I would like to continue using the Bengal lever, simply because of the built in parking brake option, which is quite rare. It has also been built for dual calipers, and has a large reservoir.

Some good suggestions here. Upgrading the rotors are not an option, the brake mounts are fixed and bodging them would be a bit risky.

Of course the motor is cheating, but a bike with an adult, up to four kids and gear is bloody heavy. This is the third Christiania Bike we have, the two first were without motors and had five speed internal gears and roller brakes. In fact, in my household it is always known as “Snydecyklen”, which is Danish for “The Cheater Bike”.

I will take a look at different calipers. I already have the hardware on the bike, so the splitter is sorted. Which calipers use DOT fluid these days? Hayes and SRAM, I presume?

Once snapped a chain at an extremely inopportune moment… I was really putting the power down to catch up with some mates going downhill. hit the family jewels enough to make them blue and sore for weeks, and cracked a rib at the same time.

Could not walk, talk, or breathe for weeks.

So much pain beacuse of a stupid chain.

I am running 11 speed on both my bikes… shifter XT on one, XTR on the other, XT rear derailleur on both. The XTR is considerably nicer to use. Better feeling, very tactile “click”. If the XT one dies, I will buy XTR for both bikes.

But don’t worry, in a few minutes someone will come along and tell you that the shifters are exactly the same apart from the name, and that you are some kind of wierdo for thinking otherwise! 🙂

I have a Shimano FC-CX50 chainset on my Cannondale CAADX commuter, and I love it! Admittedly, I’m a bit of a spinner, but a 2×11 setup with a 11-28 on the back suits me perfectly.

Lovely place… I have beem vacationing in the area around Diekirch multiple times, never brought the bike, though. Friendly locals, beautiful cities, interesting museums. Good food and beer!

Same thing here… I stream Antiques Roadshow and other programs of the same type to my garage TV when I work on bikes. I guess because they are so slow, they force me to relax and enjoy the spannering. They must be British, though. And I’m not even from the UK!

The car one is a classic!

I once changed a headlamp on a friends friends car, only to be told months later that “the day after you changed that headlamp, the rear view mirror on the same side of the car fell off”.

I may not be qualified to make too many observations about the British mtb scene, but in Denmark where I live, I have never seen so many female riders. In my club we are about 70% males vs females. The number of females seem to be increasing, both on road bikes and singletrack. In fact, this weekend I have been asked to give a tour af the local singletracks to 3 females, all in their thirties, who have decided that they want to give off road biking a go.

Of course it helps that 90% of all Danes own a bicycle, and many use bikes as primary transport.

Danish Candy…

Been using a pair of Rudy Project Stratofly photochromatic for years now… I put them on, and forget that they are even there. They are great for most conditions where I live, except for really sunny days where I use an old pair of Uvex LGL29.

Giro Feature on the trail, Force Bull on the road.

The force fits me perfectly, but the Giro is not perfect. Had a Bell Slant before that, then an IXS Trail that was terrible.

Would really like to try a POC Trabec or Tectal, but no-one sell them near where I live, and they are too bloody expensive to buy sight unseen.

that helmetor contraption looks like some kind of torture instrument!

Also, it would not play nice with the helmet my Exposure Joystick is attached to.

Otherwise, it would be ace!

Great suggestions! Keep ’em coming!

When I was working at a big supermarket, I got a smashing deal on a Weber 57 centimeter charcoal kettle grill… No car, and 10 kilometers home.

good thing I had aero bars on my mountainbike at the time!

I know you can adjust the temples… Lots of trial and error, still did not manage to get them to fit.

Great lenses, but they absolutely did not fit my face at all. They were awful, kept hitting my cheeks, and the temples could never be positined correctly. Bought a pair of Rudy Projects instead.

My advise would be to try before you buy, they seem to be pretty hit and miss with my riding buddies… Either you love them, or they will wear holes in the skin behind your ears.

I don’t trust my freehand skills when sharpening chisels. I use a combination 400/1000 grit diamond stone and a Veritas honing guide… I also have access to a Scheppach grinding machine, but only use it on chisels in a real sorry state.

That mitre dovetail looks ace! Bit complicated, I expect? I’ll have a go with the japanese saw, see how it looks… The planks are 40 millimeter thick, so I need to remove quite a lot of wood.

A Domino machine would be nice, but sadly I am not a millionaire! 🙂

I have a plate joiner, though, but I don’t think the joints will be strong enough. Besides, I really want to try my hand at making dovetails.

Decisions, decisions…

Blimey, that was quick!

Yes, that is exactly the type of table I mean…It will be a bit taller, but never the less. The Japanese saw I have is this one from Axminster: https://www.axminster.co.uk/shokunin-japanese-ryoba-double-edged-saw-270mm-105007

The idea that you can score out the start had not occured to me, I might have to try that.

The dovetails that I am trying to make will be quite large, so a low tpi would probably not be too much of a problem.

Would a carcass or tenon saw be the solution to all my woes?

Some good suggestios here, I will definately take them into consideration!

I have a bit of a thing for flieger and military inspired watches. My 12½ year wedding anniversary is coming up, and the wife has decided that me buying a new watch would mark the occasion nicely. I already have a few watches, such as the Citizen Ecozilla, Orca, Royal Marines, and so on. I also have a Hamilton Khaki King Automatic.

I have taken quite a shine to the Glycine brand, especially the Incursore models. Does anyone have some experience with these? Is there some other brands I should be looking at? I am looking in the £500 to 700 bracket…

I bought 4-stone Lansky system a few years back. It is easy to use, creates a very sharp edge without too much hassle. A stropping on an old leather belt makes it insanely sharp. the whole system can be had for reasonable money, even if you add the optional ultra fine diamond stone. The only downside to the Lansky system is that very long blades require a bit of practice.

But the whole point of some hobbies is to make a project as challenging and expensive as possible, so some may see using a system as cheating!

I live on the edge of some Danish MOD land with excellent singletrack trails we can ude when the army is not using the land. One rainy saturday afternoon, I decided to go for a spin, only to be greeted by some heavily armed special forces (jægerkorpset) guys telling me to find somewhere else to play.

Biked home, jumped in the car, bike on the back, and rather huffily drove away to some other trails in the vicinity. When I reached the trail I discovered that I had left the helmet at home. Was rather angry by that point, so I decided to carry on in order not to waste the day. Few minutes later, the rain intensified, it became almost dark… I had no decent lights, no helmet, and was on some rather technical trails I had rarely ridden before. Halfway through the ride, I had to admit defeat.Ended up having to walk 3 kilometers back to the car, soaking wet, muddy, and utterly annoyed.

Came home to my wife complaining that I was always out “having fun” and she was stuck in the house with two bored kids on a rainy afternoon…

I have had one for two seasons now. Very nice and floody light output, decent battery time. If you get the aluminium bracket, it will definately not shift when hitting a bump. Overall it is a well thought out light, with a few small niggles. The battery indicator light is very bright, I have covered mine with some semi-transparent tape. The plastic bracket on the light body is a bit flimsy, and some user reviews have mentioned that they are prone to breaking…

If you can get the light at a decent discount, I would recommend it.

The day before christmas 2017. I have never been to keen on drops, but after reading some tips on the subject on STW, I decided to give it a go. Cycling along the harbour on my way to the trail, I spotted a 30 cm drop, and went for it. Upon landing, the bike vanished from beneath me… I came down hard on my side, right in front of the panoramic Windows of the most expensive restaurant in town. Bleeding from my elbow, and my knee, my helmet cracked, my brand new rear derallieur (5 kilometers on it) torn off. Went to get my bike from the edge of the water, waved to the people eating fancy food, and started walking home. My hip was yellow/purple/green/black for six months. The elbow still feels weird when it gets cold.

Stiga Snow Racer… Buy once, have a sled forever. And if you manage to break something, spares are readily available.

Many years ago when i was about 7 or eight, my mother, father, sister, and I got in our old Opel Corsa, attached the Camp-Let trailer tent, and went to Spa in Belgium. None of us knew the language, the car was really too small for us, but it was an amazing holiday!

Got to drive on the Spa-Francorchamps racing cirquit in the Opel, Saw a stage of the Grundig Mountainbike World cup, and one evening, while cooking dinner on the gas stove in the tent, a gasket on the attached 2½ kilo gas canister suddenly failed, causing a minor gas explosion and some panic in the camping ground.

Great days!

Try Googling “Ross Geller”, and click on the sofa four times… 🙂

“People who hold their phone in front of their face and have a shouty conversation in the middle of a busy high street.
Hold it to your ear and speak at a normal volume you f-ing muppets!”

This. Absolutely this. Seriously, why?

I meet a woman most mornings on my way to work. She has one of those 45 km/h ebikes that has just become legal in Denmark.

I think she has mental issues, She screams and shouts at everyone and everything that gets in her way, you can hear her from miles away. She is positively frothing at the mouth with rage. every time I end up next to her at the lights, I always wish her a very good day… It annoys the crap out of her that I’m not scared of her.

I hope she never buys a car.

Fair point about the blades and laminate, I was planning on getting some “disposable” blades for that. Round here I can get Scheppach blades for a tenner. They seem to last quite a few cuts anyway, as long as they dont get too hot.

I think I will try the Freud blades, they are quite a bit cheaper than the Festool originals… and they seem to get good reviews. I use 48 teeth blades for almost everything, any point buying some other configurations? In theory I should have a few different types at hand, but realistically I probably won’t bother to change blades very often. 48 teeth seems to be the sweet spot for most things I cut.

I use an extractor most of the time… except when I just need to make a cut or two and I am outside in the open air.

Perhaps a stupid question, but have you made sure that the cartridge is mounted absolutely correct? Even a very slight adjustment of the cartridge in the headshell has a profound impact on sound quality.

I would suggest printing a protractor from one of the free websites, and check the alignment. Currently I have a REGA Planet, REGA Planar 2, Technics SL1900, a NUMARK dj turntable and a home built deck. If I had to settle for just one deck, it would be a SL1210… The sound quality is excellent, and it is absolutely bomb proof.

I bought a long sleeve jersey from the GMBN website a year ago. Great fit, nice colours, not too exoensive, and does not make me get hot in any way.

Did you have any problems before your injury?

Sounds just like one of my friends… he tried everything he and his doctor could throw at him, in the end it was discovered that he had sleep apnea. He is a completely different person now!

I have a set of Barr & Stroud Sahara 10×42…

Very cheap, super clear optics, and incredibly rugged. Waterproof, fogproof, nitrogen purged, BAK4 prisms, fully multi coated. Only downside is that at 600 grams they are a little bit on the heavy side.

My wife recently called me up at work, asked me to nip by a kindergarden about 50 kilometers in the opposite direction from my home because she had bought 17 kids chairs from them.

Same thing happened to med!

Except it was my wallet…

And it was in El Segundo!