Whistle

I mentioned in a previous post about a plan to use steam for "something". Well, I found that something. It's a 5 note air-whistle that makes the sound of a train! It's copper and has a threaded end so it can be attached to piping, which got me thinking.

The plan is coiling something like steel dishwashing hoze or copper piping around my exhaust (which heats to 500+ degrees). Then, I let water from a small tank in to the coil using a valve and once the water hits it, it will flash-evaporate causing steam to shoot through a pipe in to the whistle making a sound.

That's the idea, anyway. All my roommates think it's not going to work so I'm going to do some experiments on the stove with boiling water to see if I can even get the thing to whistle in the first place. Fingers crossed!

Long Weekend

The brass sections are finally done, cut and mounted. Even with our beefy air compressor and cutting tool it took me 6 hours of grinding away to get the pieces cut and cleaned up. I sat in the garage with my earbuds under some big ear-protective headphones and watched movies on my iphone as I would cut an inch, then wait for the compressor to re-fill. In the end, I'm fairly happy with the result, although I wish the etch would have been a bit deeper. But the show must go on...

...And on it went. It was nice to be back to more straight-forward fabrication and mounting the gauges took no time at all. I used some modified 90 degree mounts and hefty pipe couplings with rubber cores to hold the dials, which worked out better than I thought. The next task is to sew some sleeves for the rear ends of each to hide and protect the connections which I'll probably make out of the same vinyl as before. Glad I got extra. Finally, I have an idea for a dashboard detail that may or may not work but that's on the list as well.

Etching Ready to Cut

Last night I touched up the etching with some black paint. My already-abstract designs became even more so with the imperfections inherent in the process, but I still think they convey what I was going for. At least the nameplate is pretty clean. I'm going to seal these with a good amount of clear coat to keep them protected and glossy and start cutting them out with my air tool this eventing.

With any luck, I'll wrap up this phase and get going on my gauges to really finish up the dashboard.

Shed

Oh yeah, and we finished the shed. Right now it has 2 mopeds and 4 frames in it with room to spare. Not bad for only a few hours.

Etching Finished - Finally

The brass etching has been the bane of my existence the last week or so (and my girlfriend was becoming concerned I was delving in to the mindset of the obsessed mad-scientist). It took me six tries (and four kinds of paper) to simply get the toner on the brass and three tries to etch the damn thing. In the process, I scaled down the number of pieces to the foot plates and the name plate.

But, I did finish it with moderate results. My only question now is whether I hand-paint the negative back, or use a dremel to deepen the cuts. The etch was successful, but not quite deep enough to spray and sand as most people recommend. I think I may try hand painting tonight and see what I get, since Acrylic can easily be washed off.

As for the process...here's the toner successfully transferred on to the brass. I heated 3-4 inches at a time with the iron on the hottest setting with my cellphone timing 5 minutes. Then I would move the iron and rub the revealed section until no air bubbles were left. Put in a movie for this part.

Next, I made a tank with about 7 gallons of water with 1 whole container of salt. The pieces were dunked and separated by about 3/4" of wood. The positive charge was attached to the piece to be etched and the negative to the other.

Here's about 1 hour in. Crazy looking, huh? This nasty stuff is basically rust from the salt water. I really wanted to try doing a non-toxic (or less toxic) etch without copper sulfate. It was bubbling and fizzing like crazy. Fingers crossed here.

Here's the piece with the toner still on and the etch finished after about 2 hours. What's cool is that the other piece with the negative charge essentially became copper-plated, which I an use for something else later, I guess. The next step is to clean off the toner with carb cleaner.

Finally, the brass is revealed! Once the black paint/primer is added back in to the negative spaces the design will really pop. It's not as clean as some of the awesome etching I've seen online, but screw it, I've spent enough time on this part and there's much more to be done!

Lastly, my tips for etching, for what they're worth:

• Keep it small, under 6x6. Next time if I do something large I'll break it in to pieces. I think the charge is just too dissipated and weak over a large area.
  
• Use magazine paper (semi gloss pages from Wired or something) for the transfer
• Get an iron with no auto-temperature control safety features. You want it maximum heat all the time.
• Use copper sulfate, it will give you a much deeper etch, combined with the smaller size (I think)
  

Lights

Over the weekend my roommate Adam and I spent Saturday building the new 'ped shed. It took a bit of time getting started, but it progressed nicely. Here's a photo of the frame completed. We actually did get the walls, roof, and door completed but I neglected to take a photo, but I will once we get it painted. It's only 4 feet tall, the perfect size for bikes and we should be able to fit 4-5 in there which will free up a lot of space in the garage.

As for progress on the bike this weekend, I watched Pulp Fiction while doing some wiring. Here you can see the LED lights burning bright off the 12v battery. I haven't yet spliced in the brake lines or the power switch but it should be pretty easy.

I also attempted to print my images on the brass to begin etching. However, the paper I used was just too thick and the toner only transferred a minimal amount. Set back. But after some more research, I discovered that printing with a laser printer on to magazine paper, which is glossy and thin, can give you better results so I'll try that again tonight. Luckily carb cleaner pulled the failed stencils right off so I can try again since brass PRICEY.

Electrical Work

I started working on the wiring for the bike, which is going to take a good couple of days to finish. Electrical is not really my forte, but with my roommate's help (he builds robots) I should make it through.

First, I hammered out the frame that will house the lamp. I harvested this piece from an old slide projector ad it was nearly the right size, but 10 minutes on the anvil made it perfect. Man, I love hammering shit on those.

Next I epoxied my lamp in to the, again, perfect-sized housing (talk about a lucky find). The LEDs have such a long life I'm not really concerned with having to replace it. The thing will probably out-live me.

Here's the assembly inside the headlight. Trust me, it's a LOT brighter than it looks. Plus, this light is more for people to see me, the secondary light below is for the road.

Finally, here's the rat nest that is the wiring process. As you can see I've tagged all the wires to make sure what's-what. Once I run all the wire I'll attach them to their respective lights and terminals and see if I can get the switches working. This weekend, however, I'm planning the big electro-etching process so I'll have one more night to work on it until next week.

Grips - Process Photos

The grips were my focus last night and I'm pretty pleased with the final result.

First step was to bore out the interior diameter of the neoprene grips. I bought them thinking they were actual wood, but it turns out they were just wood colored, but comfortable. So I decided to use some vinyl left over from the seat to make matching covers. Like I said, the first step was to make the interior diameter wider so the grips would fit over the wide throttle assembly.

Next, I cut three lengths of the vinyl to be sewed together and stretched over the grips. Luckily, the masking tape width was the perfect size, so I used strips of tape as a guide.

After cutting the pieces, I sewed them together to create a tube. I used three lengths which I thought would stretch a bit better than one big piece held together by a single seam.

Finally, I made 9 tiny stitches at the top of the sleeve to start to close the top. As you can see it's almost sealed, but the final step would be threading a screw through a small hole for the finishing cap.

Here's the finished grip with the accents securing the top seam to the neoprene core.









One more shot of both grips. I love how they match the seat perfectly and are super comfortable. One more thing to check off the list!

Pedals and Wings

Last night was really productive. I finally got the wings wired up and mounted, and the stiffened fabric was a breeze to work with. I taped up the sheets on the armatures just to make sure they worked, but looking at it, it seemed like the bright white was a little too bright.

So, as you can see from this gross-looking picture, I soaked them in steaming-hot water with tea bags for 15 minutes or so. I made sure to crinkle them a bit to let the dye soak in unevenly for that natural aged look.

As you can see, the finished wings definitely have that DaVinci flying machine look to them and I'm pretty pleased with how they came out. The darker color matches a lot better with the overall look I think. I may need to spot weld the joints just to be safe, but we'll see how they hold up during some test rides soon.


Also, I mounted my collapsible pedals which are really sweet:

4th of Juy - Off

I went to the Midwest with my girlfriend for the 4th to visit her family, leaving me with no progress this weekend. However, after we got there the lambs stopped screaming and I was able to enjoy myself without even thinking about the bike. I'm pretty refreshed and motivated once again so I'll be back at it tonight. I know it's not moped related, but I have to post this picture that sums up the small town we were in:
Ah, small towns.

Anyway, I should be receiving my engine parts today which include a new PHBG 19mm carb, intake and new exhaust. After I wrap up all the custom body work I'll be working on the actualy bike with these new components. Not only is the bike going to look cool, it's going to SCREAM.

OCP

"Obsessive-Compulsive Productivity (Disorder)"

I'm pretty sure I have this.

Wings Take Flight

Last night I spent the evening watching V for Vendetta and building the DaVinci wings. The metal armatures came out SICK. It's like a cross between Edward Scissorhands and a Chinese junk sail. Anyway, the construction was the easy part, and now I have a pair of matching ones.

The fabric webbing, on the other hand, is proving to be difficult. I tried a number of webbing patterns and construction processes such as mounting the middle arm in a small sheath, then trying to stretch the outsides, or starting with outer sleeves and working in. I wasn't really getting anywhere though. The wings are just not strong enough to pull fabric taught. So, I decided to make the fabric self-supporting.

Here you can see a crude setup that stretched the fabric. I soaked the piece in fabric glue and let it dry overnight. It's now pretty stiff and will be more like mounting cardstock or something that holds its shape a bit better. Plus it looks weathered, which is always cool. Hopefully this will be a bit easier to work with.

Mirrors Complete

I fashioned mounts that allowed the mirrors to be fit inside the armatures for a great steampunk look. The dash area is really coming together!

Also, my roommate Adam and I sketched out plans for our "ped-shed" that we're building next week last night. As you can see in all the photos, we have quite a few bikes in the house at the moment between the 4 of us (I think the current count is 13) and we're running out of space. I'll post some photos of that as well.