Learning to saw

When it comes to woodworking, this is probably the most useful podcast/video I've seen for quite a while. Bob Rozaieski at the Logan Cabinet Shoppe put together a great presentation on how he improved his own sawing. The problems he described are very similar to my own issues when I saw. I cut fairly well, but I'm always slightly out of true in exactly the same way.
If you're into woodworking, you're probably familiar with Bob. Just in case you've never found his site, though, now you know.
Once I'm back on my feet and working, I'm definitely going to make the adjustments from that podcast and see if I can improve my saw cuts.

Boredom

Gawd...I'm bored. I've got a list of things to do a mile long, but I'm not capable of doing much more than sitting on the couch and rotting my brain on daytime TV.
Thankfully, there are these devices called computers! The internet is a lot better than soap operas. I've been spending some time watching vids at Lie-Nielsen and Paul Sellers. I've got some new ideas in my head and can't wait to get healed so I can get back to life.
Once I'm capable of doing work again, the first thing I plan on is rethinking how I sharpen. Sure, I can get pretty good edges now, but I think my method could be improved. After that, it's time to improve my tool storage.
Because of the breaks in my pelvis, I may not be able to ride a bike at all this year. That means that the time I would usually spend out being a hooligan may be spent being crafty. We shall see. I'm kind of miffed that I can't ride my new bike.
Another thing that I'm miffed about is that I can barely type. I take pride in knowing how to actually type, but my left wrist isn't quite healthy yet.
Anywho, I'm just typing off into space to kill the boredom. I have a small project that my dad is going to help with over the next few days. Who am I kidding, he'll probably do all of it while I point and supervise!

More on passenger pegs

Before my accident, I made some progress on my peg mounts for the Aprilia. I'm bored as hell right now, so I'll get the pics up that show the current state of the peg mounts. With any luck, I'll be able to ride this bike sometime this year. It kind of sucks owning such a beautiful machine and not being able to enjoy it. Anyway, enough of my whining.

The frame stand offs are cut from 1/2" stainless hex. I went with that because the factory body mounts are made from hex stock. They will get a little cosmetic treatment to match the factory parts at the end.

Cutting down the OD for the male threads, which will be 8mm. Look close and you'll see a funny spot. It took a few passes to get through it, but that little spot was sort of hard. It happens, and luckily wasn't enough to mess up the part.

Crash and Burn pt 2

Here's a few pics of my crash, it got pretty gnarly. Accompanied by one handed typing!

About a half hour before the accident. I built this bike, and I'm pretty proud.

Crash and burn

First day out on a bike ended badly. I was doing a check ride on my friend's bike after some tuning, and got tangled up with a mini-van. Four total broken bones, 12 days in the hospital, and a lot of pain later...I'm recouping. See y'all again soon as I heal up and slowly (very, very, very slowly) get back to a normal life.

Passenger peg mounts

My new bike is an Aprilia RSVR 1000 Factory. It's dead sexxxy, and has more horsepower than I should be trusted with. In fact, it is 131 pounds lighter, and has triple the horsepower of the Sportster that I traded in. Being the "Factory" model, as best as I can tell it was never equipped with any passenger seat or pegs. Normal models would have had a back seat and pegs on the exhaust hangers.
Provided my looks and personality don't get in the way, I thought it might be good to equip my new bike to carry a passenger, just in case I meet some unfortunate young lass who has bad taste in men and decides she'd like to go for a ride.

Basically I'm using a piece of scrap 1/4" aluminum as my stock. The idea was to see if I could squeeze a pair of mounts out of it. Here, it has already been cut in half. It was a bit of a "U" shape. I also had to dodge some existing holes. I pulled the mount dimensions from the exhaust bracket, and just eyeballed the rest.

Carburetion

Pre-blow up, my chopper was a 650cc machine with twin 30mm Amal carburetors. Post-blow up, she is a 750cc machine, sporting a single 34mm Mikuni round slide. Not knowing a bunch about Mikuni carburetors, I consulted the lads over at the Brit Bike Forum. After a brief description of the motor, I was given a good starting point to set up my new Mikuni.
Now it's just a matter of tearing into the Mikuni a little bit, and finding out what jetting I have. Then it's off to see my new friend at the dealership for jets. I hope she can get them, because searching for the exact one's on my barely-faster-than-dial-up internet is a real pain.

My new 34mm Mikuni, with the top and slide removed. See the three small holes at the bottom of the main bore? The one to the left houses the air correction jet, it's a tiny little bugger.