Folding Bikes - Cantilever Brazeons, hard to get done?

As i have recently bought a new wheelset with a new hub that has no coaster brake i wanted to upgrade to V-Brakes. I had so much trouble to find the braze ons and/or someone skilled to braze them on my Twenty! Finally i found the braze ons and will be having them put on soon. Is this a general problem? A couple of specialist frame manufacturers told me they wouldn't do it on frames that were not of their own make as they were super worried about damage to the frame or liability if the braze ons failed. Understandable but sortoff weird too. How about you, did you guys have an easy time of it?

Do you think that with a steel frame it is better to have them welded or brazed on? I think brazed but i am not sure.

My rear v-brake bosses were brazed on by a specialist in Newcastle (the wonderful M Steel Cycles (http://www.msteelcycles.co.uk)) who did the whole lot - particle blasting to bare steel, brazing, priming painting, decals and laquer. All for a very reasonable price too.

All they needed was the frame and the wheel that was to be fitted to the bike so they could get the positioning of the bosses right. They usually do road bikes but were not at all phased with the little twenty.

I'd say - find any specialist cycle builder that does renovations/resprays and such and it's likely that if they do anything to do with replacing dropouts, filling dings or removing bits for fixies that they'll happily braze a pair of generic v-brake bosses on - and for little cost, though you should consider that brazing will burn up all the surrounding paint and would probably be part of a full renovation with a respray done after to stop the new bare metal rusting to bits.

Huw

if your bike is steel just go to some welder and have them put them on for ya. You can go to the framebuilder's forum and see where to buy the braze ons.

Hey Thanks a lot for those tips, good point on the rust/paint damage. No matter though, i think i will just treat the surface myself and apply many coats of hammerite. I don't really have the cash for a new paintjob plus i can't bare being apart for my Twenty longer than absolutely necessary! ;)