unterhausen

I guess it was worth doing, I wanted to make a spiral but my control wasn't that good. As I suspected, crummy brass and horribly powdered flux work really well in this application.

reddog3

As it relates to joining bicycle tube junctions, all the exercise in building towers of brass blobs tells you is, that there is a need for heat control. Otherwise you wasted a bunch of filler, and gas. Pretty hard to take your "heat control" exercise in building towers and move over to fillet joints on thin wall tubes. If you want to build "blobby" sculptures, great. If you want to build bike frames, get the real stuff and burn a few up. Honestly, if welding doesn't come natural to you get some instruction to go along with your practice. I know you have, but again take a look at the work by Steve Garro, Dave Kirk, and others. They didn't learn to lay fillets like this by building towers.

unterhausen

I just did it because I recommended it and felt stupid never having done it before. It's the sort of thing that really only makes sense to do if you haven't done much brazing.

The thing that improved my fillets a lot was just re-working practice fillets. And a burning desire not to have to file the damn things.

Andrew R Stewart 

Reddog3- By your logic an athlete should never do any other activity then the one they are involved in. So no balance training, no weight lifting, no visualizing because, by your view, there's no transfer of skill, strength or experience.

I, for one, feel otherwise. The skill and eye/hand control, the ability to see the flux and filler changes and the feel for the temp control to flow the filler just so is transferable. I do agree that building towers has a limited benefit, just like playing scales won't teach you how to play music but does keep you sharp (bad pun). Andy.

calstar 

+1. I learned a lot by doing this exercise and hardly consider it a waste of filler or gas, it was a very inexpensive lesson. I try to learn something new everytime I use the torch and I usually do.

cheers, Brian

unterhausen

I probably will never do it again, unlike practice joints. I do work seldom enough that warming up on a practice piece is helpful. I just built a tower so I could see if recommending it to others was worthwhile. I would say the biggest problem with making a smooth tower is that the filler oxidizes and so periodically you have to stop to add flux somehow. I found it extremely difficult to do that without making a lump. I have never seen this problem on an actual joint. However, it makes sense for a rank beginner or someone that is having problems with heat control to build a tower or two.