Doug Fattic Frame Building Course: Day 17

The last day! Because I stayed in the workshop late last night there isn’t actually a whole lot more that I have to do to finish off the frame today.

There were a few holes to fill. I fluxed up the fork rack mounts.

And brazed them.

And did the same for the rear rack mounts on the seat stays.

And the down tube bottle cage bosses.

I fluxed the seat tube bottle cages bosses.

And applied heat and silver.

With most of the day left and things more or less complete Herbie and I looked at how I could make my dynamo lighting cables run internal to the frame. We came up with a system of four holes, three which would just be drilled out (at the fork crown, top of the down tube and the rear of the bottom bracket) and one (on the fork blade near the dropout) which would get some reinforcement which Herbie would braze in for me.

First we drilled a small hole on the fork blade.

And expanded it.

Then Herbie placed a hollow tube in the hole and brazed it in.

Which was then cut and filed to make a really neat entry point.

The rest of the holes were simple to drill out.

The cables can run directly off the dyanmo hub and into the fork blade, emerging at the top of the crown. From there they will run underneath the fender to the front light, back underneath the fender and into the down tube and out the hole in the bottom bracket before running up the inside of the rear fender to the rear light which will be fender mounted.

The only thing left to do now was to fill up the vent holes that had been drilled on the fork blades and seat stays to allow gases to escape while they were brazed up. Now they need to be covered over so that water doesn’t get in and sit there and rust things away.

Filling the holes is very simple, a stick of bronze is sharpened to a point.

And stuck in the hole and brazed in place.

The stick is cut off.

And then filed down flush.

On the last braze I managed to burn the hair off my knuckles when lighting up the torch.

But what did I care? The frame was complete.

How much does it weigh?

The frame is a touch over 1.8kg.

And the fork is about 650g, so in total around 2.5kg. Not that that really matters a whole lot.

I went up to Walgreens looking for bubble wrap so that I could pack the frame up. I couldn’t find any but they were having a sale on pool noodles. 74c each.

I took one last look at the frame fixture and left the workshop for the last time.

It was a pity we didn’t have enough time to paint, but I’ll get that done back in Australia. I was really happy with the class, I think Doug and Herbie both did a great job teaching us the techniques and walking us through the process. Without the course I would have been very hard pressed to have been able to develop the skills needed to build as good a bike as I have ended up with and I can see so many places throughout the process where I would have so easily done something wrong in a subtle way that would have ruined the frame completely. Hopefully back in Australia I will get the chance to build some more bikes because it has been really fun and also made me so much more aware of the extent to which production frames make compromises in order to suit the average rider. I really can’t wait to build this one up and ride it, but I’m also thinking about frame number 2, number 3…

I’m pretty tired too, it has been an intense three weeks, lots of work, a few late nights. Looking forward to a couple of days off in Chicago before I’m back in course-mode in Colorado Springs.

Doug Fattic Frame Building Course: Day 16

It is the second last day and while the main construction of the bicycle is now complete there are still a lot of little fiddly bits to get done. It has been clear for a couple of days that we aren’t going to get a chance to do the painting in class, which is a shame as that was something that I was interested to learn more about, but at the same time it is good that we haven’t rushed through the building process and have had enough to time to be hands on with all of the many processes that are involved in creating the finished product.

First off today I started the set up for my water bottle bosses. This started with finding the centre line of the seat tube and down tube.

Marking the lines.

And the intersecting points where we will drill the holes.

Before going on with the drilling and brazing we cover the variety of ways to correctly locate the various cable stops we will be attaching. There are old fixtures.

New fixtures.

Specific angles to consider.

The need to ensure equal spacing, both around the circumference of the tube.

As well as from the intersections of the tubes.

To get the cable stops to just the right position under the top tube you get a straight line to touch both the top tube and the down tube and position the stop at the intersection.

Being careful to mark centre lines and get the stops facing in the right direction.

Before holding them in position in preparation for brazing.

The braze ons need to be filed a little so that they fit snugly round the outside of the tube. Here is one compare to the other, as yet unprepared, stop.

Then it was time to get the drill out. Here are the four holes for the water bottle cages.

Then I marked up the centre lines on my forks for my front rack braze ons.

And on the seat stays for my rear rack braze ons.

All drilled, cleaned and ready for brazing.

Before brazing I took my fork over the the mill to drill out my fork’s brake hole. First we lined everything up.

Drilled a small hole.

Then a bigger one.

Then set up the mill to stop after a few millimetres.

In order to create a counter sink hole.

Which perfectly matches the bolt on the front brake.

The fork crown race also needed to be chased.

Here is the finished crown race.

I also took off the excess material from my head tube.

And faced it too.

Squaring off the ends of the head tube.

I had a bit of a break now and had a wander around the workshop with my camera, though first I turned the camera on my self. My poor hands have taken a beating over the last three weeks and are covered with scrapes and cuts and the colour of steel.

Here are some of the colour sample tubes.

And swatches.

Every drawer is filled with tubes, tools, drill bits…

And the walls are covered too.

There are bits and pieces from all around the world. From England, Johnny Berry’s amazingly detailed lugged bicycle.

American machinery.

Italian machinery.

German drill bits.

There is a lot of history around to be taken in, but I had to get back to work because these aren’t all going to attach themselves to my bicycle.

I start off with the down tube derailleur cable guides. First one.

Then the other.

Then I positioned the rear brake guide.

Fluxed it up.

And brazed it.

Then the rear derailleur cable guide, this time using an old fixture which used to belong to F W Evans to hold it in place.

And I brazed it up.

My last braze of the day was the fender boss at the chainstay bridge.

By this time I’d been going well into the evening. I cleaned off the flux from the frame and called it a day.

Doug Fattic Frame Building Course: Day 15

With the seat tube area all finished yesterday we take the reamer to it this morning.

Followed by a bit of honing.

Then a double blade is put on the hacksaw so I can cut the slot to allow for compression around the seat post.

This file rounds out the bottom of the cut to avoid stress risers.

In preparation for the last braze to complete the rear triangle the frame goes back on the alignment table.

Sliding parrallels keep everything in place.

And we make sure the wheel is running straight and centred.

We put a tack on the joint to hold it in place.

Then mark a spot for a hole to be drilled.

The hole goes through the seat stay and the dropout.

Into it we place a nail to keep everything exactly where we want it during the brazing process. Richard Sachs would be happy.

All brazed up.

Now it is time to mark out the location of the brake bridge.

We measure the width of the piece.

And the angles for the mitres.

Before I work on creating the bridge I chop off the nails.

And get to filing.

We set up the South Bend mill to the right angle.

Mark up the length required on the bridge.

And engage the bit.

We create a bunch of filings.

And a bridge which fits the gap perfectly.

Before I braze I get back to filing the drop outs and stays. These are starting to look good.

We mock up the bridge with my brakes (Velo-Orange Grand Cru) to make sure we have everything where it has to be.

Flux it all up.

And hit it with heat and brass.

First the left.

Then the right to complete it.

It is time to gather together all my braze ons. As this is a rando bike there are quite a few. There are going to have to be another five bottle braze ons needed in addition to these ones for rack mounts on the fork and seat stays and a fender mount on the chainstay bridge.

Speaking of which, Herbie helps me size up a piece of tube to make the chainstay bridge and we braze it on.

And with that the bike is structually all together. All that is left now are braze ons and some other finishing touches.

Doug Fattic Frame Building Course: Day 14

This morning I brazed up my seat stays. First we marked centre lines using the machinists square.

And marked holes for drilling. This will give the gases somewhere to escape during the brazing process.

Holes drilled.

A bit of weight keeps everything in place.

As well as a bit of silver and an elastic band.

Flux is piled up.

Heat is applied.

Silver is melted.

Everything is cleaned up.

And the process is repeated on the second side.

It is definitely looking more and more like a bicycle now. The wheel goes back in so we can make our final adjustments before brazing the seat stays to the dropouts.

A little bit of filing at the dropouts is needed to get everything to sit flush.

Then it is time to braze it up, bronze brazing again. I’m getting ok at this.

I managed to lay down enough bronze to make a good joint while sparing myself a lot of filing by putting too much on.

While that braze is cooling attention turns back to the fork. The dropouts were brazed on yesterday afternoon but now I need to make sure everything is in the correct alignment. Back into the fixture.

The H Tools make another appearence.

It is decided that the right blade is a sitting a little wide. Nothing to do but to put it where it should be.

And then a little bit of filing in the dropouts gets the axle sitting perfectly centred.

With both seat stays connected to the seat tube lug I can get rid of the remaining excess tube. Four cuts of the hacksaw removes the bulk of it.

Then out comes the file.

I’m getting a lot better at this, and it doesn’t take long for a nice curve and point to be created.

With all of the brazing at the bottom bracket completed I can also turn my attention to filing out the cast marks on the shell.

Returning home at the end of the day a little friend who had been making a few evening apparences was waiting on the door.

Doug Fattic Frame Building Course: Day 13

Once I had filed up my seat stays it became just about impossible to tell which one Herbie had made and which one I had. Of course, it took a little bit more effort on my one to get it there.

Then attention was turned back to my second chainstay. I brazed it up and did a reasonable job, though did get a little excess silver on the bottom bracket.

But the penetration was good, which is the most important thing.

There was a little bit of chainstay sticking into the bottom bracket so we got rid of that.

And turned out attention back to making sure the dropouts were parrallel.

Now it was time to prepare the rear dropouts for connection to the seat stays. I cut some tabs into them with a hacksaw and file.

Meanwhile, more filing on the fork dropouts. Progress has been made.

Back on the fixture table we set up the seat stays to make sure I cut them to the right length. You can see here that they are a little long and I’ll need to take a few millimetres off the end.

Here is the first stay cut to size, with the frame performing a bit of a magic act being suspended by a single dropout.

Then I prepared the seat tube lug, flattening it out where the tip of the seat stay will be brazed on.

Now it sits flush.

At this point we cut the excess seat tube beyond the lug off to assist us in getting heat to exactly where we need it when we braze on the seat stays.

The brazing will need to wait for tomorrow.

Doug Fattic Frame Building Course: Day 12

Today I moved on to attaching my chain stays to the bottom bracket. They need to be mitred as well as cut to size.

AS I was working on that Joe was having an issue with his rear drop outs. Herbie worked out pretty quickly that they were stainless steel, not regular steel, and so they weren’t going to work – stainless steel requires different flux, different bronze and different temperatures to regular steel. So the connection that had been made had to be undone with a bit of weight, gravity and heat.

Meanwhile I marked up my chainstays to length.

Put them on my plans to make sure things were working as I intended.

And filed in the mitres.

They fit just so in the bottom bracket.

Then it was time to prep everything. I used emery paper to clean up the chain stays.

And the bottom bracket was cleaned up in the sand blaster.

Everything was covered in flux.

Using the Johnny Berry tool we set the chainstays up with some triangulation from the seat post bolt.

This was then transferred onto my frame fixture so we could make sure we were at the correct angle out of the bottom bracket to put the rear wheel exactly where we wanted it.

The axle should sit right above the gap in the fixture.

I put a tack on the chain stay to hold it in place.

Then I brazed it all up. This was a pretty straight forward braze.

Matt was on to the brazing of his lugs now. Because they were so intricate Doug was pretty hands on for this.

While this was going on I was having fun with alignment again.

With little margin for error due to my use of vertical dropouts we have to be very careful to get everything positioned just so. We used the H tools to set the dropouts in phase with each other.

And gave the right chain stay a little tap to get it seated exactly where we wanted it in the bottom bracket.

Then measured the alignment again.

I didn’t end up brazing up the second chainstay today, though. My attention was first diverted by my plugs on my seat stays.

Herbie cut and coiled a small piece of silver which gets wedged between the plug and the seat stay.

It then gets set up in a fixture.

And then the connection point is heated until the silver flows out.

Herbie did the first one to show me how it was done.

And I did the second. You don’t have to look to carefully to tell the difference between the two!

I also finished off the brazing on my forks, brass brazing the dropouts in. The process was the same as for the rear dropouts, thought it is done in a fixture to make sure the desired rake is achieved.

I layed out a fair amount of bronze into each socket.

More than enough to make a good connection.

Now I just need to finish of filing them into shape, removing the excess bronze and shaping the scallops.

Doug Fattic Frame Building Course: Day 11

With the main triangles all brazed it was time to turn our attention to the rear triangle. Doug walked us through the whole process.

You start with setting the dropout spacing, adding a couple of extra mm as the application of heat to the chain stays tends to bring everything in a little more than what you set them.

Then you need to get the dropouts aligned, making sure there are four points of contact with the alignment table.

Putting the chain stays into the bottom bracket it is clear some material needs to be taken away.

Rather than use the mill, though, we file these by hand.

And they fit perfectly.

The tool here is a Johnny Berry original, it bolts on at the seat post clamp to make sure that the chainstays are on the correct angle.

Which you confirm by taking it back to the frame fixture – the dropout should be centred over the gap in the fixture.

Then out comes the Park FAG tool which makes sure that the dropouts are positioned so that the wheel is going to be centred in the frame.

Using a wheel and a straight gauge you can make sure that this is the case.

I’m using vertical dropouts which has less margin for error than horizontal dropouts, so I foresee this being a fairly long process for me!

While waiting for the brass brazing demonstration to connect the dropout to the chainstay I continued to file my lugs. They are getting there…

Next was the brass brazing demonstration. It is really important that everything is very clean for this, including using some scotch brite on the brass rod.

Apply some flux only to where you want the brass to go.

And then get it really hot, much hotter than brazing with silver.

When it is cherry red you get the brass in there.

And keep going until you have filled 1cm into the chain stay and created a little dome of brass on top.

While I was waiting for my practice attempt I started planning out the clearences in my back end. Things are going to be tight back there.

Then it was time to practice brass brazing. I put on some flux and got going

Here is the finished result

We chopped off the dropout to inspect inside – there was definitely enough material on the inside to consider the braze a success.

Then it was back to the drawing board for my rear triangle spacing.

The major issue was the fender width, which is wider than the gap that is going to be left when I braze everything up. In the end I decided that I’ll just do a bit of trimming of the fender to make it fit.

Then it was time to set up my dropout for brazing. We made sure they were aligned.

And set them up in the vice. We are making the dropouts sit in the inside of the chain stays to try to cheat as much clearence as possible.

Flux is applied.

And off we go. Because the gap on the inside is so narrow Herbie helps out to start the inside filling.

Before I take over to fill the outside and then pile up the brass around the outside of the dropout

All done.

Not the most attractive connections. Time for some more filing to create some scallops in the transition from dropout to chainstay. Here is the start of that process.

And in the end they look like this.

Doug Fattic Frame Building Course: Day 10

Matt put in a long night again last night, but the good news is that he has more or les finished his lugs. He has put a lot of time and effort in to them, but it hasn’t been wasted – these are going to look great when they are all brazed up.

But back to the alignment table. Doug has these nifty magnetised tube holders which can assist in keeping one tube in the right position while you make adjustments elsewhere – fixing one alignment issue only to create another is frustrating!

My second head tube lug was all ready to go, so I brazed it up.

Now that both head tube lugs were brazed I cleaned off all the flux to get a proper look at how I had done.

And I’m pretty happy, it all looks good. Back to the alignment table.

It gets harder and harder each time to get things just right – each brazed lug makes it significantly more difficult to adjust the positioning of all the tubes. We are using surface gauges to ensure alignment, so we are getting everything to within small fractions of a millimetre.

The next connection to be brazed is the down tube into the bottom bracket. I put a spot on and smoke billows out of the chain stay holes.

When the spot is cool I braze it up.

It looks pretty good.

You can see a major difference after I clean off the flux and compare what was my second actual braze on this bicycle, the seat tube to bottom bracket (on the left), and my most recent effort.

Time for a lunch break. For the most part I’ve been using the pretty good supermarket up the road to make salad sandwiches or eating left overs from large batches of pasta and soup that I have cooked, but today we went on an excursion out to Berrien Springs to get the local delicacy, the “Haystack”. There are a bunch of Seventh Day Adventists around here, including Doug and Herbie, and with that comes vegetarianism. The Haystack is a pile of beans, salad, sour cream and cheese – basically a burrito without the wrap.

We got ours at Apple Valley, which is a really very good organic supermarket. I bought french lentils to make soup and they even have vegan cheese and sour cream for your Haystack.

Back to work, which means back to the alignment table. We use some weights to keep everything in position for the alignment spots on the last lug of the main triangle, the top tube/seat tube connection.

The spot goes on.

And the lug is brazed.

When the flux is cleaned off it all looks good.

Now the “fun” begins. Filing time. I need to thin out the lugs, giving them a smooth consistent surface. This is going to take a while…

After class we decided to all pile into Joe’s car and go back to Berrien Springs, where the county fair was on. Matt, Joe and I were accompanied by Valerie, who had been hanging out at the workshop during the day designing some lugs for a bicycle she is going to get Doug to build for her, or maybe she will build it herself, as Doug keeps encouraging her to do. I suspect watching me file lugs all afternoon wasn’t convincing her!

The county fair had a lot of your typical produce and livestock pavilions. This duck wanted to untie Valerie’s shoes.

There was also the “Wonders of Birth” pavilion, filled with baby animals. Sponsored by the local nuclear power plant.

The real attraction, though, was the food. Again, Berrien Springs does not disappoint the vegetarian or vegan, as I was able to get some a much-hyped vegan corn dogs.

Definitely the kind of food where you couldn’t easily tell if you were eating meat or not! It was actually pretty good, though.

The other local specialty was the “Elephant Ear”, a large piece of fried dough, covered in cinnamon and sugar. Here Matt and Valerie pose with the Elephant Ear to demonstrate the scale.

We shared one between the four of us. There were plenty of other delicious sounding carnival foods, but we had had our fill.

Mmm. Fatballs.

We wandered through the amusement section, but didn’t go on any rides. I fear the “Mac & Cheese Slinger” is probably a little too close to the truth.

Doug Fattic Frame Building Course: Day 9

Yesterday was the calm before the storm – today it was time to get start putting together the main triangle of the bicycle.

First, lots of cleaning of lugs and tubes in preparation. Cleaning is dirty work.

The first thing to be done was drill a vent hole in the head tube where the top tube will join it. First the location was marked.

Then a first, smaller hole was drilled.

Which I then expanded with a larger bit.

Not very well centred, but good enough for something that will never be seen by anyone else.

Doug the demonstrated the technique for adding the very many position and alignment spots that we will be brazing at each junction as we work around the main triangle.

Then it was time to set up my own frame. All the joints were fluxed, the tubes inserted into the lugs and positioned correctly on the frame fixture.

Because the lugs and the angles of the tube are not completely the same we used some clamps to make sure everything sat exactly where we wanted them.

Matt is still plowing on with his custom lugs, so he is falling behind us now – he is getting a lot faster with the coping saw and files, though.

Then it was time to put the position spots on each intersection to make sure that all the tubes stay in the correct position to one another. Before each lug is brazed we will also add alignment spots to it to make sure that they are aligned as well. Lots of spots!

After these were applied the main triangle is actualy held together – it is starting to look like a bicycle.

When the spots are all cooled it is back on to the alignment table for what will become a very lengthy process of spotting, brazing, aligning, spotting, brazing, aligning, etc.

The first alignment spot goes on the head tube/down tube lug, at the bottom of the heat tube.

When that is cooled everything gets covered in flux.

And it is time to braze.

Here is my first lug brazed up, still covered in flux.

I think I did pretty well, there is silver everywhere it needs to be and not a whole lot where it doesn’t.

Then, back to the alignment table.

I put the next alignment spot on the heat tube/top tube lug, at the top of the head tube.

I didn’t have time to complete the braze today, so I’ll continue tomorrow.

Doug Fattic Framebuilding Course: Day 8

It feels like I didn’t really get a whole lot done today.

I did finish off the shaping of my front drop outs.

And got started adding tabs to the rear dropouts. First I marked them up.

Made the initial cut with a hacksaw.

And filed off the rest. Here is the first one done.

Then I transferred the marks over to the second dropout.

And made some minor adjustments so they slotted snugly into the chain stays.

The other thing I got done was mitring the downtube. First we set up the mill to mitre the head tube connection. We made an initial mitre to check it was correct and then cut again at the same angle at the correct length.

It fit! Then we turned our attention to the bottom bracket mitre. We position the tube at the correct length.

<a

I marked where the cut had to be made and the tube went back into the mill.

All done. The mitre sits a millimetre into the drop out, the excess will be ground out.