Built up and ridden 50 miles...

Well here it is, I am very proud of my 1st build. It rides super smooth and stiff (like I like it) I will need to get a Surly tug nut so the wheel won't slip and because I don't want to tighten the rear skewer so much that I can't open it out on the road.
I am taking it in for powder coat today and should have it back next week.





1 x 10 gears work great... it's a 50 tooth chain ring. I will report later on how it does for longer hilly rides. I centered the ring by mounting it on the inside of the spider so I can go through all 10 gears with very little chain alignment stress at the 25t

Not a real clear photo but it looks pretty good for a 1st timer.

I decided to build a new fork over the weekend and didn't take the time to shoot pictures during the process. But here are a couple close ups of the finished fork; I really like these Ritchey crowns from www.bikelugs.com they are cheap and pretty light weight. It's an internal plug style crown (to match the drop outs) I had a hard time figuring out how to do the brazing but after a few issues with one drop out I worked out all the kinks.

Basically I drilled vent holes on top and bottom of the legs then a feed holes just at the top of where the plugs are inside the leg. That helped make sure my silver was going all the way up and around the plugs, I even fed enough silver for the drill hole to fill in on itself (not the vent holes though).

The crown was much easier because it is easier to control the heat and take my time, I fed a lot of silver in there so I am more than positive there is a nice fillet inside. The nice thing about this style crown and drop is it takes all of about 20 minutes to clean and finish the brazing joins.

The only issue I really had was bending the legs to match each other, these were the 1st set I bent and they look OK but there is a very small lump (almost like a kink) on one leg. The issue was keeping them from twisting while bending each one... I had a pair that twisted inward and looked horrible when mounted so I scraped them. Also it is hard to get the radius I wanted and to match both legs but I got pretty close after scraping the second set and I am confident the next fork (which I will probably start on this week) will be much better.

I am very proud of the brake bridge, it looks great.

The seat stay tops are OK after lots and filing and shaping but I think I will be a lot more careful on the next build to align them right and make sure the fillets match.

Since the bottom bracket was one of the 1st things I brazed, it leaves a lot to be desired. But the good thing is by the time I got to the chain stays I was pretty comfortable with brazing, and they look much better than the ST and DT.

I am pretty satisfied with the rear dropouts but I will do them a little different on the next one to keep them looking uniform and cleaner.

The internal cable runs came out pretty clean, but there is lots of room for improvement. I will also need to adjust my placements because this one just slightly touches my leg while peddling.

But I still really dig the look and style of internals so I will focus on getting better at placement and brazing them.

The cable routing is just a little funky around the head tube so I will confront that on the next build but it doesn't affect performance and I have seen mutch worse on some higher end frames.

It's ridable!

So I finished the frame and fork this weekend and before I do the finishing touches for powder coat I built it up for a few rides.
The frame rides like a dream and since this is the first custom built frame I have ever ridden I notice some big differences between this and my last road frame (Ridley Excalibur carbon race machine)
1) since I speced the tubes for a 190 Lbs rider (me) it is stiff and buttery all at the same time... that's good since the Excalibur was pretty stiff and this feels much stiffer.
2) It's been a long time since I have ridden a steel fork and I don't think I have ever ridden a lugged steel fork. It rides really smooth and once agains seems stiff and yet very buttery on the little road vibration and bumps.

All in all I am very happy with myself on this one and I can't wait to get it powder coated and then see my logo on it.

The only thing I did wrong was built the fork to use long arm caliper brakes so my Dura ace brakes are too short so I am going to pull the drops and shorten the legs by about 1cm. My next frame will use the longer dimensions but I will use canti brakes instead so I can run a cross set up on that one.


I will post some pictures this weekend of the bike built (unpainted) but I am out of town for the next couple days so it may be Monday before I get them up.

Braze-on time!

I did a few different things last night: brazed in the bottle bosses, brazed on the cable stop for the rear derailuer and pulled the right seatstay drop to straighten out the wheel in the rear triangle.


So my previous "New" method of brazing is working well. But you can see here I overheated the flux just a little but it still wiped right off with a wet rag.


This is after I had heated the seat stay/drop joint and pulled it. I ended up having to pull it about 2 mm to get the wheel straight at the brake bridge within 1mm of center. I ended up having to turn the frame over and try and get all the silver to go back down in the joint because it all came flowing out when I pulled on it.

The cable stop for the rear derailuer, I was kind of practicing a fillet (it is really hard with 56% silver) it came out pretty well.

This is the other set of bottle bosses on the DT after wiping off the flux, you can see I didn't over heat anything and I just got a little silver build up on one tip. These were a lot easier than I thought they would be.
I also bored the seat tube for a 27.2 post and cut the slit in the seat clamp, I didn't do that great of a job on that so I might key hole it to clean it up. I also taped and faced the BB with my new Ice toolz kit... man it is nice having my own set of tapping and facing tools.
I may not be able to do much on it for the next couple days but saturday I plan on cleaning everything up and possibly building it up for a ride! cross your fingers.

much better now...

So as I mentioned yesterday I completely screwed up my brake bridge so I went home and just removed it and started over.
I had this other bridge so I decided to make a better jig that holds everything in place while brazing. I also did some research and realized my off center wheel is not to hard to fix so I centered this bridge and will fix the right drop out tonight.
This was the best brazing I have done by far, I really focused on not over heating the flux and working the torch away when it came up to temp. Originally I would heat up the area then stick the silver in between the torch and the area to braze, that lead to over heating and usually to much silver. So this time I heated the joint then moved the flame away and dab the silver at the join, it would take a little silver and then I would roll the flame in to add a little more. This worked well as you can see I didn't overheat the joint ever and I was able to just scrub off the flux with a wet towel after the joint cooled.
I can't wait to put this to the test tonight on the braze on cable guide and the bottle bosses.


Just cleaned the flux off.

About 5 to 10 minutes of filing and it looks great!

I will finish sand it later this week once I have all the brazing done and alignment all checked. Then I have the seat clamp to finish and sand everything... then I can build it up for a few rides before I paint it.

New Fork built and disaster with the brake bridge...

After making a paper weight out of the 1st fork I decided to rebuild it instead of just leaving it, so I reheated and pulled the fork legs and cleaned and preped the crown for a new set. On this one istead of using outside plug drop outs I am using the standard drop to match the rear drop outs.

This time around I went way farther with the my measuring, alignment and prep of the fork legs. Trying really hard to make sure everything is going to be straight and square, the pictures below show a little of my new process.

You can see the center line of the leg so I will be able to align it with the crown.

Nice and straight and ready to be brazed...

This is after a quick soak to remove the flux, I used some some brass brazing rod that came with my 1st map gas kit... it works pretty well.

After some quick filing, I tried a little different cut on the fork end. I am still messing around with fork end cuts to see how they look after filing and how hard it is to clean and finish. This style is a pain because I have to get in with the dremel where as the straight solid angle I did on the rear drops is all file and very little dremel work, which is cheaper and quicker.

This is after the dremel work and using the abrasive wheels that cost 2 bucks a pop and they only last long enough to finishe one or two lugs... Expensive!

If you look close in this picture you can see the old fork leg I pulled out sitting there , I will probably cut it open to look at my brazing.

I am checking to see if a jig idea will work here, it ended up being a great way to do the fork (next picture) I have decided to not build big bulky complex jigs but ones that I can peice together and won't take to long to set up.

The setup here was quick and almost to easy, I am checking every angle for square and level. You can see I have a nice square flat piece of steel with a center line on it, the v-blocks are centered on that sto make a nice straight line for the rest of the jig.

Now checking for the crown to be level and square, after this I inserted the fork legs with a dummy axle and pulled the angles from the drawing to make sure I will have the correct rake angle.

Once I had everything set up and checked many times for square and straight I fluxed the crown to tack it into place.

After I tacked them into place I pulled it out and put it in the vice vertically to make it much easier to braze. It ended up being almost perfect with a wheel in it after I was done brazing, I will have some pictures of the filing later.

Now for the brake bridge, even though I thought I had it straight and square... it wasn't.

You can see here that I had some marks on the stays to make sure it was in place but once I started brazing it all went wrong. The jig didn't hold the piece in place so it ended up being low on the left side and poorly brazed. So last night I reheated and removed it, I will have some pictures tomorrow of that and how the new brake bridge looks.

Wow this is getting fun...

Well I got a lot done this weekend, I finished the rear triangle and a new fork as well as getting started on the brake bridge (more on that tomorrow)

Above is my jig to keep the rear triangle in place while I tack it and cut and prep the seat stays.

This basic jig made it easy to lay the frame on the drawing and pull the alignment measurements up off the drawing.

getting ready to cut the seat stays

almost done with the filing.

finish filed

Here is the seat stay fitted and almost ready to braze.

Both Seat stays ready for brazing, but next is the seat stay ends at the top tube

Both Seat stays cut to length

Fitting the cap to the seat stay.

So while I was brazing the cap to the seat stay I tacked the chain stays in place... not the greatest tack but it worked.

After brazing the cap and a little triming on the grinder.

Just about to file it down.

Fitted up after filing and sanding... they aren't perfectly square but I am happy with it.

You can see in this picture the left cap is just a little bit bigger than the right... that is haunting me now.

Now I am brazing up the rear triangle after a few checks to the drawing for accuracy and to make sure I have the right BB drop.

Well after all the overly simple jigs and what not the rear triangle came out pretty straight and square, I had one slight mistake. It seems that the rear wheel is just slightly out of square so the by about a mm at the rim. So the brake bridge is going to be slightly off center but I will see what i can do.

I will have more pictures of the new fork and brake bridge tomorrow.