3 speed Elgin Velocipede 1934

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silverbear

The Boy Who Never Grew Up
Jul 9, 2009
8,325
670
113
northeastern Minnesota
Hello Annie and Zoran,
Nice to know you are following along in this madness...
Just took a break for brunch since it is well into afternoon here and with my stomach growling I thought a breakfast of champions (bowl of cereal) was in order. Now I am thinking that attending a meeting of the Flat Earth Society (international nap time) is also a good idea. As someone famous once said and a bunch of others said, too, no doubt... "I shall return".
SB
 

cannonball2

Well-Known Member
Oct 28, 2010
3,682
223
63
Colonial Coast USA.
BRAVO SB! That's gonna be fantastic! My wife is a stained glasser and uses the foil wrap method. You will have no trouble with it. She is intimidated by the lead method but is getting better. Cant wait to show her what you are doing. Now you have to make a killer tail light!
 

moto-klasika

Member
Jan 12, 2013
584
18
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Bern (more) and Belgrade (less)
... just one OFF-TOPIC question (if anything is off-topic in anyway crazy <in positive way of course> forum like this one): how I could cut bottoms of various bottles to build glass window for our garden house. Some bottles have quite nice bottoms! Could I use grinder with disk for ceramic tiles, or there is some other simple (cheap, too) method?

Ciao, Zoran


P.S.: Attached are photos of some interesting details for my future motorised quadricycle, or for present HPV...

P.P.S.: Anybody doubt that Earth is flat?
 

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Ludwig II

Well-Known Member
Jul 17, 2012
5,071
783
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UK
I suggest going to a musicians site to find how they make glass bottleneck slides for guitars. The same process should give you the bottle ends as well.
 

moto-klasika

Member
Jan 12, 2013
584
18
18
Bern (more) and Belgrade (less)
I suggest going to a musicians site to find how they make glass bottleneck slides for guitars. The same process should give you the bottle ends as well.
----------------------
[FONT=Comic Sans MS, cursive]Ludwig,[/FONT]
[FONT=Comic Sans MS, cursive]Thank you: I found, I saw and I understood!
Never knew that musicians use something like that... To speed up process, I could prepare a few bottles? But, I will try first one-by-one....
Now, I remember that in elementary school we made "baths" for chemistry experiments, cutting big bottles or jars: putting tinny rope around them, wet it by alcohol or benzine and fired it... After that put bottle or jar under cold water... Shown systems are simpler (internet is miracle)!
[/FONT]

[FONT=Comic Sans MS, cursive]Ciao, Zoran[/FONT]
 

silverbear

The Boy Who Never Grew Up
Jul 9, 2009
8,325
670
113
northeastern Minnesota
Thanks for the good words and interest. Zoran, I don't remember exactly but do recall seeing something that was for cutting the tops of wine bottles off to make into drinking glasses. I don't recall what it looked like but a search on google for how to make drinking glasses out of wine bottles should give results. Perhaps a bottle could be cut off closer to the bottom. Don't know, but share what you discover.

Now where were we? Ah yes, cutting out the pieces of glass. That blue is beautiful to my eyes. As a little boy forced to go to church on Sundays I was as bored as most little fellows being compelled to endure scratchy wool pants and oak pews unkind to bony little boy butts. No surprise that the sermons were of no interest and the hymns were no hit either. What was of interest was the wood working... the way the beams in the ceiling were fitted together and the colored light of the stained glass windows. The wood and glass are what held my interest and the sense of mysterious spiritual dimension. That is what I took home with me... the beautiful wood and glass and the mystery of spiritual sanctuary. I left behind the dogma with the stern preacher and the hymns with the old ladies. Bad boy, but better than my brother who got caught palming half dollars and quarters while depositing pennies and nickles in the offering plate. Ha! When I got big and could say no to attending church I pursued my interest in wood joinery and the love of colored light led me to becoming a stained glass artisan. And my interest in the spiritual dimension eventually led me to becoming a pipe carrier in the Native American tradition, something akin to what that preacher was doing, but without the dogma. Interesting how things develop in life. My folks thought my going to church would be a good thing. It was, but not in the way they had imagined. Once more the old man digresses.

The blue pieces are cut out roughly and now it is time to clean things up with the diamond glass grinder. This is especially nice for cleaning up inside curves without risky cuts. It takes some time, but saves on glass in the long run. What if you don't have a diamond glass grinder? There were a whole lot of things the artisans of the glass guilds (known as glass mongers) did not have in the middle ages when magnificent rose windows were created in towering cathedrals. No ordering stuff from the glass companies, either. They made everything including the stained glass. Amazing.

One hand tool which can do a lot is called a nipper, sometimes referred to as a nibbler. It resembles a pair of pliers whose jaws touch only at the forward-most part. One jaw is arched, so only a little bit comes together. With it you can kind of munch away at the edge of the glass a little at a time. An inside curve is cut away in stages, with several scores leading up to the innermost one. But I have a glass grinder and will use it. As you can see there is a spindle sticking up which has industrial diamonds along its surface. The grinder top is like a trough so that it can hold water. There is a little platform which sits on top and has a U shaped cut out at the spindle and behind the spindle is a spot for a piece of sponge which draws up water and keeps the spindle lubricated with water... else the diamonds would dull prematurely. Rough edges can be cleaned up, a piece can be trimmed down to make it smaller and inside curves become easy enough to not worry over. Pretty neat tool.
SB(cont.)
 

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silverbear

The Boy Who Never Grew Up
Jul 9, 2009
8,325
670
113
northeastern Minnesota
The glass pieces are cut and set in place to get an idea of how it is shaping up.
In most windows you would begin at a corner and work out from there. In a leaded window I laid things out and held the pieces against each other with horseshoe nails which were no doubt also used by the artisans of glass centuries ago. They have a flat edge on one side which gives a wider point of contact, especially if a small piece of lead came is used as a cushion while cutting out the lead came to fit against each piece. A lead came is shaped like an H laid on it's side so that there is a kind of groove which the glass fits in to on each side of the "heart". The pieces of came are mitered to fit against each other similar to wood joinery and the miters are cut with a lead knife. I did not do my soldering at the joints until the whole window was fitted together.

With the copper foil technique you solder as you go along, also working out from the corners. The way I did this little "window" was from the center working out and "tacked" the pieces together with solder rather than trying to run a continual bead of solder. The horseshoe nails were in the way of running a bead. I don't know how an expert would do it, but that's all that I could see as an answer to the problem.

I'm using a hundred watt electric iron with a rheostat switch to control the temperature. Not hot enough and the solder does not flow. Too hot and it will run through to the other side. Just right it will flow as a humped bead and look nice when you're done. Mine looks so so mostly because of having to "tack" it together and not having a real good feel yet for running a perfect (if there is such a thing) bead. I think sometimes I had the iron too hot. The white block you see is sal-amoniac and it keeps the tip of the iron clean while giving the tip some acid so the iron will hold and move the solder cleanly. When the tip starts looking grungy you drag it across the sal-amoniac until the grunge is gone and it is silvery looking again.
SB(cont.)
 

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silverbear

The Boy Who Never Grew Up
Jul 9, 2009
8,325
670
113
northeastern Minnesota
In the prior post I have shown a bottle of liquid flux which is an acid applied with a cotton Q tip (or small brush) to the copper before soldering. Without flux the solder will not flow into the copper (or lead if using came).

As you can see, I am moving outwards with the glass pieces until eventually I am at the outermost level ready to attach the blue glass. I can see that a couple of the blue pieces are not right and do some dressing with the diamond grinder. I do my best at learning how to run a continual bead of solder on both sides with limited success. The lens is set against three brass bolts and from the outer edge I have made a kind of clip from a copper ground wire which holds the lens against the brass bolts. It seems secure.

I can also see that the lens is not perfectly round, but since it will be sitting inside the headlamp and back a little from the edge I don't think it will matter. I've never done anything perfectly, so I don't see any chance of that happening any time soon. It is a matter of how good is "good enough"? Just like my paint work and everything else what I actually do does not fulfill the original intent. But such is life. In traditional Indian bead work (usually done by old ladies) the practice is to intentionally include a "mistake" as a reminder that true perfection is not humanly possible. To imagine we are capable of perfection is hubris, but we try. If it is too off, then it is time to do it again. I call this one "good enough" and will let it go. I have done what I wanted to do... make a headlamp out of a grungy old copper pot made a long time ago in far away Portugal. I paid four dollars for it and used it for years to hold water on my wood stove. Now it has a new life as a shiny copper headlight on a bicycle made in 1934. Sometimes I wonder who originally owned this bike. A girl or young woman probably and most likely it was on a birthday or Christmas back in 1934 before WWII and a year after my sister was born, a year after "The Wizard of Oz" hit the silver screen. Or perhaps she bought it through the lay away plan through Sears mail order catalog. It was a beauty and no doubt took her breath away to pedal along on something so wonderful. The bike came from the Carolina s, I know that much. I wonder if she is still alive and also wonder what she would think of what I have done with her bicycle. Would she like the motor and want to ride it? Did she pretend it had a motor as most of us boys did either making motor sounds ourselves or using playing cards at the spokes? And the burning question I have here in 2014, so long since (80 years), would she like the copper headlamp? I want to think she would...
SB (cont.)
 

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silverbear

The Boy Who Never Grew Up
Jul 9, 2009
8,325
670
113
northeastern Minnesota
And finally it comes to this. It is a headlamp after all and is meant to give light both for seeing and to be seen. While I hope someone else likes it and it is gratifying when someone does, in the end what matters most to me is whether or not I like it and I do. I like it a lot. Thanks for following along on this mini-adventure of the copper headlamp. Now for the rest of the bike.
SB
 

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Intrepid Wheelwoman

New Member
Oct 29, 2011
2,830
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Hauraki District, New Zealand
Oh that is soooooo beautiful Silverbear :)

Your recollections of being in church as a child made me smile because I can remember doing exactly the same thing. The combination of old world craftsman fitted woodwork and coloured light through stained glass windows still touches my heart and whispers to me of spiritual things. When I was small the sermons and crusty wheezing old hymns bored me silly, but something must've definitely stuck since I'm now a secular Franciscan sister.
 

silverbear

The Boy Who Never Grew Up
Jul 9, 2009
8,325
670
113
northeastern Minnesota
Thank you for the kind words. While I'm done with this lamp for now (tired of working on it, truth be told) it still needs to have the lens cleaned up and polished, one of the brass bolts behind the lens is too small a diameter making the plane of the lens off so it will need replacing and the copper needs more cleaning up, especially where it came into contact with a live flame in it's former life as a pot. But for now, "good enough". And CB2, yes, I do have copper jewel tail lights and am contemplating a copper jewel front fender light in a torpedo shape with brass filigree dragon fly wings... something else to further the art deco motif. I know this bike is kind of going overboard with decorative doo dahs, but that is art deco and it is how things were done from the 1890's into the 1930's. Even tools were decorative and made with style. Treadle sewing machine bases and all sorts of things were made with an eye toward beauty. So this bike is an indulgence and a nod to that time period when bicycles were morphing into motorcycles and a new age was coming.
SB
 

fasteddy

Well-Known Member
Feb 13, 2009
7,470
4,954
113
British Columbia Canada
Absolutely first rate. Tried to picture it done as we sat there talking about it during Bike Camp this summer. There will not be a copper pot seen by a fellow motor biker that wont be picked up and examined for it's true potential as a future head light.

Once again the bar has been raised. This time it's head lights.

Steve.
 

silverbear

The Boy Who Never Grew Up
Jul 9, 2009
8,325
670
113
northeastern Minnesota
The nice comments really do mean a lot to me and I appreciate it. Makes me feel good, especially when I consider all of you who I respect for your own work. Sometimes when you are sitting at a project by yourself you kind of wonder if you're nuts or what. Face it, what we're doing behind closed doors ain't normal. Ha!

As for this fanciful copper headlight raising the bar, well I don't know about that. I can't picture this light on my other builds, but for this one I think I can get away with it. Sometimes you have to stare at a bike and listen to it, too. Be patient and it will tell you how it wants to be. Once in awhile a bike doesn't want paint. Another doesn't want fenders. One wants to look elegant and another to be fast. One wants to be shiny red and another one prefers flat black. This one whispered something about art deco. I think of it as giving respect. At the same time we want to have a say in things and leave our hand print of ownership on the side of the pony. We have our preferences, too, and the bike or pony knows that it needs us to make things happen. So it's a kind of partnership as I see it. Yeah, I know. More crazy talk from an old fellow going senile.

Anyway, thank you all for your kindness. Every now and then I feel an urge toward responsible adult-like behavior, especially when I have to. Winter is settling in here with snow on the ground and the lakes all frozen over. Yesterday morning it was 25 below zero on the thermometer and with a wind was in effect colder yet. Plenty cool enough to keep your ice cream cone from melting. I need to fire up the snow blower and also have a load of maple logs coming to be cut, split and turned into firewood for a year from now. It would be nice to get that work underway before it is all buried in snow. We'll see. Time to check over the chainsaws.

I'll still be tinkering with bike stuff and will check in when there's something for show and tell. I'm making up a second hand crank engine starter for the "kindalikeawhizzer" build sitting in my trailer's front window. Since I look at it over coffee each morning I have to notice that it wants some attention. The Elgin is in my bedroom on a workbench so we chat daily. And next to the laptop is the Atco cradle holding the Villiars engine for the delta trike. It wants some tinkering time. The headlights for the tri-car are sitting on a shelf also wanting to have their innards replaced with LED units. There's lots of little stuff to while away the long cold dark of hibernation. Even old bears wake up now and then and need to have something to do. Nice to have this forum handy so I can see what my partners in crime are up to in all your far off places. Don't forget to bring your stuff for show and tell. I live for show and tell!
SB
 

indian22

Well-Known Member
Dec 31, 2014
4,734
7,740
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Oklahoma
Hey Silverbear I'm not about to trade weather till mid June. Tomorrow through Sunday no worse than 60+ degrees maybe mid 70's!! It's crazy here in I.T. 50 to 60 degree swings plus or minus pretty common, but seldom below zero (wind chill yes) 50 plus mph winds just yesterday & I rode the Indian Scout in it for a couple of miles. Yeah I'm a bit touched. I'll be praying for an early thaw up there regardless of what that fat little Pa. rodent thinks about it! Keep warm, safe and joyous. I know you're developing new project ideas and dreams keep us young. Best regards Rick C.