WORDS WIL PHOTOGRAPHY CHIPPS
Sand a little bit. Stop. Step back, blow away the sawdust, eyeball the mitre. Nah not quite, needs a bit more. Start sanding again.
I can feel the coarse sandpaper starting to make its way through the third layer of skin on my fingers… try to ignore that. Stop sanding to check the mitre again. Do that thing that artists do where they cock their head to a few diTherent angles while looking at something. Squint a bit, then nod. Yeah, reckon that looks alright now. Take the long piece of bamboo over to the jig and check how it’s fitting up against the shiny alloy headtube. Still nice and snug. A beautiful fit. Pretty impressed with that really, given it was the very first mitre I’ve done in my life. Now, check the other end of the downtube where it meets the metal bottom bracket shell. This is the one I’ve been sanding into the tube for the past three quarters of an hour. It kinda fits, but then I look around at the other side. As in, the underside of the bottom bracket where there’s a rather large gap. Hold on, that… that doesn’t look right. No, it is most definitely not right. I start to panic. The whole mitre is off-centre. Like, by a good 30 degrees.