the shift cables for smoother operation.
Remove the rear wheel from the frame. Remove the cassette or freewheel from the hub. Adjust the hub cones. Start by locking the cone and locknut on the right side, which will be concealed inside the freehub or freewheel body. The right side is more likely to stay properly locked after that, so you can do future adjustments from the accessible left side.
Grease the threads of the cassette lock ring or the freewheel before reinstalling the gear cluster. Set the rear wheel by the truing stand.
Adjust the cones of the front hub. You may have to pop the little rubber dust covers off to get to the locknuts. Just do it.
Before truing the wheels, grip pairs of spokes in your hands and squeeze them as you work your way around the wheel. You'll hear a crackling noise as accumulated stress is released from the spokes. You can perform this procedure with the wheel in the truing stand. You will probably notice that the wheel goes out of true as a result. Give everything another good squeeze and then true the wheel.
With both wheels true, put air in the tires, install the wheels and adjust the brakes. On linear pull brakes it's a good idea to undo the nuts on the threaded posts on the brake pads, grease those threads and reassemble before adjusting pad height and angle. It's a good idea to grease the threads of just about anything with threads.
For linear pull and cantilever brakes, set the pads high on the rim, near the outer edge, so they stay on the braking surface as they wear. On brakes with pivots beside and below the rim, brake pads hit lower as they wear. If they're too low at the start, they will quickly drop below the rim and develop a lip.
For caliper brakes with the pivot bolt centered above the tire, more common on road bikes, the arms come in and up. Set the pads nearer the bottom of the rim.
To eliminate squealing brakes, you may toe the pads slightly so that the end nearer the front of the bike hits slightly sooner. This is more crucial on cheap brakes made of soft metals that deform a lot under braking force.
As stated above, grease the threads of just about everything with threads. This includes water bottle and rack bolts even if no accessory is installed, and the threaded adjusters of brake levers, shifters and derailleurs.
Greased accessory bolts save you that step if you're slapping accessories on a newly-sold bike on an insanely busy day. On the same insanely busy day, well-assembled bikes take far less time to check over with a customer breathing down your neck. Later, when they come back for the free tuneup, a well assembled bike will need virtually nothing unless the customer has damaged it. That's more time saved when impatient people might be standing around tapping their foot.
Greased adjusters work more smoothly and don't corrode as readily if the bike gets used hard or stored carelessly.
Grease the crank arm bolts. They will torque more accurately. Grease the top cap bolt of a threadless headset. Ungreased, those bolts can rust into the star nut.
Why isn't this the bike owner's responsibility? It certainly could be. But most people don't have the time, knowledge or confidence to maintain their own bikes. They depend on the guys at the shop to be trustworthy, courteous and kind, as well as knowledgeable and proud enough of their work to do it well. You're stuck there for hours anyway. Why not do a decent job?
Ironically, shops make less money on expensive, high-end bikes, so they may be more tempted to cut corners on assembly. But if a mechanic follows a standard, high-quality procedure on every bike, he or she knows what's called for and just does it. Speed comes from efficiency, not from leaving stuff out.
It's difficult when an employee has higher standards than the shop that employs him. The shop management then views meticulousness as a liability, or as a quirk they indulge until they lose patience. A shop's reputation depends on what people think of it, not on what they really produce. So friendly goof-ups will have a bigger following than crusty perfectionists. But which bike would you rather be riding down a hill at 20-40 miles per hour?
I confess I do not take apart the cranksets and grease the chain ring bolts unless I'm doing a complete overhaul. Some things are beyond the scope of an ethical assembly. I do it on expensive special-order bikes, but not on routine assemblies. I can justify everything else I do by showing advantages to the shop as well as the consumer. So a word to those who care: grease your chainring bolts.
Even though cycling is a trivial backwater occupied by the dregs of society, I try to imagine what we do matters. Someone truly important might, for reasons of temporary insanity or gross misjudgment, briefly take up cycling in youth or adulthood. In that case we would hold this person's destiny in our greasy hands. Imagine uncaring slackers building and maintaining commercial aircraft, or the highway bridges over which millions of people travel every day. Cynics will say that they already do. I say that in any occupation, more pride in craftsmanship can't hurt.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Variations on a Theme
My Blue, the commuting/traveling fixed gear, and the cellist's Blue, with her regular touring and exploring setup.Getting the drop on Blue
After trying two arrangements with the time trial bars I really missed having the positions a drop bar offers. I had a set of 46 cm Salsa Bell Lap cyclocross bars left over from a project based on a Cross Check complete bike. The drops flare to a whopping 50 centimeters, which feels pretty weird, but the other proportions of the bar feel pretty good. The weird, wide drops aren't that bad. They actually ease some shoulder strain I get from holding my hands in perfect alignment with my more normal drop bars.Open-face stems allow for experiments like this. The brake lever clamp is hinged. The whole change took minutes
One drawback to the drop bar: on every other drop bar bike I own I have regular road levers. In any urgent situation I reach automatically for the front brake. With the TT bar the whole setup was strange so I had no automatic response to a crisis. With the drop bar, but no road brake lever, I have been reaching to where the brake lever isn't. One way or another I will get trained out of that.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Buzzing Angrily, Threatening to Sting
Warm weather seems to affect motorists the way it affects hornets: they move faster, more aggressively. They threaten anyone who invades their territory.
Today was the local Bike to Work Day. I saw no one else riding when and where I did. The motorists acted as if the event was meant to concentrate more targets for their inconsiderate or defensive behavior.
The automobile did more than any other factor to advance selfishness. Within decades of the start of the automobile era it was becoming a vital tool for everyone's transportation, not just a luxury for the carriage trade. It not only put a powerful machine in the hands of growing numbers of adults, it sealed them in metal and glass capsules, separate from each other, competing for space both in transit and when trying to park. In subtle and unsubtle ways, other road users became opponents. As racing advanced automotive technology, consumers' cars grew faster and more maneuverable and drivers' expectations rose. Everyone wants to be able to travel as fast as their machine is capable of going, or at least as fast as they feel like going, at all times.
Spring is the season of bloodstained roads. Every day brings new corpses and blood puddles to my route. I've also gotten to witness the actual moment of death several times when I hooked back to rescue a turtle or snake that had ventured into the lane, only to see a car smash it as I approached. The most recent was today when I spotted a newly-hatched snapping turtle smaller than a silver dollar as I rode to the bank. The car that snuffed it just smashed its head. I don't blame the driver for not seeing it. The operators of sensory deprivation tanks have enough trouble seeing cyclists and pedestrians, let alone tiny reptiles almost the color of pavement. Every driver has an excuse for peening an animal. Creatures come out in dusk or darkness. Many have colors that conceal them, or defensive habits unsuited to the hazards we bring to them. Porcupine spines or land crab claws don't repel a ton of steel moving at 60 miles per hour. Skunk stink presents an inconvenience at best. Our senses dulled behind the glass, we can't react quickly enough to the unpredictable darting of squirrels and hopping of frogs, or the unidentifiable lumps of reptiles.
The riding is beautiful. The weather improves daily. Even the setbacks to colder, wetter conditions set us less far back each time. The scent of flowers and the sound of birds define the character of the season as life reaches out in all directions. That part is great. Just watch out for the swarms of hard-shelled aggressors.
Today was the local Bike to Work Day. I saw no one else riding when and where I did. The motorists acted as if the event was meant to concentrate more targets for their inconsiderate or defensive behavior.
The automobile did more than any other factor to advance selfishness. Within decades of the start of the automobile era it was becoming a vital tool for everyone's transportation, not just a luxury for the carriage trade. It not only put a powerful machine in the hands of growing numbers of adults, it sealed them in metal and glass capsules, separate from each other, competing for space both in transit and when trying to park. In subtle and unsubtle ways, other road users became opponents. As racing advanced automotive technology, consumers' cars grew faster and more maneuverable and drivers' expectations rose. Everyone wants to be able to travel as fast as their machine is capable of going, or at least as fast as they feel like going, at all times.
Spring is the season of bloodstained roads. Every day brings new corpses and blood puddles to my route. I've also gotten to witness the actual moment of death several times when I hooked back to rescue a turtle or snake that had ventured into the lane, only to see a car smash it as I approached. The most recent was today when I spotted a newly-hatched snapping turtle smaller than a silver dollar as I rode to the bank. The car that snuffed it just smashed its head. I don't blame the driver for not seeing it. The operators of sensory deprivation tanks have enough trouble seeing cyclists and pedestrians, let alone tiny reptiles almost the color of pavement. Every driver has an excuse for peening an animal. Creatures come out in dusk or darkness. Many have colors that conceal them, or defensive habits unsuited to the hazards we bring to them. Porcupine spines or land crab claws don't repel a ton of steel moving at 60 miles per hour. Skunk stink presents an inconvenience at best. Our senses dulled behind the glass, we can't react quickly enough to the unpredictable darting of squirrels and hopping of frogs, or the unidentifiable lumps of reptiles.
The riding is beautiful. The weather improves daily. Even the setbacks to colder, wetter conditions set us less far back each time. The scent of flowers and the sound of birds define the character of the season as life reaches out in all directions. That part is great. Just watch out for the swarms of hard-shelled aggressors.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Tooling Up
After many years of bitching and improvising, I just ordered a compressor and a grinder. The relatively major purchase inspires me to reflect on how my workshop has grown over the years.
When I finally started to pay close attention to bicycles in 1975, I realized this was a vehicle anyone could maintain with ease, even when living in a small apartment. A few special tools were required, but they were relatively cheap and would pay for themselves many times over as I did my own repairs at my own convenience.
I don't remember the exact order of purchase, but I bet cone wrenches came high on the list. Hub overhauls and adjustments are simple procedures. I needed a freewheel tool to remove whatever type of freewheel I was running at the time.
Somewhere in there I got a fixed-cup and lock ring spanner, and a 32mm and pin spanner so I could service the bottom bracket and headset. Later I got a second 32mm, with a 15mm pedal wrench on the other end. I'd gotten a crank puller with my first alloy cotterless crank. You got a lot of goodies with a component purchase back then. Later I got the Park universal one.
Early on, I recognized the value of the "fourth hand" cable tensioner. I'd bought a third hand to hold the brake pads against the rim, but found myself using it less and less once I could manipulate everything through cable tension. I use it from time to time when the fourth hand doesn't quite apply, so it still earns a place on the pegboard.
I would post pics of my workshop arrangement if I was proud of it. It's barely a step above chaos, however. With the compressor and grinder I will shift a number of operations out to the detached garage to keep the noise and dust level lower in the house. The next priority will be to insulate said garage so I can work there in the winter and so things don't freeze solid. Alternatively, since funds are perennially tight, I might just bring the compressor into the crawl space and mothball it for the winter. At 20 below zero my garage is 20 below zero until I institute some climate control. But that problem is months away.
For many years my tool purchases slowly filled larger and larger tool boxes. Now I have two with drawers, one a 2-drawer, the other a 3-drawer, plus about a dozen drawers in a weird gray cabinet that came off a trash pile 20 years and five or six dwellings ago. Those drawers are about 10 inches wide and perhaps a foot long, and about three or four inches deep. Half of them are full of small parts like chains, cogs, freewheels, half-eaten headsets, cup-and-cone bottom brackets, miscellaneous derailleurs and so forth.
In addition to the bike-specific tools I have the basic mechanic's outlay, circa 1974, suggested by my far more mechanically-inclined brother. He spent many years driving Model A Fords all over the eastern half of the country, and could rebuild anything, anywhere, on those simple machines. In the mid-1970s, even what passed for modern cars would yield their secrets to ordinary hand tools much of the time. So I had basic metric and English socket sets, assorted screwdrivers, pliers, box-open spanners, hacksaw, and, once I had the Triumph Spitfire, the indispensable CIRCLIP PLIERS. With a 9/16 box-open wrench, a medium screwdriver and a set of circlip pliers you could probably tear down and rebuild the entire car. Oh yes, and let's not forget the ball-peen hammer, vise grips and other implements of destruction.
Spoke wrenches came on the scene within a couple of years. Wheelbuilding is the last mystery short of torch work. Once you can do that you are completely independent until the bike industry finally manages to quit making and supporting normal crap and fences us off from self-sufficiency forever. But with all the product out there based on tried and true methods, I don't see that happening soon, if ever. Only the speed freaks who have to have eggshell frames and tweaky, weird wheels will have to haunt their dealers, with hollow eyes and grasping fingers. "You gotta hook me up, man! My bike has started to feel HEAVY to me! You don't unnerstan'!"
My heart goes out to you poor bastards. Get some help, okay?
As the spoke wrench goes, so goes the truing stand. Shell out for a decent one and treat it right.
I did cough up for the big-boy professional shop-type work stand. Not everyone can do that, but get as close as you can. It might be better to buy the shop-type arm that bolts to your bench than to get a folding stand with a lesser clamp. Use the big-dog, iron-base shop stand as your standard and work from there.
At the other end of the work stand scale, you can hang your bike from a cord tied to a nail driven into the top of a doorway to perform many adjustments. You can't apply a lot of torque, as when setting a fixed cup in an old-style BB or seating a cartridge-type BB, but you can pop a wheel out, and adjust gears and brakes. I did that for decades.
Before I had a headset press I knocked cups into the frame with a block of wood and a hammer. Bear in mind the damage you could do with a ricochet.
After decades in the bike business I have acquired most of the heavy tools for basic handling of steel frames. I have the BB reamer-facer, the taps to chase BB threads, head tube reamer-facer, crown race setters, some tubing tweakers for various applications and I still have a shopping list. Torch work I have yet to master.
I have no illusions about becoming a master frame builder, or even a minor one. My torch aspirations extend to minor repairs like dropout replacement and braze-on installation on the rare frame these days that might not have every imaginable nubbin on it. As such it has not been as high a priority as some other lines of endeavor outside of cycling. I like cycling to support my life, not be my life. The extent of my tools is probably overkill for mere independent maintenance, but not by much. I've found occasion to use just about everything at least once. And I do pick up side jobs from time to time.
My addiction to the QBP account keeps me chained to the shop. That and the other wholesale sources are my pipeline to fresh parts when other sources like scavenging won't suffice. But with a full arsenal of tools I could tackle the parts issue by other means if I lost access to the easy ones. Knowledge is freedom.
When I finally started to pay close attention to bicycles in 1975, I realized this was a vehicle anyone could maintain with ease, even when living in a small apartment. A few special tools were required, but they were relatively cheap and would pay for themselves many times over as I did my own repairs at my own convenience.
I don't remember the exact order of purchase, but I bet cone wrenches came high on the list. Hub overhauls and adjustments are simple procedures. I needed a freewheel tool to remove whatever type of freewheel I was running at the time.
Somewhere in there I got a fixed-cup and lock ring spanner, and a 32mm and pin spanner so I could service the bottom bracket and headset. Later I got a second 32mm, with a 15mm pedal wrench on the other end. I'd gotten a crank puller with my first alloy cotterless crank. You got a lot of goodies with a component purchase back then. Later I got the Park universal one.
Early on, I recognized the value of the "fourth hand" cable tensioner. I'd bought a third hand to hold the brake pads against the rim, but found myself using it less and less once I could manipulate everything through cable tension. I use it from time to time when the fourth hand doesn't quite apply, so it still earns a place on the pegboard.
I would post pics of my workshop arrangement if I was proud of it. It's barely a step above chaos, however. With the compressor and grinder I will shift a number of operations out to the detached garage to keep the noise and dust level lower in the house. The next priority will be to insulate said garage so I can work there in the winter and so things don't freeze solid. Alternatively, since funds are perennially tight, I might just bring the compressor into the crawl space and mothball it for the winter. At 20 below zero my garage is 20 below zero until I institute some climate control. But that problem is months away.
For many years my tool purchases slowly filled larger and larger tool boxes. Now I have two with drawers, one a 2-drawer, the other a 3-drawer, plus about a dozen drawers in a weird gray cabinet that came off a trash pile 20 years and five or six dwellings ago. Those drawers are about 10 inches wide and perhaps a foot long, and about three or four inches deep. Half of them are full of small parts like chains, cogs, freewheels, half-eaten headsets, cup-and-cone bottom brackets, miscellaneous derailleurs and so forth.
In addition to the bike-specific tools I have the basic mechanic's outlay, circa 1974, suggested by my far more mechanically-inclined brother. He spent many years driving Model A Fords all over the eastern half of the country, and could rebuild anything, anywhere, on those simple machines. In the mid-1970s, even what passed for modern cars would yield their secrets to ordinary hand tools much of the time. So I had basic metric and English socket sets, assorted screwdrivers, pliers, box-open spanners, hacksaw, and, once I had the Triumph Spitfire, the indispensable CIRCLIP PLIERS. With a 9/16 box-open wrench, a medium screwdriver and a set of circlip pliers you could probably tear down and rebuild the entire car. Oh yes, and let's not forget the ball-peen hammer, vise grips and other implements of destruction.
Spoke wrenches came on the scene within a couple of years. Wheelbuilding is the last mystery short of torch work. Once you can do that you are completely independent until the bike industry finally manages to quit making and supporting normal crap and fences us off from self-sufficiency forever. But with all the product out there based on tried and true methods, I don't see that happening soon, if ever. Only the speed freaks who have to have eggshell frames and tweaky, weird wheels will have to haunt their dealers, with hollow eyes and grasping fingers. "You gotta hook me up, man! My bike has started to feel HEAVY to me! You don't unnerstan'!"
My heart goes out to you poor bastards. Get some help, okay?
As the spoke wrench goes, so goes the truing stand. Shell out for a decent one and treat it right.
I did cough up for the big-boy professional shop-type work stand. Not everyone can do that, but get as close as you can. It might be better to buy the shop-type arm that bolts to your bench than to get a folding stand with a lesser clamp. Use the big-dog, iron-base shop stand as your standard and work from there.
At the other end of the work stand scale, you can hang your bike from a cord tied to a nail driven into the top of a doorway to perform many adjustments. You can't apply a lot of torque, as when setting a fixed cup in an old-style BB or seating a cartridge-type BB, but you can pop a wheel out, and adjust gears and brakes. I did that for decades.
Before I had a headset press I knocked cups into the frame with a block of wood and a hammer. Bear in mind the damage you could do with a ricochet.
After decades in the bike business I have acquired most of the heavy tools for basic handling of steel frames. I have the BB reamer-facer, the taps to chase BB threads, head tube reamer-facer, crown race setters, some tubing tweakers for various applications and I still have a shopping list. Torch work I have yet to master.
I have no illusions about becoming a master frame builder, or even a minor one. My torch aspirations extend to minor repairs like dropout replacement and braze-on installation on the rare frame these days that might not have every imaginable nubbin on it. As such it has not been as high a priority as some other lines of endeavor outside of cycling. I like cycling to support my life, not be my life. The extent of my tools is probably overkill for mere independent maintenance, but not by much. I've found occasion to use just about everything at least once. And I do pick up side jobs from time to time.
My addiction to the QBP account keeps me chained to the shop. That and the other wholesale sources are my pipeline to fresh parts when other sources like scavenging won't suffice. But with a full arsenal of tools I could tackle the parts issue by other means if I lost access to the easy ones. Knowledge is freedom.
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