Stacked-contingency projects

We're in the midst of a pretty solid rainstorm as of sometime around last Wednesday. On Thursday, I tried commuting on Old Faithful, but on the way home I had to bail out a couple of times because caliper brakes really don't work well on old steel rims. Also, I should re-true Old Faithful's front wheel. I'd switched over because I haven't had the time/energy/wits to figure out what to do to fix up the Jolly Roger's front fender, and fenders sure are nice when it rains.

I finally had a dab of time this morning. The problem with the Jolly Roger was that I recently switched from using 1.35" tires to using 1.5" tires. With the wider tires, the front tire was no longer clear of the front fender. I tried futzing with the whole thing, but couldn't get it sorted out properly at the time, so eventually I just pulled off the front fender. That's all well and good up until it starts to rain in earnest. I'd forgotten how annoying it gets to have water spraying up into my face.

So, what to do. I really just needed to re-bend the awesome, heavy-duty steel bracket that randomdreams custom fabricated for me a while back. The problem is that I haven't had the right equipment to achieve the leverage necessary to bend that sort of metal.

There was a vise hanging around in the workshop here, but it wasn't attached to anything. I managed to remember to ask A about it while he was in town, and learned that both the vise and the workbench in the workshop belong to his friend J. So that meant I couldn't just get A's permission to just go ahead and install the vise onto the workbench. Instead, scrottie came up with the idea of installing it onto a board. So that's what I finally did this morning:



I clamped the vise-board down to the workbench, put the metal bracket into it, and then cast about for a good lever-arm to bend it further. Aha - a pipe wrench did the trick. The actual bending took less than 60 seconds, after all that build-up.



So that's finally up and running again.

I also put a final coat of polycrylic semi-gloss finish on the sewing machine cabinet. Once it has cured, I'll move it to the spot next to the bed and will proceed to the next refinishing project, a small yellow-and-white child's dresser that's currently in the spot where the sewing machine will go.

Having the sewing machine back in its cabinet should be helpful for tackling some upcoming sewing projects. Probably the next real task on that whole list will be figuring out what to do with and how to organize the current contents of the child's dresser (mostly arts-and-crafts supplies), and the same for two boxes of academic papers that are currently sitting in the closet.