Grinding Metal

I've been waiting for about a year to turn a set of Shimano XTR FC-M960 cranks into a Jeff Jones style single-speed crank.  A quick search of the interwebs will reveal many others who have done this.  While I don't claim to be proficient at working with metal, I thought it would be fun to try, or at least spend some quality time in my mancave destroying a perfectly good set of cranks.

The Process...

1. Take a perfectly good set of cranks.

2. Remove the chainrings and apply a hacksaw.  The good part about this is it goes fast and accuracy isn't all that important.

3. Apply a 250mm file for 20-30 min.  I also used the smaller file to smooth things out a bit.

4. Stop well short of finished job but enough to have a workable set of SS cranks.

So now you are shouting at the computer screen because 1 - My cranks are a disgrace to all of those that have put a week or two into the same job (I spent at most 45min) and 2 - I still have the original 32T chainring on the thing.  Before you slam your laptop shut in disgust, be assured that 1 - I will most likely pull these off once or twice over the winter and tool on them and 2 - The M960s take a non-standard 102bcd 4 bolt chainring and I only had a 104 on hand.  Hopefully one of these from HBC will take care of that little problem.

Here is how things could look if one were to spend much more time than I did.  If you look close you can see your reflection in the crankarm.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/subliminalshiver/5152795795/