getting ready to talk to some tourists

Bon Gornio,
Welcome to Part Duex.

The next step in the bici-maquina-making process was to attach the rebar pieces i had so enthusiastically bent. My welds were fast and accurate, filled with a small sense of pride i showed Carlos who, much to my satisfaction, exclaimed that they were his welds. The picture isn´t the best, but you can see my lesson paid off.


Anneliese and i took turns welding away, it was great fun for both of us.




The next step in construction was to make a small wooden table for the blender to sit on top of. Carlos gave me rough dimensions from which i cut a round-cornered square. My days as a novice carpenter had me wishing for an orbital sander to clean the thing up, you know, get it looking good (shaving a 64th off of most ugly wood can bring it miraculously back to asthetic life) But there is no such sander, just a metal grinder which i used to smooth out the corners some. Maybe we can find Carlos an orbital sander somewhere.



Carlos then placed the hub, showing me approximately where it would sit. He then measured out on the wood, drew a mark and commanded "cut."



So i drilled holes in all of the wooden tables, three in total, and moved on to the hubs. From my experience de-constructing a liquadora several weeks prior, i knew that each hub would have to have four of its spoke holes widened to accomodate a screw. So more drilling, and then onto attaching.


The odd part about this process is that we didn`t actually have any screw short enough to not pop out the other side and look terribly un-professional. Again from my intimate moments with the liquadora i knew that i could cut a screw in half, sharpen the new end and it would, more or less, function. Holding the screws to the grinder was a little difficult, in part because of their size but mostly because the grinding heats them up fast. It was a good incentive to be economical with my passes.

After sculpting several new screws, predrilling and attaching the hub to the bike-sized table, i moved on to the base.

Each bike needed to have more rebar bent to connect the two forks at the front of the bike. This is for added stability and overall durability. More good muscle use ensued.


They almost look like stickly little animals, dinosaurs, or those weird bug aliens from starship troopers.