Had a quick repair yesterday. A lady called and asked how quickly I could fix an eyelet on a very well loved early 90s Schwinn Voyager. It's her primary mode of transportation so it was urgent. She sent a few pictures that confused the discussion a bit but I thought I had the gist. Turns out, 3 of the 4 eyelets were damaged or had been rewelded by someone in the midwest! I'm a sucker for keeping a well-used and loved bike on the road, so I agreed.

I removed the 3 that were damaged, turned 3 new ones (the originals are much bigger than ones I get from typical suppliers).
by https://www.flickr.com/photos/54319503@N05/, on Flickr

You can see I put small miters in the dropout that nestle the eyelet perfectly. I then brazed them on with nickel silver and painted flat black.
by https://www.flickr.com/photos/54319503@N05/, on Flickr
by https://www.flickr.com/photos/54319503@N05/, on Flickr

As mentioned, the bike has seen some miles. It turns out she rode it from east coast to west coast several years ago and it's her primary transportation here. On her cross-country trip, she had breakages along the way. Apparently it's easy to find people to weld in the midwest. The top rack mounts are both welded (MIG blobs on top of eyelets?) and out of phase on the seatstays, one of the dropout eyelets was welded but only on the outside so it broke off pretty easily with plyers. Luckily it distorted enough from the welding that she couldn't get an M5 screw into it, so it was unused and hadn't broken!
by https://www.flickr.com/photos/54319503@N05/, on Flickr

Other things I noticed:

• The stays for the rear fender seem to be rubbing on the bottom of the rack which would have added pressure and could have led to the latest eyelet failure
• The stays had a lot of built in stress so I adjusted (bent) them
• The rear was spaced for 130mm but the hub (Phil) was 135 so I respaced and aligned that.
• WIDE MTB cranks on a very small road frame for a small rider
• Phil hubs that are worth 3x the whole bike value.

For the second eyelets we brazed onto Campagnolo 1010 dropouts for the model 720, we milled an indent the same diameter as the OD of the eyelet. This held the eyelet nicely during brazing.

Exactly what I did. The original eyelets happened to be 1/2" in diameter and I have a 1/2" carbide burr so I just touched the burr to the right spot and "voila"!

PS - my next investment is a sandblasting cabinet.

When I bought my blasting cabinet I went to these guys for upgrading parts and media. HOME | Tacoma Company They were very helpful, spending a lot of time on the phone running through the ins and outs of cheap units and how to improve their performance.

Good timing for this topic as I am in the process of making an extension for one end of my cabinet and I plan to report back here after I've made real progress. At only about 4' long the cabinet is just barely big enough to blast a frame and getting good attack angles on the dropouts or head tube is quite a contorting trick currently. I plan to replace an end door with a box. Andy

Ooh can I invest also, and then come and use it sometimes? No way I'll ever have room for one unless I bulldoze my house and build a "skinny house" on half of the (tiny) lot. Laurie won't let me put one in the dining room.

I wonder if Davidson ever sold his? When he moved from Pike Place to Fremont, the blaster was there, disassembled in a heap for a long time. I didn't visit all that often so maybe he eventually assembled it. The new owner of the shop might be interested in selling it, unless he does his bead-blasted finish on Ti in-house. It's big enough to turn a frame every which way, and we did tandems by building a tent over the open door, and just trying not to point the gun in that direction... not always successfully, so that room got pretty dusty.

Bill bought a big expensive dust collector but then never attached it or wired it for power, and it sat there like that for years... collecting dust!

Of course, you're welcome anytime! I don't know where I would put it either. I'm trying to find space for my Diacro #3 that has been in storage for 8 months now!

I might run air line outside and leave it along the back wall of the garage but I think moisture might be a problem. I also worry that my air compressor isn't strong enough and I don't have 220v so can't upgrade. I think maybe a small one on a rolling stand might work. I could roll it out to the driveway, do my blasting and then roll it back into the heated/AC'd shop where i can control the humidity (it's Seattle so, dampness). It would really be for blasting dropouts, lugs, crowns and shells before brazing. Having it be large enough to handle a fork or chainstays/dropouts would be nice I suppose. One large enough to handle a full frame would be unreasonable in my shop.

I also need to rebuild my lathe and mill so, this might have to wait.

For frames I've done at home, I just use a round file. Takes a little longer. but works fine.

Pretty sure every home in the US has 220, you just need a 220 breaker and line run to wherever. If you have room in your panel for another breaker, this is not a big project. I can do it (have done it) but I wouldn't recommend that unless you're an electrician. I'm not, so I might be fixin' to burn the house down. When I had a 100A sub-panel run out to my shed, mostly for the welder but also a few other outlets, I used a cheap electrician who clearly was new at it, he made some mistakes but he sure was cheap! I can get you his info, maybe he's better at it by now?

Your lathe, mill and air compressor will all run better on 220, at half the amps, so I'd suggest it is worth it. Re-wiring the motors for 220 is usually trivial, involving no tools other than a screwdriver to take the cover plate off, and then it's just undoing and re-doing some wire nuts. The chart for how to wire it is almost always on the motor nameplate, or can be looked up if the plate is unreadable/gone.

In fact I'd recommend combining that into a larger more expensive project for the lathe and mill (not needed for the compressor), namely replacing the motors with 3-phase and a VFD. Super smooth start-up, infinitely-variable speed by twisting a dial, even electrical braking to stop the spindle faster if you want that. Good VFDs have all sorts of motor-protection tech, I don't understand any of it but it sounds cool! But I mostly like it for the instant speed control. Much less belt-flipping.

I still have to flip belts sometimes, because the range of speed you can get out of the VFD alone isn't enough. I run mine down to maybe 10 Hz sometimes (1/6th of the nameplate speed on the motor @ 60 Hz), though such slow speeds can be trouble if you run it too long with a sizable load -- the motor overheats, from the fan moving too slowly. So I use 30 Hz (half speed) as a normal minimum, and 120 as the max, four-to-one range. Not enough to go from a 2" holesaw in steel to a 2 mm drill in aluminum.

I have converted 5 machines to 3-ph. and VFDs now, so if you want I can help with that. After the lathe and mill, I put 'em on my drill press, belt sander and even my buffing wheel, just because I was given a free 3-phase motor and scored a VFD for it cheap.

New 3-phase motors and VFDs are expensive but I have gotten all of mine cheap off ebay or Craig's. VFDs are complex electronic devices so maybe that's risky, but all 5 of mine have been perfect. With motors though, it's the opposite: 3-ph. is so much simpler than a single-phase motor, there's not much that can go wrong, other than a bearing wearing out, which is fixable in your shop, you don't need a specialist. So in my experience, they're definitely safe to buy used, especially on ebay with their liberal return policy. I have bought really ugly-looking ones which sell cheap like sub-$100. The good American-made VFDs I like are more like $200-$400 used or "open box", though Chinese garbage can be had new for less than $100. (Not recommended; horror-stories abound). I get the kind with fully-sealed "wash-down" enclosures so dust and swarf can't get into the electronics. You can make your own enclosure for the unsealed type, with a cooling fan, and air filter on the intake, but then the costs add up, so buying the sealed one in the first place might end up cheaper.

OK I just wrote a damn book (again), I'll shut up now, but I'm happy to answer any Qs.

Andy, I did the exact same thing in 2021; I had bought a small bead blast cabinet a decade ago which was the largest I could fit into my old space; when I built my new 200 sq ft workshop at the end of my driveway, I had a local fabrication company build me an extension to the cabinet so I could fit a full size frame and manoeuvre it around inside. Works great; would like a larger unit but this is the largest I could fit into the new space. The extension replaces one of the doors, which is against the wall anyway.

Go for it, Andy.

I used the burr and then adjusted the alignment with a few strokes of a round file.

Aye, there's the rub! the power to the shop runs under the driveway and through foundation wall. I've had electricians out to help and we've all come to the conclusion that it's not worth it. When my wife finally gets me to agree to repave the driveway, I'll dig it up and run 220 from the panel in the house but until then, it's 110.

Oh sorry. Unfortunate that they didn't originally run conduit sized to allow pulling another line.

It limited my welder choice as well sadly.

How about your clothes dryer, is it electric by any chance? If so you'd just need a real heavy "extension cord" to reach from the dryer plug to the welder. I did that briefly when I first got my welder, before I had the new sub-panel out in the shed. I just bought the length I needed of heavy 3-conductor wire and attached the male and female plugs to match the dryer socket and the welder respectively. My dryer circuit was only 30 A, but remember, that's as much power as 60 A @ 110 V. I think my ~200 A (max) welder said it wanted a 40 A breaker (I forget), but it worked fine for the welding I did while on the dryer plug. That included welding 1/8" thick steel (square tube) to build the table for my benchtop mill, and some 3/16" thick. Probably could have welded 1/4" but I don't think I did back then.

Remember if you buy wire for the extension cord, the conductors might have to be heavier depending on the length. There are charts to tell you what gauge wire you need for each amperage and distance. And that much copper can get expensive.

Obviously unplugging the dryer and running that heavy cord out a door or window is suboptimal! But if you only do it once in a while -- and while the wife is out? Ooh maybe have a 220 receptacle added on the outside of the house, then you would only need to run the extension cord across the driveway, and coil it back up after each use.

Crazy? And probably moot if you have already purchased the small welder that only runs on 110. Or do you have a dual-voltage welder that can do either, with a pigtail adapter? That's how my welder is, with the max amps cut way back when you run it on 110.

Anyway, after all that impractical advice I do have one more practical suggestion, if you have something heavier to weld, bring it over to my place. I currently (no pun) have that ~200A TIG, and also just got a ~280A MIG just for one project of heavier steel (3/8" and 1/2"), after which I will probably sell it.