Originally Posted by
big john
Do you heat the fork tubes when you bend them? How do you decide how much to bend them and pick the rake, etc.?
No heat. Heat is evil, the less the better.
The blades are bent cold and need to be overbent to set at the correct rake.
The blade actually bends down to the aluminum form on the bending tool so you
can see how much spring back there is.
The rake is determined by the desired trail dimension. The headtube angle on this
bike is 73 deg. and I want about 58mm of trail. So with a 700C wheel that works out to
44mm of rake.