Things my father taught me

My father, Fred Reber, was a mechanic. When I was an infant, he worked in a government motor pool by day and officiated dirt track sprint car races on the weekend. Our family's first dining room furnishings were purchased with race track earnings.

(A finished wheel bracket)

By the time I was in school, my father had switched careers to become a lobbyist in state legislatures. He retained all of his tools and kept an exceedingly neat and organized workshop garage. He never really worked on cars after that, but I learned to use my hands and tools to repair things by watching and working alongside him. Lawn mowers, barbecue grills and my bicycles came under his care.


I learned a lot from him and from my maternal grandfather, too. Al Frank was a life-long mechanic with a tinkerers sensibility and a skill to fix just about anything. The joke among the men in the family was that Al could fix anything with a hammer and screwdriver. So it was.

I mention this experience because today's effort to create the wheel brackets owes just about everything to my father, Fred and grandfather, Al. Of course, they never built a bamboo bike trailer, but they certainly worked with all of the tools and materials that I used today. More importantly, I was able to work efficiently and understand the basic ideas behind today's work because of the hands-on education and experience I enjoyed under their tutelage.

One thing I know: Neither man would have shied away from using power tools to accomplish this job. However, I'm sure we didn't even own an electric drill until I was a teenager. My father had a good, hand operated drill and I used it many times. But, when dealing with 14 ga. plate steel, get the power tools.  In this case, I found a Tiger Saw (Sawzall), 1/2" heavy-duty electric drill and 1/2" cordless high speed drill came in very handy. Here's what they did.

First, I realized that my plates were too big. Rather than try to think of some way to live with that, I just got the Tiger Saw out, put a metal cutting blade in it and let it do the talkin'. Am I glad I did. It accomplished in much shorter time and with better results what I needed to get the correct size plate.

At that point, and here's something I owe my family, I realized it would be best to create the first bracket and use it as a template for the other three. And, I figured that using the power tools would allow me to drill and cut all of the plates underneath the template. The picture to the left shows the template in place with three other plates behind it. I've tapped these plates with the template in place, making each plate a copy of the other. This should provide some consistency in the brackets necessary for good alignment. We'll see.

It wasn't all power tools. I used a range of hand tools to get to the finished product.  
 
These files, punches and hammer were hand-me-downs from Fred and Al.

The lessons learned today are that working smart--using templates--and using power tools make this project possible. Another lesson is use sharp saw blades and drill bits. Finally, it's hard work even with power tools. It took every bit of effort I could muster with brand new drill bits to tap the holes you see here.

Tomorrow's task? Wheel and frame alignment. This will prove how well these brackets were fabricated. My success can be attributed to those two men I mentioned earlier.