7.30pm, lovely and sunny, church bell ring practise in the background and all is right with the world….

I am about to disassemble a misfiring Rohloff hub into about a million pieces sat at the garden table (copious paper and plastic to catch the inevitable dropped important stuff).

I’m off work on what should be a school night so it should be beer, but it’s a tricky job so I need my wits about me so maybe tea…..

Kettles on, so I’ve got about 2 mins to make a decision.

Tea, then celebrate the fettling result with a beer or 2 after

Pint first then a pint of tea for reassembly.

Tea but with whisky 🙂 an take lots of piccys for reassembly time

Tea. Had too many mishaps when working on the bike after ale.

Beer after as reward, otherwise it’ll be a half arsed job and can’t be bothered to finish it as I start on the next beer.

I’m with Yak on this. Tea to fettle, beer later.

Yep, same as Yak…i make enough mistakes anyway, beer would make it even worse 😳

It depends. If you have biscuits to hand, then it’s tea. If you have pork scratchings, it’s beer.

😀

Beer, but that is usually the reason I eff up most fettling jobs

Strong tea then beer afterwards!

My well proven system involves drinking beer and getting it so horribly wrong I want to cry, I then have another beer and sit on the tablet posting ‘help’ threads on STW for the rest of the evening.

So naturally It’s beer you soft git.

A disturbingly high number of my fettling jobs have been done under the influence.

Most recently stripped my Giant Defy whilst drinking a large glass of wine. Put the components onto a CAAD10 frame whilst drinking a second glass of wine.

Took it to race training the following evening.

Put a set of Allen keys in my pocket.

Never needed them.

Blimey!

beer. Bike fettling is a great accompaniment for beer

the other bike related ones I can think of are:

putting a tent up
whilst having a shower on a campsite after a long day in the saddle,

Coffee all real engineers drink coffee and have a fag hanging out of your mouth euromech style.

Gereally beer, but happy with wine too. Some jobs are better with with booze – building a bike – as long as you get the headset in and cut the steerer while you’re still relatively sober!

Anything where you can make irretrievable mistakes – e.g. measuring hubs and rim ERD, and ordering stuff online with the calc. results, should probably be done relatively sober too.

Repairing a big bag of inner tubes – get smashed!

Also – depends a bit on the time of day and how long a ride you’re planning on the fettled machine!

Beer or cider 100%

Strong beer preferably 6%+

followed later by a few small whiskys.

The bike builders medicine.

Don’t blame me if you lose any bits or spend a whole evening drunkenly trying to bleed some hayes brakes.

before 6pm, tea.

after 6pm, beer.

^ is that timezone specific?

specific to the timezone one finds oneself fettling one’s bicycle, yes.

drinking in the middle of the day is so uncivilised, unless it’s Gin.

Personal favourite is arriving at campsite/hotel/whatever

Drink a beer, Maybe two. Maybe even go for some food, and a few beers.

Back to hotel/campsite

Open bike bag. Open beer. Commence assembly Continue drinking. Finish assembly. Head to pub,

Get up six hours later, uplift, and chuck said bike down side of mountain.

As I’m intolerant to alcohol and can’t stand tea it’s coffee for me too, unless it’s after 8:00pm then it’s water.

Just realised how middle aged I really am! 🙂

Well the evening session was fuelled by tea in the end and then a dollop of frustration when the light ran out.

I thought I’d finish the job off with coffee (pints of french press for proper jobs, espresso for fannying around jobs) in the sunshine this morning – and very pleasant it was too!

[url=https://flic.kr/p/tEBEu6]rohloff fun[/url] by Ben Shaw

Only snag was a mission failure – I know the problem but the damned krauts don’t sell the part 😡 , so the hub is going to have to have a holiday to Germany.

Hmmmm. That definitely looks like a tea/coffee job rather than a 5 strong beers job!

Nice environs, too. Just a shame about the result.

leftyboy – Member
As I’m intolerant to alcohol and can’t stand tea …

hang on.

that’s like saying ‘i don’t like flavours’.

mint?

nettle?

jasmine?

redbush?

cammomile?

fennel?

dandelion?

mint?
nettle?
jasmine?
redbush?
cammomile?
fennel?
dandelion?

he didn’t ask for a hot flower/weed/shrub based drink, he wanted tea, tea is brown with lots of tannin and caffeine in it.

no, leftyboy said he doesn’t like tea.

if we’re going to narrowly define ‘tea’ as ‘brown with lots of tannin’, then i don’t like tea either.

Beer (or bottle of red)

A fettling session is something I look forward to for weeks or even months. Boys go to bed. Wife has a bath run for her. Lesson plans etc are finished at lunchtime… It takes a lot of planning.

I’ve never liked tea or any of the ones I’ve tried from the versions listed. I have no idea what is is I dislike but I just find tea unpleasant.

i don’t like tea either.
I just find tea unpleasant.

call yourselves cyclists?
cycling revolves around tea and cake.

😉
(and have the one that I forgot to put on my first post too 😉 )

Red wine has fueled many of my bike builds, some of my best work has been after a bottle (or 2) of Bordeaux.

This also includes many bikes built for friends & I don’t recall any failures (the drink might have effected the recall though 😉 )

Tea? Bleuuugh.
Coffee for fettling.

Depends on weather.

Cold: hot tea/coffee

Warm: cold beer

^ the science of rocketry.

Tea. Always tea ever since an alcohol-fuelled disaster a few years ago.

Fitted some new cranks + BB + ye olde chaine guide one summer’s evening, sat back with a couple of cold ones to admire my work and realised the chain guide was on wrong. Cue lots of faff involving needle-nose pliers, dropped bolts, bent bits of metal and broken plastic when really I should’ve just taken it all off and refitted it

Beer eh

Good work there fella keeping things that organised and tidy! My garage turns into a complete mess with tools and parts everywhere no matter how small the task in hand. I’ve tried tea but it usually goes cold once I get in the zone of the fettlemeister. Beer is always best and keeps me confident in what I’m doing though it’s the messy tollet breaks that do my head in with oily hands.

Decision tree is pretty neat for the topic in question. If you can answer yes to all three of the parameters below:

[*]Have you done the job before?[/*]
[*]Is the job definitely a quick/simple/fun one?[/*]
[*]Is it warm?[/*]

…then always beer, otherwise and in every other instance tea FTW:

I’m doing an air can service on an RP23 tonight with a bottle of red. Should be interesting