Quick Release Goodies

I picked up four old school Ringle titanium quick releases for a really cheap price on Ebay.  The reason they were so cheap is that they had no QR nuts.  Not a problem with the shop available.

There are circular nuts, square ones, diamond-shaped, and rectangular nuts out there but I wasn't aware of a single one that had three sides.  I wanted to make something different, so three-sided nuts it was.  I had learned how to make tapers on the lathe earlier but didn't know how to use an indexing head on the mill and this was the chance to learn. 

An indexing head is a device that holds a piece of metal and allows you to rotate that piece a given angle and do so without having to re-adjust the mill on every cut.  That way you can repeat the cut as many times as you need as you rotate the piece.  So you put the indexing head in the mill's vise and machine one side, then turn it and mill the next face.  In this case, the indexing head was rotated 120 degrees after every cut. The three-sided nuts were made for both wheel (larger ones) and seat QR's (smaller ones)

Also displayed is a few nuts that were designed to mimic the standard Ringle QR nut (but not exactly, artistic license and all).



QR Nuts
QR Nuts
These are the four QR's that I picked up for cheap.  The top one is the original Ringle design.  It's not threaded as it's being cut off and re-threaded as a seatpost binder.  The other three are a later design that will go well on bikes from the mid-90s.  These models have the the titanium rods but the rod of the lower QR is being replaced with a shorter stainless steel threaded rod so it will work on a seatpost too.

I also made a few QR nuts that mimic the original Ringle design, shown on top of the picture below.  I made a few changes in the nuts.  One thing is that they are one piece vs. the original with a two piece nut.  Second, they newer ones are tapered a little more.  It wasn't a problem with not being able to measure or cut the original taper rather it's just what I felt like doing.
QR Nuts


Moosechine Home
fork mounts
Moosechine Shop Home
Next: Fork Mounts