Originally Posted by
jonwvara
I'm one of the most tiresome boosters of cotter presses on this forum, and even I have to admit that this is a nice method. The key things to me are:
1. Securing the bike so you're not trying to hold it in position with one hand, hold the drift in the other, and pound on it with a hammer in your third hand.
2. The long drift--lets you hit hard without worrying quite so much about bashing the crank of the bottom bracket shell with an off-target blow.
Sometimes you have to go old school.
I'm always been about a quarter step behind you in screaming "Get a cotter press!" at the top of my lungs. After this experience, and knowing that I want to restore some older bikes than this once I'm done, I'm going to be looking for a second press - one that'll allow me to get in closer to the chainwheel. Hopefully, I can find something (most likely antique) that'll work on a situation like this. After all, 60-70 years ago, the usual instruction was to use a press, not a large hammer. Or so my mentor at the bike shop taught me.
If I can't find one, I'll pick up a new one and start machining down the main casting.
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Syke
“No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
H.L. Mencken, (1926)