Over the last few days I've spent a lot of time hand filing and using my Makita power file to shape the fork to bearing housing connectors, rear fork and yesterday the steering head fork legs. Quite a long time ago while at the local Komeri home center one of my favorite places to visit in Niigata as you can find almost anything you require,I saw some fantastic looking flattened steel tube that were designed for hand rails for stairs. That got me thinking that they might be perfect for fork blades as they are steel with 1mm thick walls and the perfect oval shape of an ordinary fork blade. They were covered in some thin shiny tin but that was easy to cut off so I then filed down the fork to bearing housing connectors so that the tube would easily slide onto them giving a smooth profile which turned out very nice. The next job was a test to see if I could somehow fit the fork blades to the legs of the steering head. The overall diameter of the steering head legs was about 15mm but once it was filed down to about 11mm and the tube was gently flattened in my bench vice they slipped on giving a nice tight fit. Thank god that worked as I had no idea and was only guessing by looking at the tube that it could be altered to fit.
Also I have taken a photo of what the rear wheel in the fork will look like once attached to the tapered end of the backbone. Later on some holes will be drilled into the fork steering tube which will allow it to be welded onto the tail of the backbone, afterwards once cleaned up with the power file it will look like it's one piece and not joined together.
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