Scottish forks

[hawkstoneben]

i brought some scottish forks without the top yoke and thought my hawkstone to yoke would fit but it doesnt. does any one have a spare one that might fi?. im looking the boomerang that is more bent

[hawkstoneben]

heres the problem

[IanCordes]

You need to trawl ebay, check the small ads in Leading Link; or put in a 'Wanted' ad. A relatively small percentage of club members use the forum, whereas everyone reads Leading Link. One might come up, but they usually sell with the forks. You will see that the bottom yoke on the trials forks is offset to the rear, whilst the one on the scrambler is central to the fork legs.

[tonyed27]

It is all because they are 'Scottish' forks. It is not well known but the Scottish inch is 4.45% smaller than the English inch, thus if the bottom yolk assembly is from an 'English' Hawkstone bike and the top from 'Scottish' the two will not fit together. The same goes with angular measurement, 90 'Scottish' degrees is only 85.55 'English' degrees.
This came about due to the Act of Union between England and Scotland in 1707 which, although little known, included a variation in measured sizes based on the latitude variation between London and Edinburgh which is approximately 4.45 degrees.
Although ignored today, goods manufactured in the 'olden days' might well be subject to this variation.
As for the magazine 'Roadholder' try advertising for a set on Norton trials forks which might well fit your frame.