when the power goes out, we'll still need music

Years ago, sometime in 08, i got really excited about the idea of a hand-cranked record player. I don't have a clear memory of the inspiration for this, maybe Emma Goldman- "A revolution without dancing is not a revolution worth having."  

I searched the web for someone who'd made one (at the time I just thought i'd buy it) but didn't find much. Everything i found was for old gramophones, though there was one guy who built a record player using legos and a plastic cup for the speaker! My favorite, however, was this: 

http://vimeo.com/kellianderson/paperrecordplayer

However cool, nothing that i found was quite what i was looking for. I wanted a record player that would play contemporary vinyl records (not old 78's). I envisioned one day building my own, but i knew that thought would have to wait a few years.

A few years went by.

The record player was a distant memory, but then I saw an old gramophone sitting at a local reuse shop. It was in sad shape, but it had the wind up mechanism and the crank intact. By this time I reasoned i could augment a gramophone to play at the speed i wanted. I bought it and began to tinker.

It didn't have the horn with it, someone probably pulled it off for lawn art. So i looked into alternatives, turns out all you need is a resonant vessel and a needle. A friend let me borrow her record player and a copy of the mamas and the poppas to experiment with. The first thing i tried was a piece of paper rolled into a cone with a sewing needle taped to it. Hearing it actually produce sound was one of those exciting moments that, even though you know its coming, still holds a sense of surprise and amazement- this piece of paper is producing sound?

Me and my buddy Jonathan wondered what else we could get sound out of. So we stuck a needle in a few things to see what would happen. 

They all worked but the gigantic paper cone was the best. I imagined getting scientific, researching cone angles and shapes, cutting out lots of carefully measures test pieces, and seeing what produced the highest quality sound. Oh, and materials, which undoubtedly make an appreciable difference. But I set that level of fine tuning for a later date. First i needed to see if i could get the thing to operate. It was caked in decades of grease and dirt, it spun, but erratically and slowly.

I pulled the whole thing apart and start scraping off the dirt. In addition to cleaning, this was a good opportunity to figure out how everything worked. 

I told my friend Neil about the project and asked him his advice on the best way to clean and protect the metal. Neil is one of those guys that seems to know everything, not in a prideful way, he just has command of a vast knowledge on a myriad of subjects.

He said to clean the metal, we'd first need to wipe it off with acetone, then we would submerge it in hydrochloric acid, some parts would then get boiled in transmission fluid, and once dried all would receive a spray lacquer finish to protect from rusting.

We experimented with some rusty nails and a bike chain. You submerge the metal in a bath of HCL, let it sit for 30-60 seconds, pull it out, scrape off the rust, and put it into a bath of baking soda and water (to neutralize it). I was surprised at how well it worked.

All of the pieces i pulled apart went through the HCL cleaning, they came out looking much better. The next stage was to boil the springs in transmission fluid. By springs i mean the flat metal coils housed inside of two canisters. Taking them apart to clean and oil wasn't an option, the springs were under so much pressure that to release them without proper equipment would have meant losing an eye. I'm not quite sure why transmission fluid over some other lubricant, but Neil seemed to know what he was doing. 

And, of course, it eventually burst into flame. Its funny, my first thought wasn't to put it out, but to grab my camera.

I wasn't too worried about burning anything down, the shop is made of concrete, we were outside, on a metal table. But nonetheless, future boilings with highly flammable materials happened really far from everything.

After all of the cleaning, everything came out looking pretty nice. Some of the metal was even shiny. Though a few days lag time between cleaning and putting on a spray finish sent some of the metal back to spotty and dull.

To keep everything from getting rusty again I sprayed it with a clear coat of Rustoleum. Neil made a good point that i should cover all of the surfaces of the gear teeth, noting that the tolerances were tight enough that adding layers of varnish could make them no longer fit together. Also, it could gum up. I tried using candle wax and found it trickier to apply than i thought it would be. Melting it on didn't work. Eventually i discovered that rubbing it between my fingers, putting it onto the gears, and then scrape the excess off with an exacto knife. Not the greatest solution, but it worked.

I taped off everything else and sprayed it outside.

I stuck the cylindrical  pieces into a styrofoam head for spraying. I have multiple styrofoam heads. I used the ugliest one.

Everything looked pretty nice after getting sprayed down.

I scraped all of the remaining wax off of the gears, consulted my drawings, applied lots of lithium grease, and started putting everything back together. 

I was really hoping that everything would run smoothly, but i suspected that something wouldn't. Alas, it couldn't spin, the whole thing was frozen. When i fiddled with it i was able to pinpoint the problem as one piece. Not sure the exact name of this particular component, but i know its part of a worm gear (worm gears are used to change axis of rotation). It was rubbing on something, refusing to spin. I suspected that it was bent.

Sure enough, it was. Its subtle, and so hard to tell from the photo, but if you look closely you can see that the end opposite my fingers is raised ever so slightly above the level of the table.

I knew that fixing this was beyond me; to get it right would require a level of precision i didn't have the tools or knowledge to accomplish.

bike friday

In October of '11 I was hired as a production worker at a bicycle manufacturer called Bike Friday. Bike  Friday builds exclusively folding bicycles. What makes our product unique is that we are the only company that builds custom folding bicycles. Our niche is serious cyclists who want to travel the world with their bicycle- our bikes pack into an airplane checkable suitcase! What's more, the suit case converts into a trailer, which, frankly, I think is brilliant.

I've been working at Bike Friday for 16 months and i love it. Its an awesome job, i get paid to build bicycles, something i used to pay to do. Spending 40+ hours a week metal working has had a drastic effect on my skills. Its been invaluable to have highly experienced co-workers to learn from and bounce ideas off of. The job is also loaded with amazing perks, the best being open use of the shop- this means all the equipment and all the consumables (gas, rod, paint, etc) are at our disposal. This translates into a lot of talented people building some really awesome, and sometimes wacky, projects in the off hours.

So far i've mostly done Parts Cutting- preparing all of the raw tubing for the welder, and Brazing- hot gluing metal together with brass. I've also done a fair amount of welding, and some powder coating as well (powder coating is a way of painting metal using static electricity).

Oh, another perk i forgot to mention, you get to build yourself one of the company's bicycles, for free. This was an awesome introduction to all the parts of the process, start to finish. And at the end i had a sweet custom bicycle.

Here's something I built recently, not at all human-power related, I show it as a testament to the leap in skill that i've acquired from my job.

(If you're wondering, this is a sculpting stand that i built for a friend who's a ceramicist. The forks stick into the clay figure, at about waist height, allowing the clay to stand upright without the use of a wire armature). 

When i do finally get around to building something pedal-powered it's going to be far superior to anything i've built so far. 

This is where things get exciting. 

rail bike

Rail bike? Like a bike that goes on train tracks? -- Yes, said Phranque, a bike that rides on train tracks. This one's going to be two bikes, side by side. -- How do they stay on? -- There are guide wheels, and the steering is locked. -- How will it go around curves if the steering is locked? -- The curves are wide, they have to be, a train can't take much of  curve. And there's enough play between the bike wheels and the guide wheels to make it. Trains can't take much of a grade either. So it'll be pretty flat all the way out to the coast.

And it was. Though we didn't make it to the coast; the bike was nearly dead by the time we hit Veneta.

 

You may be wondering what about the trains? Fortunately, we had the advantage of train-less track. There was (at the time) a decommissioned line from Eugene to the coast, meaning the track was maintained, but not utilized- perfect.  A totally abandoned line seems like it may be best, but its not. Depending on how long its been abandoned it may have a bunch of things growing in it, trees fallen onto it, it may be damaged or dismantled. One of things that's seemingly counter intuitive about rail lines is that repeated use keeps them in good shape, rail lines that don't have trains running over them will twist and pull apart over time. It makes sense when you think about it, the train is constantly ironing the tracks flat.

I had never heard of a rail bike until i came to Eugene. Its an awesome idea- ride a bike on your own personal highway through the wilderness- no traffic, no developments, no one else around. Even better, you don't have to steer, the track guides you entirely. Not having to steer (or balance) is an incredible freedom- you can look all around you, you can even have your eyes shut, or like we did on our ride, you can ride backwards.

Rail bikes aren't a new idea, it actually goes back to the 1800's, though they were called railway velocipedes, or track velocipedes back then. Depending on the actuation style, it could also have been called a hand car, a pump trolley, a pump car, a jigger, or a Kalamazoo!

 

While looking into the history of the railway velocipede I had the good fortune to come across The National Velocipede Rally, a British organization that holds annual rallies of human-powered rail vehicles in the UK. A brief history of the railway velocipede from their site:

[The Railway Velocipede] was invented by George Sheffield to get to work by unofficially riding on the tracks of the Michigan Central Railway in the hours of darkness. One evening he found a broken rail and by borrowing a lantern from a local farm, he stopped an approaching train and prevented a derailment and loss of life. News of his nocturnal velocipeding was out but the railway company was grateful for his prompt action and allowed his use of their tracks, also asking him to build another velocipede for the Michigan Central.

His patent was issued on 11 March 1879 and according to the Scientific American of 3 November 1883, 4000 of these machines had been sold in America and Europe in just 4 years, a world-wide hit. They were used as personal transport for track inspectors and signal engineers and could carry two people if needed. Their light weight meant they could easily be removed from the track when required...   Kevin Thomas

Jacqui Thomas, organizer of The National Velocipede Rally, was kind enough to be interviewed for this post:

Jaqcui, tell me a little about your organization. 

[We're] the biggest and oldest one in the UK, over a dozen machines attend at the Churnet Valley Railway. Only a Sunday Rally, but I  hope to make it weekend Rally  in 2014. Other Rallies are appearing, The North Yorkshire Moors Railway in November but not organised by me. Hopefully one in 2013 at the Langollen Railway in Wales again not organised by me.
  
On average, how many people attend your rallies?

We send out about 100 Newsletters and about 30 attend the National Rally, families of those bringing machines, those building and restoring, and Railway Photographers.

How did you come to be involved in this work?

My father was a shedmaster on a sugar cane railway in Zululand, South Africa when I was a child in the 50's and I noticed the dumped hand power machines that had been replaced by petol machines. I kept noticing and the interest grew. I built a Velocipede from photos and measurements collected in Santa Clara Railway Museum, California before I came across Steve Kay who started the UK Rallies. Also a pump trolly which I cut down from standard gauge bits. I did train as an engineer but never did it as a job, I worked in the technical/studio side of publishing.

I also try to track down all the preserved machines and send them the Newsletter in the hope they will come along. I'm also writing a book on the subject, and help any one who wants  information on restoration or new builds. I also get hand powered queries passed onto me by the National Railway Museum. It's my retirement hobby.

...

For more information about The National Velocipede Rally, documentation of some fascinating human-powered rail vehicles, and even downloadable schematic files (to build your own!)  visit: http://www.velocipedes.co.uk/


Returning to our side of the pond:

The building of this particular rail bike was envisioned and enacted by Phranque, former pastor of the Bike Church. I helped out with the construction some, but it was mostly Phranque who built it, with help from a couple others in the shop. It sat there finished, just waiting for someone to ride it, but for weeks no one did. I finally asked Phranque if i could take it out for a ride and he was happy to have someone take it on its maiden voyage. I told my buddy Kyle about it, and he was pumped. (I knew Kyle would be into it).

The trip started off only a few blocks from the church, we walked it down to the tracks. Honestly, we were both a little paranoid that "someone" might see us and consider our trip, for lack of a more euphemistic term, illegal. But it was sunday, the trains weren't running, and apparently neither were the cops. Giddy with adrenaline and the thrill of doing something we knew we weren't supposed to, we sped away from the road as fast as we could. 

We didn't get too far before we noticed that we were missing one of the nuts on the front of the bike, specifically, one of two holding on the front right wheel (as well, holding the right side of the front guiding structure). We stopped and looked around, but to no avail. The bike seemed to do fine so we kept going.Within another 10 minutes we'd lost another. After that we tried to keep our eyes on the nuts, stopping every so often to re-tighten them, but even so we lost the third before we'd gone an hour. We did the majority of the trip with the right fork missing both nuts for the wheel, and the left fork with only one. The pressure of our weight was the only thing keeping it all together. Several times throughout the trip we needed to lift up the bike to switch tracks and each time the whole front end would just fall off. By the end of the day it was something of a cruel Sisyphean joke.

The first leg of our trip was through the industrial section of Eugene. It was interesting seeing the backsides of industry, the undersides of highways, and secret hobo camping grounds. The line we were on wasn't, even while in operation, a commuter line- we were seeing things very few ever got to.

Though what we mostly encountered were long stretches of beautiful country side and woods.

On our way out of the city was my favorite moment of the whole trip. I wish SO much that I had it on video, but it was one of those things that you don't stop to take video of:

As we were leaving the industrial section and heading, more or less, straight into the woods we encountered our first road crossing. We saw it coming and slowed down to strategize- okay, so pull up slowly staying out of sight, then i'll get off and walk up to the road, once we have the all clear, you pedal like crazy, i'll run along side and jump on the bike-- It sounded like a good plan, or at least our best option. What actually happened was very different.

As we approached the road the warning bells and blinking lights went off and then the motorized arms dropped. Shit, a train! We looked behind us and there was nothing. In front of us, nothing. Didn't hear anything, the tracks weren't rumbling... it was us, we set it off.  At this point the cars were starting to pile up: four, seven, twelve.... Fuck. What do we do? Lets just wait, maybe the arms will go back up. No, said Kyle, we have to go to the other side. Why do we have to go to the other side? The arms are going to stay down until we cross. We just need to go for it. Go for it? Yeah, really fast.

We sped across the tracks as fast as we could (which was not very fast) laughing and screaming the whole time. The looks on the faces of the drivers was priceless.

We booked it as hard as we could for as long as we could. Once we'd gone a ways, we turned to see if the road was re-opened and it was.

It was pretty much smooth sailing from there on out, well, it was smooth in respect to run-ins with people in cars. Just about everything else was not smooth, namely using the rail bike. Two steel frames, with a lot of excess metal supports, plus our gear was already heavy enough. But what really slowed us down were the guides keeping us on the tracks- four flanged metal wheels both riding on the tracks and running down alongside them. The drag from the friction of the guide wheels was huge, it was like having the brakes on the whole time. So while everything stayed really flat, it felt like we were pedaling up hill the entire way. Plus it was absurdly loud, we were two feet apart but had to shout to be able to hear each other. The roughest part, however, were all of the crashes.

Our first crash was right across from the fern ridge reservoir park. There was a wooden cross way going over the tracks to let cars drive over into a nature preserve. Unfortunately, there was a spike that hadn't been hammered all the way down and it was just tall enough to catch on our front guide support beam. We flew forward and impaled ourselves on the bike, Kyle more so than I. 

Of course, i wanted to stop and take pictures of the accident, but at this point we were next to a highway and could have been spotted easily. We had to get out of there fast. So we pulled the bike off the tracks and into the nature preserve. The timing worked out well for lunch.

When we returned to the rail bike we took a closer look at the damage. Fortunately it was just the front guide support that had been damaged. It had bent in at a weak spot, moving the guide wheels out of alignment. We took it apart and wedged it into a nearby metal gate, using its own length to leverage it back into alignment. Having been bent twice we knew that the metal was compromised, it was already pretty rusty to begin with. Kyle, being an eagle scout, and generally just a really resourceful person, said we should splint it. Made good sense to me. We had brought along a large crescent wrench thinking we'd need it for its intended purpose, but it proved to be far more useful as a splint.

Not too much further past our first crash/lunch-break spot was a bridge going over a small waterway. As we pulled up we could see there were a handful of people jumping off the bridge into the water, a family, and some kayakers. They were all pretty excited to see us. They had lots of questions.

By this time in the afternoon, the foggy mist had burned off and it was just plain hot, especially riding our heavy home-made locomotive. Jumping in the water was a much welcomed respite.

Before we left i asked one of the kids to take a picture of us. For the history books.

We continued our westward journey, almost in Veneta at this point. As we forged ahead i wore out pretty hard, i had clearly passed my peak and was needing to stop with greater frequency. Kyle naturally has about 3 times more energy than the average person, and about 5 times more than I, he picked up the slack as best he could. My drop in effort clearly started to wear on him, but he's a good sport and tried not to let it show. It was probably for the best that we ended up crashing again.

We came up to our second road crossing, though this time no drop arms. We were far enough out on the tracks that those kinds of things had been shut down til further notice. At this point we were in Veneta. We hopped of the bike, waiting for a break in traffic, too tired to care who saw us, and walked it across at our first chance. As we made it onto the other side a group of weather-beaten drunks cheered us on. They were sitting at the edge of the green along side the tracks, 50 feet from a Dari-Mart, drinking conspicuously in the summer sun. We continued on, but two merging tracks confused our high-tech guide system- the left side popped up onto the tracks, we skidded askew and then ate it again. This time the front guide support beam was toast, it broke entirely, the only thing holding it together being the wrench. Kyle, once more, employed his eagle scout abilities and found a perfectly shaped branch to reinforce it from behind. It was rideable, but just barely.

Another crash called for another food break. We pulled the bike of the tracks and wandered back toward the Dari-Mart. The drunks were happy to see us again, they really liked our bike and seemed to think us comrades, something akin to railway renegades from another era. I vaguely remember them talking about some of their own foolishly hazardous escapades, being none too impressed, and mostly just wanting water.

We stocked up on trail mix and fruit at the Dari-Mart. Kyle surreptitiously filled the water jug outside of a local pizza joint. We wandered around "downtown" Veneta for a bit. It was clear they had put a fair amount of money into making the place look nice, and whereas there were maybe one or two interesting businesses, it struck me as unwarranted optimism for an unlikely renaissance. We did run into a lady painting a mural on the outside of a hardware store, that was fun.

Our crash convinced us it was time to turn around. We weren't sure if the bike was even going to make it all the way home. But it was our only choice. Exhausted, we pedaled back, mostly in silence, well, i mean we didn't talk, it was still really fucking loud. 

We had one final crash before returning home. Merging tracks, guides ride up, bike goes off. The bike flipped up and flung us forward this time, face first toward the track. Arms outstretched, neither one of us suffered any injury to head or face, which was lucky. 

The rest of our efforts home were put toward crash prevention and front-wheel-falling-off mitigation. The bike in its frail state was significantly more susceptible to derailment; things that we barreled over the first time we had to take with great caution on the return trip. And, of course, any time we had to switch tracks the stupid front end would fall entirely off. Neither Kyle or I had the patience for this anymore, our communication had broken down almost entirely to frustrated grunts. 

We did make it back eventually, miraculously, to Eugene. We were sunburnt and worn-out and it was worth it. It was an awesome adventure.