Front wheel bearing housing : part 3

The drilling and the tapping of the holes for the bolts to clamp the halves of each bearing housing together went like a dream.
First, holes of 5 mm were drilled in one half. With a transfer punch, the exact position for the holes in the other halve were being defined. The other half was drilled with 6.5 mm to allow a bit of play.
Finally, the holes of 5 mm were threaded with M6 thread.
Result:

This reminds me to make some more transfer punches in a dead moment. The one I used, I quickly fabricated from a piece of 5 mm diameter tool steel. I just turned a little point at the end with the lathe, but didn't harden it because I wanted to get on.
Using tool steel to make ones own tools is very satisfactory. After making with it whatever it is you want to make, you can easily harden it so it gets very durable.

Update on the front wheel rim

This week, I had the time and opportunity to visit the guy with the tube rolling machine in his workshop. A very friendly guy who understood what I needed. I gave him the specs for the front wheel and he promised it would be ready by next week Friday!! Cost for the rolled tube would be around 130€.
So speaking about good news!

Front wheel bearing housing : part 2

At last! Friday night again!

A few hours in my workshop and this is the result:

The two bearing housings start to look how they should look like. After cutting the flanges from a 12x12mm bar (top) and welding them to the bearing housing halfs, there was still some work to be done with the files as can be seen in the picture.
Next, the holes will be drilled, tapped and the flanges will be cut even (I left about 5 mm extra material to be cut off later).

cutting thread in the front wheel hubs

This week I managed to tap all 60 holes in the two hubs:

I used the drill press as a way of keeping the thread cutting steady. I operated the belt of the drill by hand since the RPM of the drill would be too high when running on power.
My big fear was that the threadcutter would break, but everything went well. It's only aluminium after all.

As to my fear the tensile strength of the aluminium would not be sufficient, I did a little calculation with a spoke tension of say 100 kg.
Imagine the finished wheel with a spoke in the middle.
The middle spoke would be able to support 100 kg
The two spokes to the left and right would be able to support 100 * cos(360/60) = 99.45 kg each
The two spokes left and right of the previous ones would be able to support 100 * cos(360/60*2) = 97.81 kg each
...

Total load for one half of the wheel would be able to support approximately 2500 kg, so that should not be of any concern.