Let's try this again... shall we

Ok so I screwed up the 1st set of chain stays by cutting them to short... it was kind of fate anyway because the 1st set wasn't as high quality as I want. So I ordered the correct flux to use with my bronze rods and below are the pictures of my brazing steps.
By the way I also just bought an oxy/acetylene set up on craigslist that was a great deal and it is so much easier to use than the MAP gas setup.


All fitted up and ready for flux...

Getting ready to braze...

Wow that went so much better than the last time, I couldn't see that there was a bubble and not enough bronz in the joint so I needed to go back and dump a little more bronz in there.

Ah much better, I built much more of a filet inside the joint and this thing is solid!

These are presoak brazed...

After about 30 minutes of soaking... almost clean.

This is after about 15 minutes of filing and sanding... looks pretty good

I am especially proud of this joint, there are no voids, no extra bronz anywhere and once I sanded it down it looks great.

So this is basically the finished joint, I will finish it after I have done the seat stays and brazed it into the BB.

I realized I haven't put any pictures of the cleaned up front triangle yet so I will post some those tomorrow.

Starting slowly...

Well I got my order from Nova with the new chain stays and fork blades so I started on the chain stays last night. I am taking this a good bit slower than I did previously and I am really seeing a difference in my filing ability and knowing exactly how I want to approach this stage.

These pics are after I have found the true center line with V-blocks and the machinist square, then I made a nice flat/square cut of the tip with a tube cutter (big help here) and then made my alignment marks bigger and more representative of what I want it to look like. I am sinking the drops in about 8mm deep so the main black mark is 7mm deep for the hack saw cut.

You can see I used a small knife blade file to start my cuts

The cuts with the hack saw are hard to keep straight but I have plenty of room to straighten everything out with a file.

Initial filing, I will work down to the hash mark with the file and get it nice and square.

The initial fit is very nice, no slop and nice and straight and square to the center line of the stays.

Trying a little design cut, I like this look better than the tapered cut I did previously.

Finished with the non drive side cuts and filing.

This is the cog side of the drive side stay, I have a little clean up to do on it but this is with a taper for the cassette to have as much clearance as possible.

I am really proud of how these stays are starting to look, I think I did a much better job of cutting and filing these to look nice once they are brazed. I am confident that I will be able to braze them in nicely without burning the drops like last time.

I hope to have the rear triangle done this week end and then finish up the braze ons next week... and maybe build it up to ride next weekend. I plan on building it up before painting and get a few rides so I know that it is ready to truely be finished then.

minor set back...

Taking measurements for the chainstays to cut and miter;

Well I cut them to short by about 1 centimeter! DOH! well I had to do an order with Nova anyway so instead of using these and having to let the air out of the tire to install the wheel I will try it again with new stays. I will probably recycle these for a later bike with a steeper seat tube angle.

I am really looking forward to finishing this frame possibly this weekend so I can build it up and ride it. I think I will get it powder coated instead of trying to paint it myself because I want to improve my building skills before I start on paint skills.

I ordered the tubes and lugs for my next frame from Henry James yesterday and will get started on that over the Christmas holiday break. It is going to be a Road/Cross frame so I can go for road rides and hit some of the local fire road trails as well.

Well it has been about 2 weeks since I have even touched the frame... Thanksgiving then shoulder surgery has benched me. I am chompin at the bit to get back at it but I think it will be another week before I can.

Front triangle is done... mostly

Well I got a little discouraged last weekend... I thought I had the fork all jigged and straight but once I was done brazing and cleaned it up it was WAY off. I am not sure if I will try and fix it by reheating and taking the legs off, or just hang it on the wall as a reminder that anything can and will go wrong if I am not careful.
But I motivated myself to take my time and finish up the front triangle, I feel I am getting the feel for heat and being able to read the metal (even though the pictures don't show that). Last night I finished up a point on the head tube/top tube that didn't fill all the way in, but I realized how to recognize the metal temp and when it is approaching a critical temp... it's a cool feeling to know where that over heat line is and how close I am to it.


The seat clamp was a long preheat but I kept it pretty clean so I won't have too much extra clean up.


You can see here that the flux burned a little but it isn't as bad as it looks... I think it is more on the surface of the flux because it washed right off... but I have had a little more practice this week and I am way more comfortable with the temps.

The cable braze-ons were interesting because they moved just slightly which took them out of alignment but I am ok with it. My wife couldn't even see that they are out of alignment so I figured that is a good sign.

This week end I might be able to work a little on the rear triangle... but we will see.

Now for the fun part...

This was really exciting and absolutely scary as hell all at the same time... I decided even thought this is my first frame I wanted to do some nicer detail touches. So internal cable routing is one of them along with some other braze-on goodies.

After looking at some other builders designs and learning from what I could see in their production photo's I new to use internal brass tubing and braze in these ferels. I decided that I will try to do an internal fillet because there are some little gaps to fill since the angel of the ferels doesn't match the tubing cut/mitter very well. As you can see I loaded up the silver... I think it is either because I couldn't tell that the hole was filled or if the silver expanded a little after it cooled.

*** A side note*** take a look at the head tube... yeah it was the worst of all my joints because I wanted to make sure there was silver going into the mitter... but I also got some gaps in weird places... so I had to go back reheat and add silver... wow that is ugly!

So here I started to cut off the excess ferel to open up the inlet for the cable housing... I was very nervous because I really didn't know whatto expect.

More grinding and taking my time at that!

So after some filing and triming of the inside... it doesn't look to bad?

Well this was well worth the experience because I am more than happy with the outcome, even though the holes aren't the same size or length they do match up well enough that I will put braze-on internal cable covers and it will look spectacular. Don't get me wrong I want to leave these open because with paint on them you would barely be able to notice the the slight alingment issue... but with brased on covers over the holes I will be able to align them perfectly and symetrically. I will work on a way to match the holes up so they will be able to be left un covered to give a cleaner look.

I really wish I could get a shot if the internal fillet, it came out really nice.

I definately learned alot with this round of brazing, I also feel that filling gaps with 56% silver is much easier than working with brass rod. and I will really focus on taking my time in heating and watching the temps on the next round of brazing as well as keeping the silver in the right place. I did a little reading online and figured out a few things I was doing wrong and to help keep everything much cleaner. I eventually want to be able to braze well enough to just clear coat a frame and showoff the seams.

the ugly brazing...

So following the Paterek building plan I brazed the drop outs... even though they look pretty bad here the drops look pretty good with the basic clean up below.

The rear drops wen't pretty bad but I did recover from it pretty easily... I decided since I had large gaps to fill I would try using brass rod instead of silver... the one thing I forgot was the flux I had is for silver... so as you can see below I cook the flux pretty bad, I will know better next time.

the front drops after some basic clean up... I will use the dremel to clean out the little triangle on the lugs.

The black tar is actual hard as a rock and hard to remove...

After lots of dremel work they came out pretty decent... I will know what not to do next time. Even though it looks like I had to grind on the tubes... I didn't that is just file marks.

I wanted to show what the jig looks like...

So here are a few pictures of the home made jig to hold the bottom bracket to the seat tube and then the Head tube to the down tube.

Pretty simple; I used a 4 foot section of 1/4" angle steel, clamped it in the vice nice and square and plumb. Then set up a couple steel angle plates (used for fence building or joist anchors) clamped square then a long threaded bar (left long to use for the head tube when the front triangle is set up) with a hole saw cut in half acting as the BB cup/holder. and a v-block to keep everything as square as possible. It helped to stay on track with Patereks manual without spending money and time of fixtures.

Here you see the head tube/ down tube fluxed and ready to braze in the fixture... the fixture head up very well to brazing and I set it up to be as open as possible.

I didn't take any pictures yet of the head tube/ down toube after brazing but I will tell you that was the hardest so far and I had to go back and dump more silver in it to make look better. But I got good penetration and it stayed pretty plum and square.

Now for the Bottom Bracket to Seat tube

I fluxed all the joints that I was planning to braze at the same time, so same as before I still didn't flux far enough away from the joint to keep down the discoloration. I came up with a Jig that requires no machining and just clamps together and uses bolts for leveling. I will be able to use this jig for most of the sub assembly and rear triangle.

Below you will see I didn't do to bad with this joint almost all the way around got good silver penetration and I only overheated area that were very thin or not properly coated... not bad I would say I am getting better but I now what the next 5 joints already look like...

I definately realized why Richard Sachs puts so much flux on and coats every single part that will even get closed to heat... it aids in less clean up and keeps the metal in better condition.

Here I did some quick clean up after dinner and it looks pretty good... except the lobe of the lug between the chain stays... it got penetration but left a little gap at the tube and tip...

So I went back and reheated the tip of this lug and dumped way to much silver in it... but it still cleaned up pretty well.

Next is the head tube/ down tube...