Originally Posted by
unterhausen
Do you still do it that way?
No, not since '94. After Big D, I worked two other places, that had their own way of making forks and I didn't try to ram anything down their throat.
Now as a hobbyist I would probably do it the old way of raking one blade at a time, adding the dropout, cutting the length, and only then brazing the crown. One reason is I'm not in a hurry (the D way is faster), but also I don't have a raker that does both blades at once. Or actually I do have one* (Marchetti or Bike Machinery or similar, no brand marking on it). But it's not useful to me, for the next few forks I want to make anyway, it makes a large-radius curve with limited total offset, so I can't make "low trail" forks. I don't need any more short-rake racing bike forks.
* personal to Andrew S., did I buy that from you? I got it used from someone. No regrets, it's a cool thing to own. If it was from you, do you remember the brand?
To fully follow the D. way, you also need a way to cut the blades to precisely the same length after brazing and raking, indexing off the brake hole. I made two at D., one to cut them square for plug-type, and one to slot them for trad drops.
Trad forged drops have that rounded shoulder though, not repeatable, so I also made another arbor for lathe-turning a nice sharp repeatable shoulder to mate with the bottom of the slot. I might make myself one; it's not needed for the "normal" fork making method where you cut the blades to length after the drop is brazed in, but I just like things that fit that nice. The lathe turning step takes like 10 seconds, so if you have the arbor then why not?