I hope this works!

This baby still needs a bit of work but it’s on its way. Got it started up today and with guidance from the Waltworks blog and my own idea of what I want to see for this fork.  The little crown segments are 1-1/8″ x 0.045″ 4130 steel, the main legs are 1″ x 0.035″ straight gauge 4130, the “lugs” (upper legs) are not that at all but the same tubing as the crown segments mitered just for design sake, and the dropouts are Paragons.  They’ll be heavier, but I’m really not sure they’ll be overkill, for a my touring MTB.    (BTW, i haven’t cut the upper legs off to length yet, so it’s not a rigid-double-crown fork!)

Getting this fork to stay together in the fixture is just funny. I may just use tape from now on.  It’s difficult to test the fit of the tubes and hold them all in one place! I don’t need to have it all together like this to tack but I wanted to make sure it all lined up alright before welding the dropouts to the legs.  Luckily, I have a rubber mat beneath my workbench that stops the tubes from dinging themselves as they attempt to get away from me.  The main culprits for the lack-of-a-tight-fit-right-now are the tubing segments between the steerer tube and the legs.  I mitered them at 15 degrees on each side but i got a little off-phase on them since I don’t have a fixture made yet for this job.  I’ll likely copy Walt’s cool mitered tubing block by sacrificing one of my Paragon blocks.  So once the dropouts are  welded up to the legs, I will have to spend some time cleaning up the junctions between those segments and the legs.  I spend more time filing after I get the tubes out of the milling machine sometimes I wonder why I don’t just START with the file!?

The fork will end up being 432mm axle to crown so not too long for those skinnier 1″ legs.  I hope that the brass brazed upper legs will add strength (and style) to the fork and the 1″ lower legs will offer some compliance on the trail.  More later…