I cracked on and finished some sets of the forks..but on assembling a set, it's clear that the dropouts are not right....they are coming out at 94mm spacing rather than 100mm.
Crap.
Something to do with the offset of the slot in the baseplate for the dropout...
I'm going to have to scrap the ones I have made (Should have made one test set first ) and start again.
At least this time I'll have a clearer idea of the process and sequences etc.
I ordered new tubes from Dedacciai, and while waiting for those to be delivered from Italy, I turned to the Magura mounts...
On closer inspection, there are two sorts of mounts...straight and offset:
This bend in the leg gives the mounts different offsets from the tube onto which they are mounted. Pace use the bent version on the RC30 legs. All OK, except it turns out that of the 30 pairs of mounts that I have, only 2 pairs are the bent type, and nobody sells the offset ones anymore...so I needed to work out a way of bending the straight ones to order.
After a couple of unsuccessful crude attempts with a bench vice etc, I designed a tiny folding press. This has an anvil with a shoulder onto which the mount sits at the right depth for the fold, and has a chamfer on the outside to give clearance for the unbent leg.
The shoulder is slightly narrower than the mount, so that it is clamped tight in the small mill vice.
In order to get the bend even across the length of the mount, I used a heavy door hinge as a folding arm:
I also used the time to revise the tube squashing arrangement so that the tube end dimples a little further without creasing the tube. Larger diameter tube block on the bottom and a little profile filing on the top half opening to get an even curve.
Once this was successful, I could take measurements and revise the end cap and dropout drawings while saving a little weight inside, ready to get some more laser cut.
These arrived yesterday from Fractory:
So, I'll make up a couple of test pieces to make sure that everything is lining up properly this time, and then get on with a batch of 15 pairs with most of the 50 tubes that arrived last week:
Wow, amazing update! Thanks for all the info, really interesting to see the work that goes into building components.
Looking forward to the finished product, and I'm happy to wait as long as it takes.