Originally Posted by Sixty Fiver

Good that you mention this as many would be amazed at how little silver / brass is in smioe joints and in many cases, you find this in higher end frames while "lesser" made production frames have much better quality control. I won't tell you what famous builder uses a little too much filler in his frames but let's just say that a pretty joint is not always the strongest one.

The damage to that Kogswell tube does seem to be something that might have stemmed from the extrusion process rather than a manufacturing defect and it is good of Jan to clear this up and would expect the blog entry to be corrected.

The biggest plus to riding a custom is that if you are fortunate enough to find a builder that really understands your riding needs that you will get a frame that fits you like a glove and it will have all the little extra features you may not be able to get on an off the peg bike.

We do a lot of post op work on nicer production frames to add those little things and the Surly LHT is a regular sight in our shop... the frame quality is very good although their early paints were akin to Korean war surplus... tough enough but nasty to get off when you were prepping for a repaint.

Lots of mid eighties Japanese bikes also come in and agina, the frame quality is very high on many of these... I could build myself a new custom touring bike but have been riding the same Kuwahara for many years and many tens of thousands of trouble free miles so why would I want to change what has been pretty much perfect for so long ?