After brazing the front triangle and allowing everything to cool down i took the frame out of the jig to take pride in my masterpiece, something did not appear to be quite right. On closer inspection the fault became apparent. At some ponit during the brazing process i have knocked my jig and twisted the head tube out of allignment with the seat tube by 3 degrees.
This is a catastrophic error. In a futile bid to correct it i hung a heavy weight from the right side of the head tube (as it sits in the photo above) and tried to reheat the lug to melt the silver.
Unfortunately it is impossible to get the entire joint up to the temperature required at the same time and in attempting to do so i have heated the tube beyond the safe limit.Disapointing indeed but i vow to persevere and begin afresh this time with many hours of bike building experience to better guide me. Frame no. 1 will hang from my wall so that in the distant future i will be reminded that even bike building greats such as Chris Beard Custom Cycles can succumb to hubris.
Epic. Absulotely epic.
ReplyDeleteHow do you prevent the same thing happening again??
Are the replacement parts on order?
Just be more careful i guess, i could strap it down but i did not do this originally as i only had hessian straps which i thought would catch alight.
ReplyDeletePlaced the order this morning, hopefully i will get them by Wednesday but i really am running out of time now. I can prob get the frame built but i will have to find a painter in London rather than using the company i use for coating our cages that i know and trust...
So you're up this weekend? I'm sorry I won't be around to help. I'm off to Paris with Sarah!
ReplyDeleteThe 'straighten my head tube with a heavy weight' approach reminds me of many absurd ad hoc solutions that I've attempted with my own bike:
ReplyDelete- boring out the mudguard mount braze-ons with a drill so that they're wide enough to fit a pannier rack screw
- re-aligning a massively bent wheel rim with a hammer (it broke a few weeks later).
- And just last week my rear wheel developed a crack on one side of the rim, so that the edge of the rim had actually splayed apart. I fixed this with pliers and duct tape: good as new.
I look forward to seeing your finished frame, hopefully free of duct tape!