Jake von Slatt Archive

A Visual Aid for Bike Design

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For Halloween I made a Witch on a broomstick out of 2" thick Styrofoam insulation. I got my 8 year old daughter to pose with a broom and then I snapped a picture with my digital camera. I did an "edge trace" with Paint Shop Pro and used the

Front Wheel Drive Moving Bottom Bracket Experiments

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Some random experiments with front wheel drive bikes. Originally published at Bike-Recumbent.com  The first iteration is based on Tom Traylor's designs. As with the SWB project I am looking for a bike that I can ultimately try and put in a full fairing. With the short wheelbase bike I

Cheap Hydration System for a Recumbent Bicycle.

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When I changed the handlebars on my Tour Easy for a "T" bar arrangement I needed to find a new place for my water bottles. I took a look at some of the Camelback type systems available but balked at their prices. In the past I'd used homemade "hydration"

Home Depot Bike Headlight

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How to make high power bicycle headlights with materials from your local home center. This is an article from a few years back that was up at Bike-Recumbent.com, I'm consolidating everything from there over to here. Nearly five years after I built them I am still using these headlights with

Steampunk Keyboard Mod

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My goal with this project was to build a retro keyboard that was fully functional and of a sufficient quality that it could be used everyday by a touch typist.  In order to achieve this I chose a high quality (though widely available) keyboard as my starting point.  This

Jake’s Google Reader Shared Items

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I’ve decided that I’m not going to maintain the feed to SPWS from my Google Reader shared item page.  However, if you are still interested in watching the feed, you’ll find it Here.   Jake.

Foundry Furnace – Part 2

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I wasn't quite ready to start in with the grinding and welding this past Monday so I thought I'd ease into the day by adapting these photo-copy station lights I found at the dump to my drill press.  They sure do make hitting that little automatic punch dimple a

Today’s Road Find

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  Today’s road finds, a #2 Phillips screwdriver with tip in excellent condition and a partial roll of electrical tape. Electrical tape is a very common find, I think they must fall of off linemen’s and phone company worker’s trucks.   BTW: You should really throw out your worn

Foundry Furnace – Part 1

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This past Monday I finally got started on my foundry project!  I’ve been collecting material for some time so I was ready to roll once Maker Faire ’09 concluded.  The goal is to built a foundry furnace capable of melting brass and perhape iron, if I’m lucky.   I’m

Dump find – Roofer’s Tool?

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  I found this at the town dump last week, I'm speculating that it's a roofer's tool for bending flanges on to sheets of copper.  It's about 4 feet long, the hinges are brass and there is a steel blade edge on both side of the central slot.  It