I decided I wasn’t happy with my original chain guard’s homespun appearance. Thanks to purchase of dimple dies and a bead roller, Chain Guide 2.0 has turned out much better. It took an unanticipated amount of effort, but ended up straight and square and surprisingly sturdy, so I am pleased.
I bought Eastwood’s smallest, cheapest roller for about $100 or so. It’s really robust, but fairly crude. It works okay with the bead dies, but there is no positive indexing to prevent the offset flange dies from shifting due to side loads. It’s all held in alignment by friction of one 5mm set screw. Fine for my immediate need, I guess.
There’s a definite learning curve to rolling beads, but a few practice runs and a couple of YouTube tutorials helped me get a feel for it. The dimple dies, on the other hand, are pretty foolproof.
I briefly toyed with the idea of making an intermediate diameter flairing die on my lathe, but when I realized the holes would mostly be hidden by the rear shock, I decided to just use the half-inch die that I had.
