Day six (Saturday) was Sabbath for Doug, so the shop was closed until sundown. I took this as an opportunity to go to a movie with one of my classmates. After the shop opened up I went in for some late night filing. This included easy things like the clean up of the edges of my fork crown, working on some drop outs and poking at the chain stay sockets on my bottom bracket. Since I’m doing a bi-laminate bike it also involved knocking off half of my lugs. Bi-liminate for this bike means that I’m fillet brazing to a lug. It should look pretty slick when I’m done.
Down tube lug before filing.
This filing was a fairly easy process, it just took lots of time. I spent most of Saturday night working on this and a good portion of Sunday. I think Doug (and possibly my classmates) started to worry about my emotional stability towards the end of it. The pictures kind of tell the tale here, but I’m about 99% done with the task and all of my tubes fit properly. I just need to do a little more widening on the seat tube lug.
In the middle of filing
Lugs after filing
The next major task to do was started on the morning of Day 7. Brazing up my fork. This involved assembling my fork in the same Anvil jig that I used for the drop outs. After assembling, leveling and test fitting I took it apart to flux up and get ready to braze. I did this right around lunch time and there was quite a bit of chaos in the shop at the time. Unfortunately something got screwed up. The jig wasn’t tightened as it should have been and we didn’t drill the weep holes in the fork for the expanding gasses to escape. I started brazing up the fork crown with Herbie, he noticed that we didn’t have the holes and we stopped brazing, drilled the holes and started up again. The brazing went pretty well, I’m feeling more comfortable with silver brazing and I’d almost venture to say that I’ve earned my beginner badge. I have enough confidence now to say that I don’t think my brazes will fall apart and I don’t think I’ll set the tube on fire. I’ve still got a long way to go to be good at it, but I’m on the road. At this point I can at least see when I’m doing something wrong, if not fix it.
Fork in the jig
After the fork was brazed and cooled I stuck one of my wheels in there to check out how things looked. Unfortunately the wheel sits in the fork cockeyed (to the non drive side for those keeping track). This is of course fixable but I spent a good chunk of the day super pissed at myself that it happened, and I’ve been trying to figure out what went wrong so hopefully I don’t repeat the same mistake again. Unfortunately it seems like any one of the things I mentioned above could have caused / contributed to the problem, or it could have been something else entirely. Thankfully it is fixable as the fork looks pretty dope, and I’ll be happy to ride it.
Fork after brazing
The other big task of the day was to do my first brass brazing. I must say that I like brazing with brass a ton better than silver. It feels a lot easier. I think this is because the metal is hotter, the signs for heat control are a little more obvious and happen a little slower. The torch is much closer which causes the area you’re working in to be much smaller and more focused than with silver. Brass brazing didn’t involve a ton of “flowing” like we do with the silver. This takes some of the magic out of it (it’s a lot of fun to watch the silver move via capillary action), but on the other hand its nice to plop the brass down and have it stay where it was put. You can flow brass, and we did this later in a practice drop out as well. The whole process went much smoother and I really enjoyed it. This is good because my main triangle will be brass brazed, so I might as well like doing it.
Tomorrow begins the brazing of the main triangle. I’m looking forward to getting the bike out of the jig and starting to have it take shape.
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