A Quality piece of British engineering!

A three-speed Sturmey Archer hub gear which is going into a custom bike.

As a young child I was told never to fiddle with these as they were hugely complicated (probably good advice at the time), but with a bit of patience they can be understood, and the principal is quite simple. There’s a good explanation here if anyone’s interested.

Here is the hub being stripped, the parts checked for wear, ready for lubrication and re-assembly.

The ring with the bar across it (top-right corner of the photo) is a tool I made to get the hub casing apart; I’ve seen videos of people hammering the case to get it off, but I didn’t fancy doing that.