...In Dealing with Arizona Mud

Growing up in the Dirty South, mud, rather, "muddin'" was looked at as sport rather than obstacle.  There were bike rides through my teenage years that were purposed with finding the largest puddles we could and riding through them.  That was what big rings were for: full speed charges through puddles after rainstorms, pulling up that front wheel at top speed until it came down through the pooled water to stamp into the sticky ooze below and relieve the rear wheel of all traction duties ejecting the rider over the bars.  That was how I learned to wrench bikes in more ways than one.  The Georgia/Alabama red clay that provides the namesake of the dirty south was a source of pride amongst those who ventured outside.  I remember entering a race where lawnmower goggles were the preferred attire over sunglasses of any sort and the first downhill quickly turned into a run to the creek at the bottom for an impromptu bike wash to get things rolling again.  That clay turned into a slick peanut buttery grease that would stop tires from rolling and kill all fun in any direction.  Racers would routinely apply cooking spray to frames and tires and I even remember one spray on product ("Mudd-off" I think) that was dedicated to the task of shedding mud from bicycles.  Oh where we would be if it actually worked!  I guess I would have nothing to type about today.

Flash forward twenty years to life in the other dirty south...the southwest...home of the Basalt lava flows of the San Francisco volcanic field.  Producer of a mud far more unforgiving than anything ever witnessed in the east.  Yeah, I know, you think the southwest is a desert of endless sunny days with ridiculously warm temperatures making it uninhabitable to normal humans.  Well the third part may be true, but this year has brought about an above average rainfall for the spring leaving areas open for daytime bike adventure long into a season that most years would have left forgotten in the heat by April 1.  I was fortunate enough to receive a phone call from Will over at WTB who was en-route to a five day Coconino 250 attempt over memorial day weekend.  In that moment the wheels were set in motion for a long weekend adventure.  I wouldn't be able to make the whole 250 with the group that identified themselves as the California Camels, but it did allow for a multi day adventure ride through some new country to meet up with another steller adventure that you can read about HERE.

My ride over the weekend would be from Flagstaff to Mingus Mountain and back around Sycamore Canyon, but the early start to monsoon season left the route selection to be a touchy detail.  Rim country (referring to the Mogollon Rim of the Colorado plateau extending from central Arizona to southwest New Mexico) is a likely place to encounter the Basalt flows and the mud that they can produce, so any chance of rain when riding in this area, especially on unfamiliar roads and trails should not be taken lightly.  Descending the rim with a loaded bike is often a granny gear affair for 2000 or so vertical feet (that's right, granny gear downhill), but add some rain into the equation and prepare for a long and slippery walk for miles if you're lucky.  Choose wisely.

My route was looking good as the threatening skies kept temperatures down but never unleashed on day one.  The power line descent known locally as the Casner Route appeared from the top to be dry enough, and it held through to the bottom.  It wasn't until the next day that the signs of what could be started to appear.

This bear track on Mingus Mountain shows the grease that had since dried.  The pebbles that comprise the rest of the trail are nowhere to be seen within the track meaning they were carried off or pressed in.  The mud crack evident in the heel pad is a sure sign that life would have been miserable here under rear wheel power when the track was laid.  Other than this bit of evidence our day was again uneventful and filled with spectacular weather for late May in the high desert grasslands.  An overnight drizzle along the Verde River in Perkinsville would be cause for concern though. 

My route for day three was home following the Pines to Mines route.  If all went well it would be 70-75 miles of dirt road, mostly uphill with ~2500 feet of vertical.  No downhill fun, but a nice pedal and none too steep climbing.  I was out of camp early, bidding the sleepy Camels farewell as they dozed.  The overcast morning showed on and off drizzle.  As I steered toward the rocky climb up the western edge of the Rim, my eyes lay on the ground before me and the residual dampness of the soil below.  A freshly graded road leading toward a mining claim showed evidence of troublesome travel, but the moisture was still too low and the surface remained good.  About halfway up the rim the sandstone rocks that make the Pines to Mines downhill an abusive challenge turn to basalt, the soil to a rich rust red of decomposing iron, and though it wasn't raining presently the overnight drizzle had left its mark.  Tires start to clog, and tiny pebbles are released into chains and derailleurs.  The release of those pebbles was indicative of a mud solution still on the dry side. 

Add a bit more water and those pebbles serve as a binding agent for more mud.  Below the mud is showing enough moisture to stick to itself, but has somehow released from the tire (not common).  It was enough to stop movement and force a get-off, thus clogging my shoes with the same sticky clod.  At its worst imagine your wheels becoming a cinnamon roll of mud and rock.  Conditions here change literally by the minute, but if this area had seen real precipition, I would have no doubt been pushing a very slow and heavy bike, or maybe a sled (pushing the sled is what happens when both wheels lock up and the bike+mud must be pushed along on the skids).  Out here mud clearance is only a matter of the recipe.  No matter how much is built into a bike frame or fork it will be thwarted by the right conditions.  The only measure that can be taken is knowing when to stop before the mess takes hold.  Walking can sometimes save your drivetrain, especially if grass grows off to the side, but the best plan is avoidance entirely.

Memorial Day for me did not present this option; I was to be back on the job on Tuesday.  Fortunately the mud up the rim was short lived and rapid travel resumed atop the plateau.  Ominous clouds loomed around the San Francisco peaks obscuring them from sight, though it was sunny west of Sycamore Canyon.  I never got rained on, save for a drizzle coming around Sycamore Rim trail.  The mud started here, but by the end of the four mile stretch of singletrack, the sun had come out and the trail was rideable again.  I found myself under a power line that runs directly east/west along the southern boundary of the Navajo Army Depot, and here began the mud.  I fell immediately into the commitment trap as skiers call it.  The intended route of unimproved dirt roads proved immediately impassible.  The mud was in full slick status in lanes of travel, unrideable, and sticky at the edges collecting all vegetation and debris surrounding a tire track.  The two track following the power line was muddy but passable, and the decision to keep moving along this route seemed obvious in rising panic of dwindling daylight.  Walking the power line hills would be slow, but the urgency of the situation forced movement.  In retrospect a route north around the Depot would have been the wise choice, utilizing improved roads, but I had not been stopped along the power lines.  Three hours of daylight, twenty miles to good dirt. There was no option for rescue; no one could get there.

The hikes up reminded me of my fire line days; power line cuts make good fire breaks.  The downhills were rideable, speeding travel.  The hills increased in length and steepness as I came up to Volunteer Canyon.  Cresting the last hill before the canyon left a dismal sight of the next power pole over half a mile away.  The bottom of Volunteer canyon was several hundred cliffed out feet below; the sun in the tree tops to the west.  I decided to backtrack.  I needed to get to a known spot on the map before darkness set in.  A singletrack heading directly south was indicated on the map near my position.  I found it with a little searching around, the stacked ancient and rotting timber over the rolling topography revealed the rail grade heading south.  Though not rideable, the travel would be the best of the troublesome situation.  Unimpeded walking would lead me back to the impassible roads of my intended route initially.  The gain in eastward mileage through my detour offered no improvement in road condition.  It was dusk.  I knew what I had to do.  Fifteen more miles of hiking and riding, all of it adjacent to the road.  The amount of moisture fallen that day was one for the records.  The roads were left as a slick that would remain overnight leaving the grass and needle cast to the side as the only means of travel.  Water puddled into a shallow lake between patches of grass in the open meadow offering the bike a short reprieve from some of the mud.  Travel would continue in this manner for the next two hours until the improved gravel of Woody Mountain Road was under rubber.  I pulled the plug a little before 10:00 pm, calling for a ride when I reached pavement.  15 hours of travel time.  Over 80 miles covered.  Worst day ever in the saddle in over 21 years of doing this.  Saved by a rail grade.

The detriment of a day like this to a multi-day route is fairly obvious.  A drivetrain that emerges from a day looking like this takes hours to revive, requiring a full disassembly, and tools that are rarely available in the field.  While waiting out the mud may not always be the best option I would believe the time component to be nearly equal to that of the required bike service.  Of course that excludes weathering a multi-day storm.  The best option in dealing with a situation is careful route planning when travels show signs of turning.  Carry a map and understand the road travel grades in selecting a route.  Improved dirt roads offer a graveled surface that will likely rise above troublesome mud.  Unimproved roads may be smooth but will travel whatever geology the earth's surface may offer.  Avoid the basalt layers in the rain.  Beware aware of Juniper areas when storm clouds are present in Northern Arizona.  Choose wisely.  Walking in the grass before your bike clogs up with mud can save a major headache down the road.  Recognize the situation; pressing on will not change the weather, but traveling cautiously with regards to road surface when mud gets bad could ensure speedier travel later on because you saved your bike.  Clean out your tires before they clog up your frame and drivetrain.  A piece of stiff fencing wire does wonders at this.  Clogged pedal cleats are way more favorable than clogged chain and derailleurs, just as a 60 pound bike is better than a 100 pounder.  It will be slow; it will be miserable; it will come to a memorable end.

Thru Axle Unicrown Fork, Vise Pedestal

This fork is on its way to Alaska after getting a coat of black powder to fit up onto a bike I did up a couple years back.  It is a long time in the works, mainly because for the longest time I didn't have a dummy thru axle, but then because the machine tooling obsession took over and I really didn't want to hand miter another unicrown fork.  It has the original Paragon thru axle dropouts that I ordered when they first came available, so that should put a bit of a timeline to the project to those of you who want to really pick this apart.  So now its done and its about the most badass rigid fork I can imagine.  Raked tapered blades, externally butted steerer, tabs for a truss rack, clearance for 29+or-"er.

Oh yeah, I welded up a sweet new rocket ship vise pedestal.  The angle of the photograph makes it look small and top heavy.  It isn't.  Its 36" high bringing the jaws up to about 42" from the floor in hopes of getting better posture when polishing brass.  Thanks to the viking for the time on the mig welder to make this happen.  Its super sturdy and I haven't even bolted it to the floor yet.  

Here's a better picture:

Turning 4130

A while back after purchasing that lathe I got the idea of turning some tapered non-tapered steerer tubes that would better match up with the offering of 1 1/4" diameter unicrown blades and give a nice and thick attachment point for the fork "crown."  Prior efforts at achieving this effect were accomplished by brazing a sleeve onto the bottom of the crown to increase the diameter of a steerer tube where the fork blades attach.  Machining this piece takes one of the heat cycles out of the equation and ultimately yields what I believe is a better product as the reduction from 1 1/4" at the bottom to 1 1/8" at the stem clamp is carried inside the head tube by very gradual 0.75 degree taper rather than abruptly at the crown race seat.  This design utilizes the tried and true straight 1 1/8" headsets of any configuration (internal/external) rather than the 1 1/8" to inch and whatever taper cups that more and more bikes are going to, suspension forks or otherwise.  It should be noted that these designs do certainly have their place, particularly in the suspension world, but the reason for doing this is to create the best brazed bike I can, in this case a dedicated rigid.  This piece gives the blade's crown miter a full wrap of the steerer tube while simultaneously beefing up a part of the bike that sees more and more force applied to it with disc brakes and increasingly fatter tires.   Fat tires SUBSTANTIALLY amplify braking forces and chattery rigid forks are discouraging at best.

Starting with some 1.25" x .125 wall 4130 cromoly, I set about designing the steerer tube from the bottom up, giving ample room for blade and crown race seat attachment.  I carried the taper 80mm into the steerer and some trig starting with the O.D. of the crown race seat area and subtracting the stem clamp diameter gave me a change in radius of 1.1mm and a taper angle of around 0.75 degrees.  Click to photos to full screen.  Calculations at this point are more accurate than my tooling can read so I rounded up the math (I'm talking math into minutes and seconds here versus a machinist's protractor that reads 5 minute intervals).

With the design laid out onto the tube I setup the lathe.  Now I have not spent much time with 4130 on the lathe.  My first cuts were looking pretty terrible with lots of galling and I was getting discouraged when the phone rang with a call from my buddy Evan at Idyllic Cycleworks.  Evan owns Moustache number 4 and has since found himself getting increasingly involved in a bicycle oriented machine shop in Fort Collins, CO.  He was able to give me some pointers that started with some new indexible tooling and inserts that allowed for deeper cuts at a higher speed.  4130 is rather counterintuitive when machining.  All the metals have their quirks though as I'm finding out.  With these pointers and a new bit I started making some practice cuts.  Turn it UP!

The roughing cut above already improved upon my initial efforts by leaps and bounds.

Messing around with tip angle for finishing cuts.  Above are samples trying out different feeds rates and RPMs 

The results were immediately better, but presented me with the learning machiner's problem of needing to take a thick cut for a finishing pass to get an accurate diameter of 28.6 mm for the stem clamp.  I went about the process in a more planned manner than I have to date:  Two roughing passes of 0.028", then a finishing pass to take off the measured remainder accounting for tool deflection.

Now with a plan on paper, the next hurdle was the taper transition.  My lathe does not have a taper attachment allowing the turning of a taper under power feed, so the taper would have to be done using the compound slide under manual feed.  This meant a smooth transition from power feed to manual feed would be imperative.  This lathe will stop itself with the power feed on if an obstruction is met, so I made up a carriage stop.  By placing this in front of the carriage where the tool bit met the start of the taper I could manually engage the compound feed without stopping.  Stopping even for a second would produce a groove in the work piece that would be a direct trip to the recycling bin.  There is certainly room for improvement on this method by milling out a taper template for the cross slide to follow under power, but that's another project for another day.  In the meantime I managed to produce three usable steerers and one decorative piece of practice metal, and also some seriously long pieces of blued out phone cord lathe chip.  The blued out coil was a happy cut in chromoly, and you still can't fake a chip.

Thanks for following along in the geek text!

Handlebar Fixturing

I've been on a bit of a handlebar bender lately (hahaha).  A calculated bender though.  I mean I've been calculating my bender.  I mean calibrating my bender.  Wow, worst opening lines ever.  So I took some of that custom drawn True Temper stock and started turning it into some bar samples in order to make repeatable bends on the home made bender which is not machined, so not totally calculable, and more meant for bending fork blades, but works just fine for 7/8" tubing.

This being the machine era has led me to start working up some fixturing for handlebar pieces, particularly bull moose stem pieces.  Handlebars, especially fixed position handlebars, are always a challenge as you are taking a position that (hopefully) works for works the rider, yet that still has some degree of adjustment (bar tilt, stem height, stem extension and angle), and trying to replicate the position permanently.  Probably the biggest challenge in this is the difficulty of measuring all of the varibles as even when isolated they are still very three dimensional.  (Frames, on the other hand are quite two dimensional in design even though the end result is three dimensional).  Different brands of handlebars place the bends at different locations along the bar giving a different extension and hand position between bars.   Its not just 9 degrees bend and 700 mm wide, its where the location of the 9 degrees sits giving the end result of 700 mm.  Placing the bends more inboard toward the centerline will result in a hand position with less extension and a longer piece of raw stock.  Then there's rotation and upsweep and the fact that this will all be altered on bikes with differing head angles.  It all comes back to hand position in whether or not the effort is a success.

I decided to start with the hardest one first--the gray one with the large single bend on the bottom of the picture above.  Single bend bull moose 17/34 degrees sweep with 80mm extension based around an existing setup that was working for the rider on a bike with a 70 degree head angle with no stem angle.  With the bend of the new bar being forward of where the stem clamp of the current setup would be, I was left to choose a point in space to establish 80mm of extension.  For me this is done by measuring in from the ends and connecting with a line to represent a regular handlebar centerline.  I used an existing bar for this measurement and adjusted as I felt necessary.  Now for the hard part, three dimensional mitre angles.  I plot work on a full scale drawing, but getting to this step stumped me for a while, and it made me wish for some tooling that doesn't exist yet, at least to my knowledge.  

Work of this type usually goes better if there is an all encompassing plan laid out to the end, but sometimes that is just not possible and the problems must be met as they arise.  The latter was definitely the case with this project.  I started with making the fixture above out of some scrap solar energy parts without really knowing if it would fully accomplish what I was hoping.  I figured that if nothing else it would allow me to miter the steerer clamp, but was hoping to do all mitering without removing the pieces from the fixture which could create a whole new set of variables.  I made the miter for the clamp and was still puzzled by the bar angle needing to accommodate the 4 degrees of upsweep I had designed.  I left the pieces in the fixture alone for a few days and what finally led me to the answer was the realization that I needed to think of these cuts around the bar and not around the bike.  4 degrees of upsweep at the end translated to a measurable 1.5 degrees looking at the side profile which was then added to the head tube angle to clamp the bar.  The cut angle was matching that of the bar at 17 degrees AND I was able to mirror the cut so as to not change any settings or re-fixture between sides!  Confused yet?

Now onto the next fixturing problem.  Thus far I've fixed these projects for tacking with whatever is laying around that'll pass as a flat surface.  Fortunately I was passed along an old Anvil seat stay mitering fixture with the directive to cut it up and make it work.  Awesome words right there.  The possibilities of perpendicular tee slots in machined metal are pretty endless.  For now I am just using the fixture as a flat surface for clamping as you can see here.  I did make some 4 degree wedges for fixturing the upsweep.  The steerer clamp is held on the fixture I made for the original bull moose project some years back.  Everything is lined up using squares off the flat and is then measured/marked for center.  All told there is much left to be desired in future tooling, but having a few more of these done will benefit that design greatly.  

The finished product atop another manufacturing side project.   I'm really stoked with how the machine era is furthering the process.  Its been a complete re-calibration on my part, but a quite enjoyable one that I feel will continue to produce better results.  All told THIS bar probably took longer than if I had just cut it up with files, but that time investment will pay off in the next one, and the third one is just hours in the bank.  I read an argument recently that machines eliminate the artisan (artistic) element to bicycle fab, but I find little merit in this argument.  I'd venture to say that its an argument made by someone who has not used a machine.  You can drive them at your will, just like the bike in the end.  Sure you can use the machine to make cookie cutter product. Sometimes this is their place and rightfully so.  You can also use them to create plenty of things that you just couldn't with your hack saws and files.  Its all tools for the process.  Sometimes you need tools to make tools.  I will say that I'm glad to have the last six or seven years of doing things the way I was to serve as a background for knowing what I wanted to do in the machine era.  Turns out that isolating learning curves is a good idea too.

The M.M.F.F.H.U

I will now proceed to sum up the most missed spectacle of the Sedona Mountain Bike Festival: the Moustache March Friday Fun Hater Unvitational.....

In the 6th promised hour and after much triumph and tribulation in the field of bonk management, the third attempt at crossing Oak Creek proved to be the divisive move in group dynamics.  The bonus miles, hours, trails and roads that followed this maneuver were left to individual devices.  ALL in attendance survived and were reportedly satisfied with the experience.

***The rest of the event was also top notch***

Attention Sedona:

The Descent of the Fun Haters is Imminent. 

Donatello Does Machines: The Barker PM Mill

Adventures in Craigslist volume 231:  A horizontal mill in Williams, the next town over, and given the fascination and the rarity of affordable heavy (or otherwise) machinery here in AZ, I figured it was worth a trip over to check out.  It followed me home from another old guy's shop, him sighting that it wasn't up to the task of planing metal that he had hoped it would accomplish.  In addition to the mill came 10 or so slotting cutters, a new (to me) drill press and two metal tables, or rather table parts shoddily cobbled together to look like tables.  The price seemed right and without driving upwards of 700 miles or paying freight, this stuff is hard to come by in these parts, so I forked over some bills and loaded up the truck.  That was at some point last summer and upon getting it unloaded and onto a bench to inspect I decided that a full overhaul was in order and there it set until I found the time to mess with it last month.

Now I'm no machinist, more of a machin-er at this point, definitely a tool junkie, but I am not exactly versed in what to look for in a good machine tool purchase.  What I saw that day in Williams looked like it had potential so I brought it home.  A little research found that this is the PMO model Barker horizontal mill, with overarm support for slotting operations.  It has a micrometer feed on the z-axis and lever feeds on the x and y axes.  The action in the feeds was functional with a little slop, but seemed serviceable so I proceeded with a mechanical overhaul of the gibbs and slides.  The 4x12" table appeared to have had a tool or two run into it, not showing true mill grade flatness, but seemed adequate enough to bolt up a vise; and a little bit of galling showed on the y axis slide, but cleaned up with a file to smooth and tight action.  Little bits of Phil Tenacious oil and grease, a bushing here, and a new bolt there and within a few hours this thing was feeling mechanically sound.  Now to make it run.  

So the information listed above was exactly all of the information I could find on this mill, save for the fact that it is still in production relatively unchanged over the last 60 years and that the current purchase comes with a five speed belt drive and low or high gear set.  This feature seemed to be absent on this unit.  The 1750 RPM motor was geared up with a 1x3 pulley system making it suitable to cut plastic.....maybe.  No wonder my man in Willville couldn't do anything with this machine.  To boot, when I took the bracket holding the reversible drum switch apart to get a better look at the wires in the rotting power cord, the plastic drum promptly crumbled in my hand as did the rubber once containing three strands of copper wire.  Add those to the parts list.  

As my reading turned up that these are intended to be setup for single task production (PM=production mill), my main hope for this unit was if nothing else dedicated chainstay mitering.  But looking at the over arm support and the slotting cutters that came with this machine, it seemed that slotting would also be among the tasks performed, as well as main tube mitering.  There really is not much to this thing so it seemed as though changing setups between tasks would not be too terribly time consuming.  

The most productive source of picture information I could find on this mill was eBay.  That said photos were not very lucrative here or anywhere.  I was hoping to get a look at the gearing system, particularly one with the rumored low gear drives.  Nothing surfaced so I went about designing a new belt pulley gear system for this mill.  Working backward from what I perceived to be this mill's future work loads, I came up with a range of usable speeds I thought would be adequate.  It seemed prudent to use the slotted clamp piece dangling on the "rocker spindle," that solid 3/4" bar that balances the mounted motor with the mill head, as the basis a tensioning spindle for an idler pulley on a two belt system.  Now the question would be one of what would fit this relatively small space AND allow me the most usable gear range.  Several evenings of calculations with an online Belt Pulley Calculator (linked) proved invaluable.  

Envisioning a usable gear range somewhere between 100-150 RPMs at the low end and 1000 RPMs at the high, the next factor to consider would be the block width of the pulleys and the load on the spindle and bearings at the mill head.  Looking through some general information on belt pulley dimensions it seemed that a 1/2" belt (type A) would be easy enough to find and a type A pulley would be easy enough to make on the lathe.  The overall width of one pulley is 3/4" so that would give me room for a 3 pulley stack on the 1" diameter head spindle.  Pulley diameters were chosen using the distance between centers feature in the pulley calculator and by matching belt lengths.  Changing the input/output values for RPMs, and working forward starting with the 1750 RPM motor, then backwards from my desired working RPMs allowed me to determine that a fully overlapping transmission (such as one found on say a 12 speed drill press) would not be feasible.  The gear diameters required within such a small space would not allow for this.  With some room to grow back toward the machine casting I determined that a 2 speed reduction system off the motor would drive an idler/tensioner pulley stack, giving a six speed transmission.  There really is a lot going on here spatially, so playing around with the calculator both forward and backward was what made this all possible.  Low gear on the motor was determined to be 2":8" and low gear off the idler was determined to be 2":6" giving an overall reduction of 1:12 and a calculated low spindle RPM of about 145.  From here, belt lengths were held constant to determine a higher set of gears for both systems allowing for equal throw in the tensioner that had yet to be designed.  A leap of good faith here that with these rough paper dimensions in belt pulley calculations, something could later be created to accommodate belt tensioning in the remaining space.

With pulley diameters determined, it was time to shop for material.  Aluminum seemed like the best choice for shaping on the lathe for speed sake, and cutoffs were substantially cheaper as they got shorter, so it seemed smart to bolt together the pulley stacks.  Doing so would also reduce time on the lathe.  I filled a 35 gallon trash can with the stringers of four pieces of aluminum.

Below are the finished (mostly) parts.  From left to right: head spindle drive pulley set, tensioner/idler pulley stack with pressed in bearings, tensioner pulley spindle, motor drive pulley, and tensioner mounting bracket, coffee, tooth brush.  Hope my mostly made up names make sense for those still following.

As assembly commenced, some tweaking and re-working of certain pieces was needed, mainly the tensioner mounting bracket and spindle underwent several modifications to allow for clearance in the now tight space between the main casting and the motor.  The motor also had to be moved back an inch or so and was accomplished with a plate with offset holes.  One of the belts was miscalculated an inch too short.  Otherwise the whole process was void of defeatist notions and tool throwing, always a plus when fabricating on a "leap of faith."  Below is how the setup came out under tension and operational as of last night.  

Below is a closer look at the back side of the tensioning setup.  The square plate is bolted to the spindle with the two button head screws at a tolerance that allows the spindle to slip freely in the slot of the gray mounting bracket.  Tension is provided by the screw on top passing through the mounting bracket and threaded in the spindle.  What can't be seen here is the face plate (think four bolt bike stem) that now holds the mounting bracket to the rocker spindle as the original pinch bolt just took up too much room.  Eventually I would like to add a quick release mechanism to the tensioner screw.

Had to make some custom hole saw arbors for the 1/2" 3c collet.  I'm not sure yet if these are beefy enough to handling cuts with hole saws up to two inches, but it gave me a reason to learn to thread on the lathe.  Next move may be to try and make some arbors that bypass the collet and tighten up directly with the draw bar.

Finally the mitering setup at first go.  The vise pictured here leaves a little to be desired as clearances are tight when turned to angle and the jaws are fairly short.  Successful miters were made, but some tweaking in the set up of the z-axis along with some centering jaws in the vise would be very helpful.

So 2014 was the year of machine acquisition, making 2015 the year of machine production.  In the year that promises hover boards and flying cars my resolution is to program myself as human robot from 100 years ago.  Thanks for reading!