Framing the scene and jiggin the frame

After getting the axle plates I'm running out of excuses to get started with the frame. So here we go, for better or worse. 

First a little about certain principles and philosophies of how to conduct the business. If you look at the videos on youtube there are _plenty_ where people just have the frame on the floor un-tied and weld with t-shirts on. And the end product is typically pretty as a picture, no complaints there. The problem here is that if you don't do any levelling and weld with such low currents that you feel comfortable with bare arms - you probably won't be riding that bike. Which is perfectly alright if it is made for showcase and not for riding. 

I'm making mine for riding but still there is a spectrum of approaches. One is where you do all the preparations to a immaculate precision. After that things will be nice and tidy. The other school is based maybe more on the principle of "if you are not sure, try". We took this route, partially because of practical reasons. 

The practical reason is that we don't have a proper frame jig. We have been discussing for almost a year of doing one, but it simply is not going to be there in time for my project. The idea of a frame jig is that it's rigid - it's big ass piece of steel beam that you know once you level it out, it'll be level even after a modest earthquake. And that is what we didn't have so this is what we did.

We have a steel covered welding table, to which we welded couple of rather rigid beams to mark the rear axle place. The axle it self, is height-wise exactly where it'll be in reality.

To the rear axle we placed the axle plates I've been writing about earlier. If you have a keen eye, you can see they now are steel grey and not black since I removed the paint with chemicals and a steel brush.

Modern men as we are, we rely on modern methods - the plumb, straight angle and patience (something I lack) takes you a long way. What we exactly did is that first we levelled the table the best we could, meaning to a fraction of a degree. This is my assessment is that accuracy of a degree is not enough but as soon as you can squeeze it to be some fraction of a degree, it'll be all alright. 

So the measurements tells us that we have the frame as level as possible and as straight (perpendicular) to the table as possible. The frame is bit skewed which to my understanding is rather normal for 70's HD frames. And it is less off it'd be after a head collision so we assume the frame is intact but it was born a little twisted.

This is very amateur, yet rather efficient way, of doing things. If you have a material for a proper jig, it probably pays off to make one. But if you don't have one, it's not the and of the world - you can substitute overly engineering with patience and insight. Anyway, this table and these pieces of beams are our jig - frame is welded to the table and they are rather immobile so it'll be just as steady as it needs to be.